CHICAGO — Sketches of Lara Croft and her archaeological adventures line the walls of one room. Dozens of real human bodies, dissected and preserved, strike poses in another exhibit nearby.

There's a "Tomb Raider" joke here for those with a macabre sense of humor, but let's leave that to the nervous teens wisecracking as they walk through the "Body Worlds" exhibit at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. After gawking past dozens of cadavers, complete with exposed muscles, diseased lungs and other reminders of why medical students say that dissection class is called Gross Anatomy for good reason, perhaps a bit of graveyard humor is in order.

Scott Brownell (ENLARGE)
Four decades' worth of video games are on display, and visitors can play oldies such as 'Donkey Kong' and 'Ms. Pac-Man' at the 'Game On' exhibit.
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IF YOU GO Getting there Expect to pay about $210 for round-trip airfare from Atlanta to Chicago's O'Hare airport; around $250 to Midway. About the exhibits "Body Worlds" and "Game On" run through Sept. 5 at the Museum of Science and Industry. Museum hours are 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays; 11 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Sundays. Extended hours for "Body Worlds" are 9:30 a.m.-9 p.m. daily. A combined ticket for "Body Worlds" and the museum is $21 for adults; $11 for children ages 3 to 11; $17 for seniors. Museum admission alone is $9 for adults, $5 for children and $7.50 for seniors. Tickets to "Game On" are an extra $5. Advance ticket purchase is recommended for both exhibits. $12 parking. Museum of Science and Industry, 57th Street and Lake Shore Drive. 773-684-1414, www.msichicago.org.

Or perhaps a bit of tension-relieving blasting, chomping or drag racing a few rooms over, where more than 100 video games beckon. The "Game On" exhibit lets visitors play vintage titles such as "Pong" and "Ms. Pac-Man" as well as some of the newest titles and platforms, like Sony's Eyetoy, which puts players on screen and into the game.

The two traveling exhibits, which wrap up Sept. 5, represent just a handful of what's available at the museum, which attracts 2 million visitors annually. A cavernous transportation hall houses a Boeing 727 cantilevered from an upper floor, a model railway with 500 buildings and 1,400 feet of track, several full-size railroad engines as well as a small airplane. A German submarine captured during World War II returns to display this month after a yearlong restoration.

The museum building itself, a massive edifice that encompasses 14 acres, attracts some. It is the only major structure remaining from the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, the former Palace of Fine Arts. "The Devil in the White City," Erik Larson's best selling nonfiction account of the builder who struggled to put together the World's Fair and the serial killer who murdered as many as 200 young women there, has stirred interest in the museum.

So has "Body Worlds," which opens up the workings of the human body in ways that few except doctors have seen. The collection of 200 human specimens exists through the work of German doctor Gunther von Hagens, who invented a plastination process that replaces bodily fluids with reactive plastics.

Athletic poses by some cadavers show how the muscles work. A man on horseback holds a human brain in one hand, the horse's smaller brain in the other. Bright red plastics outline the blood vessels of the artery family: a man, woman and child.

The full-body plastinates stand out in the open, close enough to touch, although that's discouraged. A small station offers a surprisingly heavy liver, a fluffy lung and a cross-section of hip bone and muscle for a hands-on experience.

Other specimens educate about the perils of unhealthy habits: Blackened lungs are visible through the rib cage of one, nicknamed "the Smoker," who is holding a cigarette in one bony hand. Cross-sections of another body show the burden of obesity, from the pressure placed on the organs and spine of a 300-pound man to the continuing lengthwise cross-sections that eventually show nothing but creamy white fat. A cross-section of a 120-pound person looks positively perky in comparison.

Some may view the exhibit as gruesome, some as educational, some as a wake-up call. This isn't an exhibit for everyone, although nearly 16 million people have seen "Body Worlds" since it started a worldwide museum tour nearly a decade ago. Muscles are peeled back to expose organs. Toenails, testicles, nerves and cancerous intestines are on view and authentic. Only the eyes of the plastinates are manufactured. Children younger than 13 must be accompanied by an adult.

One room, screened off from the main exhibit, shows fetuses from the earliest weeks of development to an 8-month fetus still cradled in its mother's partially dissected body. It's set aside so that visitors can make a conscious decision to view its contents.

Other specimens invoke marveling, such as the precise way organs fit within the body, or the display of a man's muscle structure, separate and standing next to his skeleton.

There's a different sort of marveling at "Game On," a retrospective of the $10 billion video game industry that originated in Great Britain. Did computers ever used to be room-size, like the PDP-1 that housed the first computer game, the crude black-and-white "Spacewar!"? Shouldn't '80s arcade favorites like "Donkey Kong" and "Frogger" be easier, given how old they are?

From early console games to some of the newest platforms, there are four decades of gaming history. Portions of the exhibit detail how a game comes together, from the first sketches on paper to final lighting tweaks, to make sure players focus on just the right portion of the screen.

Original sketches from "Tomb Raider" and unused Ocean Quigley concepts for "The Sims" are on display, along with segments on marketing tie-ins, musical scores and cultural differences in game choices.

Americans and Europeans prefer excitement in their games, choosing more adventure titles, says exhibit developer Scott Beveridge.

In Japan, games that simulate real life are more popular. Want to play stressed-out commuter? "Go By Train," a Japanese game, lets you figure out the fastest way to get from Point A to Point B. No marveling about why Americans might prefer escapism to that, for anyone who has fumed through Atlanta rush hours.

Think game titles are expensive now? Think about how many quarters used to get plunked into arcade games. Popular '80s arcade titles enticed players to return with progressively harder levels of play. Today's platform games are more likely to have definite endings, to ensure that players keep buying new titles.

The museum excluded games with adults-only themes, a decision that makes for a family-friendly exhibit.

Slipped-in bits of education aside, the real reason to see the exhibit is to take a turn at the joysticks and controllers. It's hard to resist the booming music, the bleeps and squawks of the early games, the nostalgia for older games and the chance to bang on the bongos of newer titles like "Donkey Konga." The games have changed, but the thrill of standing in front of a screen and blasting invaders never does.