Electronic Games Archive

Ian Larson, 2019 Strong Research Fellow
PhD Student, University of California, Irvine; Irvine, California
Any new popular device is bound to have its share of imitators and copycats. This certainly was the case in 1972 after Ralph H. Baer and Magnavox released the first-ever home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. While Baer’s Odyssey failed to spark a revolution, one of its many games, Table Tennis, would become the inspiration for the game that did: Nolan Bushnell and Atari’s PONG, the first […]

Continue Reading about Clones in the Archives: Console and Software Cloning Practices in the Early Years of Video Games Published on:
January 23, 2020

Is pinball a game of skill or a game of chance? Most people today would argue it’s a game of skill. The player chooses when to hit the ball with their flippers and some can even aim with deadeye precision at the glitzy little light-up targets that make these games so iconic. But what if we stripped that all away? No lights, no million-point multipliers, and most importantly, no flippers. Is still a game of skill when all you’re armed […]

Continue Reading about Taking the Plunge: Two Pivotal Games that Set the Course of Pinball’s History Published on:
December 20, 2019

Playing in the Past
Robert Whitaker
2019 G. Rollie Adams Research Fellow
Research Fellow, The Waggonner Center, Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, LA
To study the early history of digital games is to study games with historical settings. Whether the game was designed for educational use like MECC’s The Oregon Trail, or commercial profit like SSI’s Computer Bismarck, history games are an essential part of the early history of digital games as a medium.

For the past six years I’ve been studying the relationship […]

Continue Reading about Playing in the Past Published on:
December 9, 2019

In the beginning (or at least in the late 19th century), there was film. Capturing moving images and playing them back for astonished audiences at the cinema more than a century ago was magical. Though many people are still familiar with film, which has endured as a medium despite changing technologies, there are plenty of moving image formats which have been rendered obsolete over time and have found their way into the holdings of numerous libraries, archives, and museums.

I previously […]

Continue Reading about What’s Up with U-Matic? Published on:
November 22, 2019

Jana Rosinski
2018 Strong Research Fellow
Syracuse University, NY

I came to The Strong to explore the design of early computer and video games for girls, looking to account for how female designers and games create different play experiences and player representations, along with the spaces, voices, and ways of playing they have made available. I pored over the collections of Dani Bunten Berry (for her conception of the social potential in multiplayer games), Carol Shaw (widely recognized as the first female game […]

Continue Reading about A ROM of One’s Own: Snapshots from the Games-for-Girls Movement Published on:
October 25, 2019

In 2006, when we began our efforts at The Strong to preserve the history of video games, we knew we were onto an important subject, but we did not truly foresee the vast array of challenges that we would face in preserving video games. Over the years as we founded the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) and grew our collection to more than 60,000 video games and related objects we’ve learned quite a bit about how […]

Continue Reading about A Laboratory for Video Game Preservation Published on:
October 11, 2019

Video games have become increasingly popular over the last few years. In fact, a recent survey suggests that approximately 2/3rds of American adults partake in the pursuit. But even with this emerging success, gaming continues to be dogged by decades-old accusations. Many of the medium’s most ardent critics argue that games offer only vacuous experiences. Lying beyond the pixels, polygons, and interactive scenes is just empty entertainment. Or, even worse, they argue that games are only a vehicle for mindless […]

Continue Reading about “Serious” Fun: Social, Moral, and Political Content in Video Games Published on:
October 4, 2019

By Gleb Albert, 2018 Strong Research Fellow
In September 2018, I had the chance to go to Rochester and work at The Strong, thanks to its generous research fellowship program.  My postdoctoral research project deals with the history of computer games piracy in the 1980s and early 1990s as a subculture phenomenon. I look at the so-called “crackers”—amateur computer users who removed copy protection routines from games and circulated the modified versions to gain fame and beat the competition—their […]

Continue Reading about Piracy and the Computer Games Industry Published on:
September 23, 2019

Every year in early January close to 200,000 people descend on Las Vegas to attend the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and I joined the throng this year. That may seem out of place at first glance—there are many other large-scale events that might seem more in line with a visit from a representative of The Strong museum.
For instance, there are toy industry conventions, such as Toy Fair in New York City or Spielwarenmesse, its European […]

Continue Reading about “Playing” at the Consumer Electronics Show Published on:
August 23, 2019