Electronic Games Archive

 
 

I had the privilege of digging through the archives at The Strong museum during the last week before Labor Day 2017. The collection had a great deal to offer my research interests, which center on game studies generally and competitive gaming (esports) specifically. The research project I had proposed focused on investigating the prehistory of esports. Today, a class of competitive players earn a living by excelling in tournaments for games such as League of Legends and Super Smash Bros. Melee, […]

Continue Reading about Tournaments, Contests, and International Scoreboards: A Prehistory of Esports in the 1980s Arcade Published on:
June 1, 2018

How do you tell the history of video games?
For more than a decade, The Strong has been collecting, preserving, and interpreting the history of video games. Over that time our collection has grown to more than 60,000 video games and related artifacts, as well as hundreds of thousands of video game-related items in our archives. We’ve showcased them in exhibits, featured them in online content like our timeline of the history of video games, and made them available to scholars […]

Continue Reading about A History of Video Games in 64 Objects Published on:
May 22, 2018

 “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!”
Well, almost. Christmas still wins out for me, but this is a close second. And not just because May brings with it Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with you!) but because it’s time for the World Video Game Hall of Game inductions!
This is our fourth year honoring the best the gaming industry has to offer, based on criteria that includes icon-status, longevity, geographic reach, and cultural influence. This year, four new […]

Continue Reading about Game Changers: The 2018 World Video Game Hall of Fame Published on:
May 3, 2018

In historian Carly Kocurek’s recent American Journal of Play article “Ronnie, Millie, Lila—Women’s History for Games: A Manifesto and a Way Forward,” she reveals the hidden histories of three women who played important, but mostly forgotten, roles in video game history. Her study of video game regulation activist Ronnie Lamm, coin-op game route operator Amelia “Millie” McCarthy, and video game company executive Lila Zinter, challenges us to rethink what parts of the game industry we value and to expose the […]

Continue Reading about Video Game History is Black History Published on:
February 27, 2018

Reading reports about some retail store closings, it’s hard to ignore that many of us often prefer shopping online with millions of products at our fingertips to navigating a shopping cart through the aisles of our local retailers. As a historian with an interest in consumer culture and as someone who spent countless hours of my childhood playing the latest Nintendo Entertainment System games on a demonstration kiosk at our local K-Mart, it’s difficult to image a world without the […]

Continue Reading about Preserving the First Video Game Merchandising Display Unit Published on:
September 7, 2017

Carol Shaw, the first widely recognized female game designer and programmer, has donated to The Strong a collection of console games, printed source code, design documents, sketches, reference materials, and promotional objects representing games she created for Atari, Inc. and Activision in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Shaw is most recognized for her best-selling game River Raid (1982)—published by Activision for play on the Atari 2600 home console—which sold more than one million copies. These donated materials will play […]

Continue Reading about Preserving Carol Shaw’s Trailblazing Video Game Career Published on:
July 19, 2017

Since last summer, you may have noticed small groups of millennials walking briskly toward landmarks surrounded by people staring intently at their smartphone screens. Every now and then, cries of delight or disdain erupt from the gatherers. “Oh good, a Snorlax!” someone murmurs appreciatively. “Just another Rattata!” another person groans. These folks aren’t speaking in code—they’re playing the massively popular, record-breaking, augmented-reality mobile game Pokémon GO.
The “Pocket Monsters” franchise has been around since 1996, when Nintendo released the first two […]

Continue Reading about Gotta Catch ‘Em All! Published on:
July 12, 2017

“Stop playing with that ball inside the house! You’re going to break something—take it outside!” Those are familiar phrases that I heard when I was younger, and I am sure many other children can relate. What helped alter parental attitudes towards indoor ball play? Well, that would be the introduction of the Nerf ball, a four-inch foam ball officially marketed as “the world’s first indoor ball.”
According to Tim Walsh in Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them, […]

Continue Reading about Nerf Ball Published on:
June 23, 2017

In addition to collecting video and other electronic games and materials that document how these games are made and sold, the staff at The Strong’s International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) is also interested in preserving evidence of player culture. Author Chris Kohler recently donated a wonderful collection of more than 350 fanzine homemade magazines with more than 80 different titles that illustrate how players shared their passion for games with others—during a time when few Americans had […]

Continue Reading about Chris Kohler Fanzine Collection Documents Video Game Culture Published on:
June 16, 2017