AN EXHIBITION charting the history of gaming consoles will be coming to Pontypool Museum in March, following its display at Swansea's National Waterfront Museum.

Generation Games looks back at the previous five decades of consoles, thanks to the collection of curator Samuel Anstee, and will be the first of its kind in Wales.

The exhibition, which opens in March, will fall within the 40th anniversary of the Torfaen Museum Trust, which operates Pontypool Museum.

Generation Games has been in the pipeline for more than a year and half, and came about following a talk between the Mr Anstee and a council worker.

"A Torfaen County Borough Council employee approached the curator about 18 months ago about his private collection of computer games which included nearly every game from the UK since 1978," said Deborah Wildgust, the curator of Pontypool Museum.

"The curator talked to colleagues in the Federation of Museums & Galleries of Wales and there was much enthusiasm for an exhibition on this subject - the first in Wales.

"With federation funding and backing, the National Museum Wales/Amgueddfa Cymru and Torfaen Museum Trust started a consultancy project at Pontypool Museum back in May to research, explore and write an exhibition using Mr Anstee's collection.

After a period of display in south west Wales, the exhibition will be coming to Pontypool Museum in March, and is expected to open on Saturday, March 31.

"The exhibition will be demounted from Swansea next March and come to the Pontypool Museum ready for Easter 2018," added Mrs Wildgust.

"We are certain that the exhibition will prove popular."

Generation Games will close in October, and it is hoped that the exhibition will be able to tour Wales at other galleries and museum in the county.

"It is hoped that from October 2018, the exhibition, 'Generation Games / Gem wrth Gem' will be available to tour all museums and galleries in Wales with continued support from the partners," added the museum curator.

Jacqueline Roach, National Museum Wales' exhibitions officer, said: "Generation Games has been immensely popular with all ages of visitor – from grandparents and parents reliving the computer games they played and consoles they owned in their youth, to younger people discovering how we used to game.

"We are sure it will be a huge success when it moves to Pontypool Museum, which we have worked in partnership with to produce a stand-out exhibition."