Jessie Yeoh, owner and curator of Perth's first museum dedicated to gaming history. Credit:Pip Doyle "I've always liked video games and always been interested in business," Ms Yeoh said. "I just wanted to do something I was interested in." Ms Yeoh is a self-confessed Nintendo girl. "I would play Super Mario with my two older brothers and we would fight over the controllers... what I remember was that they would give me an extra one without connecting it to the console – because I was so young, I thought I was playing it."

She now owns more than 100 consoles. The earliest model is from 1972, the Magnavox Odyssey. And yes, it played Pong. It was three years later in 1975 that Atari came out with their first home console, called Pong, which only played Pong. It is, however, the Atari 2600 from 1977 that gets the most recognition. "In Australia, it's what people grew up with... it blew up the entire industry," Ms Yeoh said.

It was even displayed with an original cartridge of Pitfall. Nice. The latest gaming console in the collection is the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. "Anything newer is at EB Games," she said. "The idea is to get people to learn something about [gaming] history, [before] heading to the gaming area" The gaming area?

They're all here, Donkey Kong on ColecoVision, Space Invaders on Atari, Sonic the Hedgehog on Sega MegaDrive, Crash Bandicoot on PS1 and Super Mario on Super Nintendo. And Pong. Blessed Pong. "Most people haven't even experienced playing Pong," Ms Yeoh said. To add to the analogue "authenticity", the consoles are hooked up to old tube TVs to give it a "retro feel".

One of the games that can be played is Vectrax, a vector graphic console from 1983 ... the only game at the time to have its own monitor. "It's very innovative for its time, it's pretty rare," Ms Yeoh said. While most of the consoles are still in working order, Ms Yeoh still thought it was important to collect and "tell the history" of the older consoles like the Magnavox Odyssey, which was, sadly, for display only. "It's different when you can see it in front of you instead of just seeing it online," she said. "People don't think about it, especially kids, they don't know how it all started.

"The game industry is huge by itself, but I don't think it gets a lot of recognition – people say 'oh, it's just a game'." Ms Yeoh said that while she was still fitting out the museum, a couple of passers-by begged to come in and take a quick look around. "I said OK, and the guy was like 'Oh my God you have Contra' and just kept playing it, they both really enjoyed it," she said. "That's the whole idea, to go back to your childhood." So, are her brothers a little envious now?