From T2 to Mortal Kombat, new exhibit showcases Midway Games as an original arcade gaming giant

Mortal Kombat. NBA Jam. Cruis’N USA. Tron. NARC.

Anyone even loosely familiar with the world of video gaming has probably heard of at least one of these once (and in some cases, still) hugely popular games, but less widely known is that all of them were developed in Chicago by a now-defunct company called Midway Games (or one of its immediate predecessors).

“Especially here in Chicago,” Joshua Tsui said, “it’s shocking how little people know how much Chicago was a giant in the video game industry, and there’s still a very large presence here now.”

Tsui directed a 2020 documentary, “Insert Coin,” which served as the inspiration for the just-opened “Insert Coin: Inside Midway’s Arcade Revolution” exhibition at the Cleve Carney Museum of Art at the College of DuPage that explores the history and extraordinary cultural impact of the firm and the games developed by the local company.

With its main title taken from the film, the exhibit features 15 playable games, six one-of-a-kind artifacts and 15 drawings and renderings, as well as a wealth of video clips and other historical ephemera.

Among the highlights are two building signs related to Midway and its predecessors, the 1-foot-tall model of the Terminator robot reproduced for the related video games, and the hand-painted resin basketball used in the NBA Jam graphics.

The exhibition, which occupies just under 2,500 square feet, is divided into four galleries. The first focuses on the early history, and the other three are each devoted to one of the firm’s iconic games — Mortal Kombat, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and NBA Jam.

Justin Witte, Cleve Carney’s curator, believes “Insert Coin” is just the kind of engaging, interactive offering that will appeal to today’s audiences who are used to a whole new range of visual technologies. In addition, many people in their 40s and 50s have fond memories of playing the featured games when they were young, and video games in general remain popular among people of all ages.

But along with the hands-on games and entertaining artifacts, the museum has made a point of delving into the development of the games and how they affected and were affected by the cultural and social history of the time, especially the sometimes heated debates over the relationship between violence and entertainment.

“It’s not just plugging in a bunch of games and saying let’s have fun,” Witte said. “It’s, hey, these games have been part of cultural history for a while. Let’s look at the elements that came together for not only their creation here in Chicago but also why they became such a phenomenon.”

The first consumer video games, such as Magnavox Odyssey and Atari's Pong, appeared in the 1970s, and the market quickly exploded, with arcade games including Space Invaders (also from Atari) and Namco/Midwest's Pac-Man. The technology has steadily improved since, with handheld video controls appearing in the 1990s.

According to data provider Newzoo, the video game industry generated $184 billion in revenue in 2023, dwarfing global box-office sales for the same year, which were $33.9 billion. In short, it is a mammoth business that continues to grow at a healthy pace.

The story of Midway Games is a complicated one with lots of changes in company names and ownership, but essentially two crosstown rivals that began as pinball companies and moved into the video realm merged in 1988 — Williams Electronics and Bally Midway.

“Insert Coin” takes up the story in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Williams and designer Eugene Jarvis developed the firm’s first video game, Defender.

“And the game was just a blockbuster, and [the firm] rode the wave of the '80s — the video game and arcade era,” said Tsui, who organized the show with Jonathan Kinkley, owner and curator of Chicago Gamespace.

Midway Games declared bankruptcy in 2009, and many of its assets were acquired by Warner Bros.

Home consoles and personal computers also came to dominate the video realm; Midway had a hard time transitioning from the arcade world and could not keep up with other technological advances.

In his first job out of college, Tsui worked at Midway during its heyday and had an up-close view of everything going on.

“It just seemed like an incredible time and place to be in video game development,” he said, “because there were these very big, popular games coming out of Chicago from this tiny studio in the back of a pinball factory.”

It’s important to realize that the early video games were developed before the internet and programs like Adobe Photoshop existed, so programmers had to invent artistic tools for the designers to create the video games they envisioned.

“I always call it the Wild West days of development,” Tsui said. “Everything was new. Everything was invented on the spot.”

“Insert Coin” is the kind of exhibition that almost certainly would never have been seen in an art museum several decades ago when a bigger distinction was made between so-called fine arts and popular culture. And, indeed, puncturing the barrier between the two is one of the main points of this offering.

“The rules of what belongs in an [art] space have changed, right?,” Witte said. “When you have new media that has been around for a while, there starts to be a new history that can be explored. You can’t always just explore painting and sculpture. There are new art forms that develop.”