In 1980, American youth raced to their television sets on Saturday mornings, not for cartoons, but to play Space Invaders on their Atari 2600s. Fast forward to today, where players worldwide coordinate across time zones to join massive multiplayer matches in Fortnite’s shared virtual world, using devices ranging from smartphones to gaming consoles. The contrast is staggering in comparison to a mere 44 years ago. This then begs the question: how did what began as a hobbyist pursuit in the […]

Continue Reading about From Space Invaders to Fortnite: A Look Back at the Evolution of Video Gaming Published on:
April 18, 2025

By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
Legendary game show host and producer Wink Martindale passed away on Tuesday, April 15, 2025, at the age of 91. The team at the National Archives of Game Show History looks back at his life and amazing career. (Martindale completed an oral history with the Archives in 2023.)
A NAME THAT YOU’D BAT AN EYE AT
When James & Frances Martindale brought a baby boy into the world on December 4, […]

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April 16, 2025

Contemporary travel is a special kind of pandemonium, an admixture of excitement, fear, consumerism, and intense security measures. It can be a rather playful experience too, particularly in the U.S. The stops that took me from Pullman, Washington, where currently I live and work, to The Strong National Museum of Play are a case in point. First it was Pullman to Spokane, then it was Spokane to Las Vegas, where I transferred to a flight to Rochester, New York. To […]

Continue Reading about Relational Play Published on:
March 28, 2025

By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
A new movie coming out on April 4, The Luckiest Man in America, chronicles one of the most famous (some would say infamous) moments in game show history. Paul Walter Hauser stars as Michael Larson, an ice cream truck driver who made history in the strangest of ways as a contestant on Press Your Luck in 1984. If you want to be surprised by what happened, stop reading now, […]

Continue Reading about “Luckiest” Man in Game Shows Published on:
March 27, 2025

By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
The most prolific name in the history of game shows was a man who once admitted to TV Guide, “I’m certainly not the man who appeals to women ages 18-35.”
Bill Cullen was right about that. He appealed to everybody. For 40 years, he appeared on one game show or another; often one game show and another. His gigs overlapped and he had no qualms about taking on whatever work […]

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February 27, 2025

What does it mean to preserve an experience? Think about going to the beach. Can you feel the hot sand on your feet? Can you smell the ocean air? Now think of an arcade cabinet. The Arcade Conservation Lab at The Strong National Museum of Play is responsible for the physical conservation and preservation of arcade and pinball games, including the preservation of the experience of playing these games as originally intended. We keep and maintain original CRT monitors that […]

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February 13, 2025

By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
While going through some filing cabinets filled with memos and paperwork from the CBS game shows of the 1980s, we found a marvelous document titled, “I Heard It on the Pyramid-Vine.” The authors, Jerry Martz and Tom Buchanan, were CBS audio technicians. Both of them worked many tapings of The $25,000 Pyramid and The $100,000 Pyramid. As a refresher on these shows, celebrities and contestants teamed up for a […]

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January 29, 2025

Sometimes, the “a-ha” moment comes from what you don’t find. I came to The Strong Museum to search the earliest (1902–1929) issues of the toy industry journal Playthings for images and stories of the American past. I have spent the past two decades researching the American children’s literature industry, which regularly strived to convey this past to young readers in ways that served its moral and commercial interests. As a scholar new to the toy industry, I was surprised to […]

Continue Reading about Toys and U.S. History in Playthings Magazine Published on:
January 24, 2025

In August and September 2024, I had the chance to work in the exhibits and archives of The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. Coming from Switzerland, a country in which the historical study and preservation of video games is still in its early stages, I was impressed by the wealth and the diversity of objects held by this institution.
As part of my doctoral research, I’m working mainly on video games designed for the domestic space, i.e. […]

Continue Reading about Game Instructions: How Do You Learn to Play in an Arcade Room? Published on:
January 17, 2025