Electronic Games Archive

I arrived at The Strong National Museum of Play hoping to uncover more about the history of music in early video games—especially those released before 1985, the year the Nintendo Entertainment System launched in North America. I was particularly interested in games created by Atari in the 1970s and early ’80s. Many accounts of video game music history follow a familiar narrative: sound moves from silence to fully integrated musical scores, evolving in lockstep with technological advances. It’s an appealing […]

Continue Reading about Rethinking the Sound of Early Video Games Published on:
September 21, 2025

Opening the 1989 Sears Christmas catalog and perusing the fifteen-odd pages of video game advertisements, filled with pictures of boys and accented with blue, reveals what many women have felt for decades: games just aren’t made for us. Until the 1990s, video games were almost exclusively marketed to boys and men. Women, of course, can and did still play video games; but playing them meant wading through a swamp of sexist portrayals, if we were even lucky enough to encounter […]

Continue Reading about From Girl Talk to Girl Games: The Analog History of Games for Girls Published on:
August 23, 2025

The Commodore VIC-20 first debuted at the Computer Electronics Show held in June of 1980. It began to be sold for North American households the following year and from the get-go was a hit–an inexpensive computer that could display color graphics. The other major competitors of the time were the Atari 400, TRS-80, and Apple II. It’s easy to forget now, but in the early ’80s, Apple was still the newcomer, whereas Commodore—under the leadership of the aggressive and visionary […]

Continue Reading about A Brief History of the Commodore VIC-20 Published on:
August 2, 2025

Back in 2010, The Strong opened eGameRevolution, the museum’s first permanent exhibit to focus on the history of video games. For more than a decade, that exhibit informed and delighted millions of museum guests. We recognized early on that the exhibit’s arcade was a hit with guests who loved playing and learning more about coin-operated video games. So, when the museum opened its ESL Digital Worlds: High Score and Level Up exhibits as part of its 90,000-sq. ft. expansion in […]

Continue Reading about Infinity Arcade Exhibit Explores the History and Impact of Coin-Operated Games Published on:
July 28, 2025

As I begin a new decade of my life, I’ve become more aware of the toys that model real-world “adulting.” Pretend play is a childhood staple, and often it involves kids performing what they see adults do. I’ve also realized, with a bit of my now developed adult cynicism, that it was a lot more fun to pretend to be an adult. The real thing doesn’t always measure up.
Take chores for example. Sweeping up with a fake broom or running […]

Continue Reading about Chores Are More Fun When They’re Fake Published on:
June 20, 2025

The Strong is honored to announce the acquisition of a collection of material from pioneering game developer Volition, the developers behind iconic titles such as Descent, Red Faction, and Saints Row. The donation includes design documentation, physical props, concept art, game builds, and some source assets, providing an in-depth look into the studio’s development process.

Continue Reading about Preserving the History of Volition Published on:
May 1, 2025

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

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

My previous blog post explored the emergence of video game Westerns in the 1970s. Driven by a mixture of technological limitations and public familiarity with Westerns and electromechanical shooting games, these new video game Westerns asked players to take on the role of the gunfighter in a relatively small digital world. Set in the mythic West of films, television, and novels, these games relied heavily on visual symbols such as pixelated covered wagons, cowboy hats, and pistols in arcade games […]

Continue Reading about Gunfighter Gaming: A History of the Video Game Western Part 2 (1984 to 1994) Published on:
February 7, 2025