By: Zari Smith, 2025 Valentine-Cosman Research Fellow
During the summer of 2025, I had the opportunity to visit The Strong National Museum of Play for a research fellowship. For two weeks, I had access to the collections and the rich archives that the museum owns in addition to the museum exhibits available for the general public.
I decided to apply for a fellowship from The Strong in order to find source materials that could assist me in writing my master’s thesis. My research project relates to Japanese video games (both localized and unlocalized) and their reception by both western media and Japanese media, including fan groups. As such, I needed an archive that first and foremost has access to older Japanese video games. Thankfully, the museum has a large collection of video games, both in English and Japanese. Accompanied by CRT monitors to mimic the original experience, I was able to spend time with titles that were not popular outside of Japanese such as Densha de Go!, a train simulator game.
I also needed an archive that possessed a large quantity of magazines for me to learn about what games received attention both in North America and in Japan. Japanese gaming magazines are especially helpful to identify niche games that were not talked about in English-language magazines. To this end, the most helpful resource for my studies was the large collection of Famitsu magazines the museum possesses. The Famitsu collection is the largest I have seen domestically in the U.S. thus far, surpassing even many academic libraries in the United Staes. This is of particular importance as many issues have not been preserved online. Having access to these magazines is critical for understanding how Japanese games have been discussed domestically and I am grateful that The Strong has made these available.
Finally, my research interests also involve games and aspects of game design that are seen as niche or “strange.” For this purpose, having access to game design papers from creators proved helpful for understanding how games can serve as an escape, not only players, but also the creators. Thanks to these internal documents, I have confirmation that game design ideas from non-Japanese developers are actually not that different from what can be found in Japan.
In conclusion, my time at The Strong was incredibly valuable and produced many leads for my research that I did not even imagine finding otherwise. I am truly grateful to the institution for hosting me this year and I also implore other scholars of video games to explore the collections that exist at The Strong. You never know what you might discover!
