Where the Games Are Switched On: GamePlaza, Zurich's Interactive Video Game Museum
- Marcel Pflug
- 18 hours ago
- 4 min read
There are two ways to love an old video game. You can keep it sealed, boxed and pristine, a small monument to the day it left the factory. Or you can switch it on, take hold of the controller and let it do the one thing it was built to do. At the Game Boy Museum we mostly do the former. A few tram stops away, in the west of the city, a museum does the latter, and does it beautifully.
GamePlaza is exactly the kind of place every collector secretly wishes existed around the corner, so we wanted to introduce it properly.
An Interactive Video Game Museum in Zurich,
Fully Switched On
GamePlaza is an interactive video game museum in Zurich, tucked onto the first floor at Badenerstrasse 569, a short walk from the Kappeli stop on tram 2 and bus 89. The idea behind it is refreshingly simple. You buy one ticket, and everything inside is yours to play. No coins, no tokens, no queue at a change machine. Arcade cabinets, home consoles, PC stations and virtual reality are all set to free play.
That single decision changes how a visit feels. Instead of rationing your francs across a handful of machines, you wander, sit down at whatever catches your eye and stay as long as a game holds you. Entry is CHF 22 for adults and CHF 19 for children, and because each time slot is capped at sixty visitors, the room never turns into a scrum.
From Arcade Classics to Virtual Reality
The floor is a deliberate sweep through gaming history. Vintage and modern arcade cabinets stand ready for a high-score run. Home consoles from Nintendo, Sega, PlayStation and Xbox line up so you can jump from an eight-bit platformer to something far newer in a few steps. There are PC stations for the mouse-and-keyboard classics, and a virtual reality area for anyone who wants to see how far the medium has travelled.
The care shows. Visitors routinely mention how good the machines look and how much passion they can feel behind the collection. GamePlaza works with recognised partners such as Nintendo and supports gaming initiatives and events including Game Days.
GamePlaza Zurich GamePlaza Zurich Entrance GamePlaza Zurich Entrance GamePlaza Zurich Entrance
Preservation Through Play
This is where our two houses meet. Preservation has more than one meaning. One kind protects the object: the box, the manual, the shrink wrap, the exact state in which a thing was sold. The other kind protects the experience: the muscle memory, the sound, the shared laughter around a screen. Both are real, and both are needed, because a game that can never be played again is only half preserved.
The Game Boy Museum guards the first kind. Our collection is built around original packaging and complete-in-box condition, the DMG-01 ecosystem catalogued piece by piece so the record survives. GamePlaza guards the second kind, keeping the controllers warm and the screens glowing. Put the two together and you get something a single institution rarely manages on its own: the full story, from the sealed artefact to the living game.
Building a Retro Gaming Hub in Zurich
Zurich is quietly becoming a good city in which to be a retro gamer. GamePlaza gives visitors a place to play, the Game Boy Museum gives them a place to study the hardware in detail, and Switzerland has a growing network of game-preservation efforts around them. The pieces of a genuine retro gaming hub are already here; they simply deserve to be better known.
There is room for the idea to grow, too. As collectors, museums and preservation projects across Switzerland get to know one another, Zurich has a real chance to become the place people think of first when they picture gaming history in the German-speaking world. Cooperation, not competition, is how a scene like this matures.
And if an afternoon at GamePlaza leaves you curious about the little grey handheld that started so many gaming lives, you can explore the whole original Game Boy story in our complete DMG-01 guide, then browse the collection item by item from there. Play it at GamePlaza; study it here.
Who It Is For
You do not need to be a hardcore gamer to enjoy GamePlaza. It works just as well for a family with young children, a group of friends after a rainy-day plan, a nostalgic thirty- or forty-something chasing one specific memory, or a company after a team event that is not another escape room. The free-play model means nobody is left watching from the sidelines because they ran out of coins.
GamePlaza Zurich - Wii in Action GamePlaza Zurich - Arcade Heaven
Plan Your Visit
GamePlaza is normally open from Wednesday to Sunday, with extended opening hours during school holidays and special periods. Current opening times are available on the GamePlaza website. Beyond the standard ticket, it runs birthday packages, school-class visits and company events, and GamePlaza also offers arcade and gaming machine rentals for events, companies and institutions throughout Switzerland. Full details and tickets are on the museum's own site at gameplaza.ch.
Our advice: book a slot ahead, give yourself the full two hours, and do not be surprised if the youngest person in your group ends up teaching you something about a game older than they are. That, really, is the whole point.
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