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Genius knows no boundaries.
That’s the inescapable conclusion I reach when I look at the 2016 finalists for The Strong’s World Video Game Hall of Fame. The nominated games are equally distributed across three continents (Asia, Europe, and North America) and reflect how the video game industry has developed around the world and how the most successful video games often tap into universal themes.
Continue Reading about The Global Scope of the World Video Game Hall of Fame
As I stood outside The Strong’s new permanent Pinball Playfields exhibit, I couldn’t help but see and overhear our guests’ reactions to the flashing lights and distinct pops and thumps of the pinball machines. “Pinball! Yes!” I heard someone cheer. Another guest who noticed I worked at the museum stopped to tell me, “You’ve made my husband very happy.” As I watched smiling children, young families, and adults play in the exhibit, I heard another person ask a companion, “They […]
The Strong launched the World Video Game Hall of Fame in 2015 to recognize individual electronic games of all types—arcade, console, computer, handheld, and mobile—that achieved iconic-status, longevity, influence, and geographical reach. Of the six games chosen for the inaugural class of 2015, perhaps no game has journeyed the globe more than the simple puzzle game Tetris. New materials from The Tetris Company now on display at The Strong demonstrate the game’s universal appeal.
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The Strong has acquired a collection of more than 2,000 drawings, photographs, mock-ups, proofs, and other materials related to the design and production of Atari home and handheld game packaging and user manuals from 1976–1984. The Cort and Barbara Allen Atari Packaging Design Collection, 1976–1984, documents how the company’s artists, designers, and writers developed and created the distinctive packages and manuals for some of the earliest and most popular home video game titles of the later 20th century.
Continue Reading about Atari Packaging Design Collection Documents the Art of Selling Video Games
As a child, I always enjoyed playing video games, but I never paid too much attention to the musical accompaniment in the background. It wasn’t until college that I first heard gaming music on its own. Prior to that, I simply enjoyed the music as background noise for games, or as musical cues that prompted me to “jump” or dodge an enemy. But then I met the man who eventually became my husband, and while we were dating, we burned […]
Continue Reading about ICHEG, the RPO, and Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy
Paul Sams, former Chief Operating Officer at the American video game developer and publisher Blizzard Entertainment, has donated a collection that traces the history of the company and highlights the importance of its games. Sams worked for Blizzard from 1996 through 2015 and served as the Chief Operating Officer for eleven years. During his tenure, Sams accumulated more than 1,500 items representing the company’s many successful games and franchises such as Warcraft, World of Warcraft (an inaugural inductee into the […]
The introduction of Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI)—the application of computer graphics to create images in media—in the 1990s moved many illustrators away from traditional frame-by-frame, two-dimensional animation techniques. John Lasseter demonstrated the possibilities of CGI when he directed Toy Story, the first feature-length computer-animated film, for Pixar in 1995. Shortly after the release of Toy Story, the medium took off. CGI proved more efficient and created a new aesthetic. In the past few years, however, cel animation or hand-drawn animation techniques […]
Continue Reading about Hand-Drawn Animation: From Cartoons to Video Games
Penguin Software founder and lead developer Mark Pelczarski has donated the Penguin Software Collection, 1970-2013 to ICHEG. In addition to more than three dozen copies of games and graphics software released by Penguin, the collection includes source code, background notes and other material related to the development of games, company correspondence, and Pelczarski’s publications on computer graphics. Collectively these materials document Penguin Software’s development of key software tools that made it possible for programmers to create cutting-edge graphics on computers in […]
It’s official! The members of the inaugural class of The Strong’s World Video Game Hall of Fame are Pong, Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, DOOM, and World of Warcraft. All of these games stand out because in addition to being great games, they have transcended the world of gaming to impact our wider culture.
Games become eligible for the World Video Game Hall of Fame by meeting four basic criteria. They’re iconic, have longevity, reach across international boundaries, and exert influence […]
Continue Reading about The First Class of the World Video Game Hall of Fame
