Popular Culture Archive

By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
The Strong’s latest expansion—opening June 30, 2023—includes the world’s largest, playable Donkey Kong arcade game. Using a motherboard from an original Donkey Kong cabinet, this monolithic version stands nearly 20 feet tall. In honor of this new addition to The Strong, the National Archives of Game Show History is flashing back 40 years to a short-lived but much-loved game show that starred Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, the Mario Brothers, and […]

Continue Reading about A Donkey Kong Game Show? Starcade Provided Video Gaming Star Power Published on:
May 24, 2023

One of the joys of working in a museum collection is seeing the variety of objects that come into the museum. In 2022, my weekly round of photography brought me in contact with a mix of Pokémon plush figures. But photographing some classic Pokémon wasn’t my only interaction with the franchise. I spent February 2022 exploring the open world of Pokémon Legends: Arceus. In December, I completed my Pokédex in Pokémon Scarlet. I continued to procrastinate on several planned Pokémon […]

Continue Reading about Just Call Me Ash Ketchum Published on:
May 15, 2023

“Hey, you! Greenhorn. Come on out and play like a man!” challenged the dozen cowboys staring me down from an ad in an issue of Electronic Games magazine. This rhetoric surprised me in 2023, but I imagine it would have been even more jarring for readers in 1981 when the ad for Activision’s Stampede first appeared. “Play like a man!” seemed unusual, because playfulness is so rarely connected to conventional forms of American masculinity as a key trait. Yet here […]

Continue Reading about “Play Like a Man!”: How Atari Gave Adults Permission to Play Published on:
April 28, 2023

How we play sometimes depends on where we play. Activities indoors are often constricted by space, crowding, and the presence of breakable objects. “Go outside and play,” is a cry of desperation uttered by a frustrated parent whose rambunctious kids have been cooped up inside too long. But where does that play take place?
For most of human history, kids spent their free time in the half-cultivated land around settlements or the adjacent fields or woodlots. As cities grew and more […]

Continue Reading about Lawn Games: From Croquet to Jarts Published on:
April 21, 2023

Every player of tabletop roleplay games (TTRPGs) can agree on two things. First, scheduling games can be your worst nightmare since no one ever seems to be available at the same time. And second, finding someone willing take on the role of Dungeon Master (DM) or Game Master (GM) seems just as difficult. Playing this coordinating role can require extra work, planning, and effort, which sometimes none of the group are willing to tackle. Thankfully, on those days when you’re […]

Continue Reading about Create Your Own Story: Tabletop Roleplay Games without the Game Master Published on:
March 24, 2023

There has always been a close connection between bowling and video games for me. As a kid, I spent many nights playing with one of my brothers at our local candlepin bowling center. While my father hurled softball-sized balls down the bowling alley’s lanes, my brother and I often rolled digital bowling balls on a video game in the alley’s arcade. What I didn’t realize then was that while many of the first commercial video games of the 1970s centered […]

Continue Reading about Pins and Pixels: A Brief History of Home Video Game Bowling Published on:
March 17, 2023

Born in 1914, Dare Wright spent her early childhood with her mother, famed portrait artist Edith (Edie) Stevenson Wright. Edie treated Dare like a companion and the pair often created imaginary worlds through reading, writing, drawing, carpentry, and sewing. Dare loved to read Robin Hood, Grimms’ fairy tales, and The Lovely Garden, and she spent countless hours occupied by her dolls. Following Dare’s enrollment at Laurel boarding school in the fourth grade, Edith purchased Dare a 22-inch-tall Lenci doll on […]

Continue Reading about The Lonely Doll and Unconventional Connections Published on:
March 10, 2023

In the Autumn, 1975 issue of Strategic Review, the precursor to Dragon Magazine, Gary Gygax wrote:
John Bobek and Bill Hoyt have used D&D as a teaching aid in grade school classes. Bill has a great little book of accounts of adventures and illustrations of monsters prepared by his 6th graders. Wish I’d have had such luck as a child . . .
Role-play gaming as a formal and specific game type began with the invention and introduction of the original Dungeons […]

Continue Reading about Teaching Medieval History with Dungeons & Dragons Published on:
March 3, 2023

After the dropping of two bombs in 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, humanity’s ability to harvest the potential of nuclear energy became a recurring theme in play. In the beginning, nuclear power seemed like an awesome force that offered great promise, even as it was recognized as perilous and destructive. As time went on, however, its catastrophic capacity began to outweigh its potential for good in the public mind, as fears of global destruction invaded the imaginations of toy and […]

Continue Reading about Atomic Play Published on:
February 17, 2023