The Retro Gaming Lounge - an interactive display of '80s and '90s home computer games - is the latest project organised by Urban Dream Brokerage.
It comes from the collection of Dunedin man Clinton Rowe, and allows people to walk in off the street and try their hand at the historic games at one of eight gaming stations.
The lounge, which will remain at 125 George St until September 25, is also a promotion for the Dunedin Powerhouse Festival, an October event celebrating Dunedin's industrial heritage.
Urban Dream Brokerage helps organise art, music and literature projects in underused CBD buildings and shopfronts.
The Dunedin City Council last year allocated $50,000 of funding, with Dunedin fashion designer Tamsin Cooper taken on as a ''broker'' to put the project into action.
Ms Cooper said yesterday funding had been extended for another year, under the council's arts and culture strategy.
Southern Heritage Trust trustee Jonathan Cweorth said he came across Mr Rowe's collection at a Star Trek-themed party in Dunedin about a year ago.
''I just thought it was amazing someone had a collection this comprehensive.''
When the trust came up with the idea of the Dunedin Powerhouse Festival in October, he thought the collection could become ''a fantastic promotional event''.
Mr Rowe said his large collection, on which he estimated he had spent more than $150,000, was one that needed to be seen and used by the public.
So far it had limited exposure at private events.
His choice of equipment to display at the lounge was based on accessible, easy-to-play games, and titles people would recognise.
''It had to be the games [where] you could pick up a joystick and start playing.''
He also collected and was displaying ''ephemera'' related to the technology, including a Commodore computer user's manual, books on how to play, colouring books, flyers and publications, ''the type of thing that would have been thrown away''.
Mr Rowe agreed his collecting was obsessive, but ''it has to be done by someone''.
He said nobody else had taken responsibility for preserving that era of technology in New Zealand.
