Video Games Archive

The Strong recently acquired a custom-built Fix-It Felix Jr. arcade video game at the center of Disney Animation Studios’ 2012 film Wreck-It Ralph. This summer, visitors to The Strong’s Boardwalk Arcade exhibit have the opportunity to play this rare game. Fix-It Felix Jr. allows players to take on the role of the game’s hero, Felix, a soft-spoken window fixer. Players move Felix from one windowsill to another while fixing shattered glass and dodging a bevy of bricks hurled […]

Continue Reading about Wreck-It Ralph and Video Game Villainy Published on:
July 3, 2013

The current “serious gaming” trend in both electronic and traditional play uses games to increase awareness of significant cultural, historical, and current events. Game designers Brenda Brathwaite Romero and John Romero recently visited The Strong and provided a compelling demonstration of this trend to staff.

Continue Reading about Brenda Romero: “The Mechanic is the Message” Published on:
June 25, 2013

Traditional library and archival materials help flesh out the history of video games. In addition to the personal papers of famous game designers like Ralph Baer, Ken and Roberta Williams, Dan Bunten, and Bill Budge, The Strong collections include many items that shed light on the formative decades for the development of electronic games. 
Our many computer and other trade magazines offer abundant information about computer games during the 1960s and 1970s. No dedicated video game magazines existed until the 1980s, […]

Continue Reading about Finding Video Game History in the Archives Published on:
June 12, 2013

Pretend play often helps us cope. When we’re sad, scared, or depressed, pretend play lets us escape our hurts and gather strength to face our fears and trials. As psychologists Dorothy and Jerome Singer and Sandra Russ explain, pretend play—“such as divergent thinking, the ability to transform one object into another, and the organization of narratives—demonstrate the relationship between play and coping.” Two recent video games, Papo & Yo and The Unfinished Swan, wrap their stories around ways children use […]

Continue Reading about Pretend Play in Video Game Worlds Published on:
May 20, 2013

For those of us who grew up during the so-called “golden age” of arcade games (late 1970s through the middle 1980s), the word “arcade” conjures up images of carpeted walls, smoke-filled rooms, black lights, and row after row of brightly colored video game cabinets. For some, the thought of these spaces evoke such vivid memories of playing video games that similar establishments created before and after the “golden age” simply aren’t “arcades.” In fact, most discussions of arcades inevitably hinge […]

Continue Reading about Coin-Op Century: A Brief History of the American Arcade Published on:
May 9, 2013

I’m writing this blog while carrying a phone with the potential to play tens of thousands of games like Angry Birds, Temple Run, and Words with Friends. The incredible diversity of game options reflects a revolution in mobile gaming. Today’s smart phones offer a cornucopia of choices inconceivable to users who back in 1997 were satisfied playing Snake on their Nokia phone. But while the number of different mobile games available is new, the desire for games to play on […]

Continue Reading about A Short History of Mobile Games Published on:
May 3, 2013

Earlier this month, The Strong opened its newest permanent exhibit, Game Time!, which traces the history of non-electronic games. The exhibit includes an artifact-rich timeline of games from the 1800s to the present, and also presents collections of some of the most popular game genres, such as race, strategy, party, and wealth accumulation. As excited as I always am to explore a newly completed exhibit, I had a special sense of pride in this one, because a small group of […]

Continue Reading about From Paper to Pixels: Magic: The Gathering Video Game Published on:
April 29, 2013

Henry David Thoreau advised his peers, “Let us first be simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our brows, and take up a little life into our pores.” Thoreau’s contemporaries professed similar emotional, individualist, and idealist sentiments. I respect authors of the American Romantic and Victorian period of literature; however, I don’t always enjoy wading through their sometimes ornate language. I recently discovered a few video game titles that provide a new format to interact with […]

Continue Reading about Poe, Thoreau, and Dickinson as Video Game Avatars Published on:
April 22, 2013

The roots of video gaming go deep into the longer history of games, puzzles, and play. Backyard games of cops and robbers predated first-person shooters. Puzzles existed long before designers incorporated them in video games. Pen and paper RPGs proved so exciting and immersive that programmers began creating electronic variations. To celebrate and explore this deep history of game playing and puzzle solving, The Strong has opened Game Time!, a permanent exhibit at the National Museum of Play.
My work with […]

Continue Reading about From Board Games to Video Games Published on:
April 15, 2013