Smartphones have given everyone the ability to check email, browse the Web and create documents anytime and anywhere.

They have also become a useful entertainment device, on which consumers can enjoy playing games.

With enhanced graphics and memory, mobile games offer users almost the same experience as they had when playing on personal computers or at video arcades, even evoking nostalgia for their old favorite games.

NXC, the holding company of Nexon Korea, South Korea’s biggest game developer, said it has built a museum to provide an environment where people can “travel back in time” to learn about computers and play their childhood video games.

Celebrating its first anniversary this year, the Nexon Computer Museum on Jejudo Island lets visitors to take a look at Apple’s first computer, the Apple I, created by founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and the world’s first mouse developed by Stanford Research Institution engineers including Douglas Englebart.

Aside from getting a glimpse of historic computers and accessories, participants can also join workshops on how to build a mouse and a speaker, and think creatively about converging the studies of technology and liberal arts.

But the highlight of the museum is the chance to play classic games introduced during the golden age of video arcades of the 1970s and 1980s such as “Pong,” “Pac-Man” and “Galaga,” as well as other restored games such as Nexon’s “The Kingdom of the Winds.”

NXC said that its aim was to educate the public on how computers evolved from machines mostly for data calculation to a personal computer for gaming and other applications. 

It hopes that visitors can experience the vision of Nexon founder Jay Kim, who said, “Every computer is a game machine,” and the computer’s potential, as foretold by Albert Einstein: “Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.”

By Park Hyong-ki (hkp@heraldcorp.com)