Video Games Archive

Before I came to The Strong, I taught writing and literature courses at the Rochester Institute of Technology and elsewhere, which fits right in with writing electronic games blogs. As video games occupy more and more of our playtime, it is not surprising that some educators are finding opportunities to use gaming to teach writing and critical reading skills. Here are three examples I find particularly interesting:
1. BiblioBouts
With funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Studies, researchers at the […]

Continue Reading about Video Games in the Humanities Classroom Published on:
February 23, 2013

On a recent trip to France, I saw the beautiful Romanesque basilica of St. Sernin in Toulouse, a stop on the medieval pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Martin Sheen and Emilio Estavez celebrated and updated this journey in their movie The Way, and the thought struck me: if a modern video game pilgrim traveled to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) at The Strong, what museums might he visit along the way?

Continue Reading about Video Game Museum Tour Published on:
February 15, 2013

A few years ago, I asked my students in an American cultural history course to identify logos and slogans from their lifetime. Not surprisingly, since advertising bombards us through print, radio, television, and the Internet, the students did this easily (try this Logo Quiz game for yourself). After this exercise, the class discussed how advertising illustrates changes in social and cultural history. Take for example, the changes in television commercials from three different generations of video game consoles—the Magnavox Odyssey, […]

Continue Reading about Selling Electronic Play in Video Game Television Commercials Published on:
February 6, 2013

“And so, the Four Horsemen were unleashed as foretold, and their names are Famine, Pestilence, War and Death. I am the line that separates life from death, war from peace and good from evil. I am known as Abaddon. And though I walk through the shadow of death I shall fear no evil…because evil fears me.”
~ Original game tagline from 3DO
The 3DO Company began developing their first M-rated video game title, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, in 2002. The game’s […]

Continue Reading about Four Horsemen: 3DO’s Apocalypse That Never Was Published on:
January 31, 2013

I have wanderlust. In college, I found like-minded companions in Dean and Sal from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. In one passage, Sal recognized why he felt compelled to travel and explained that he had “no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, rolling under the stars.” I still relate to his sentiments; however, my lifestyle does not always permit sporadic adventures. Now when I feel the need […]

Continue Reading about Satisfy Your Wanderlust with These Video Games Published on:
January 24, 2013

Have you ever yearned for a particular gift only to receive an inferior substitute? That I imagine is what happened under a number of Christmas trees in the mid-1970s, when Marx Toys marketed its T.V. Tennis, an electromechanical version of home video game systems. ICHEG recently acquired a working copy of T.V. Tennis.
Let’s set the stage. In 1972, Magnavox introduced Odyssey, a home gaming system featuring, among other activities, a tennis game. The game consisted of two player-controlled paddles that […]

Continue Reading about But Mom, I Wanted PONG! Published on:
January 18, 2013

As a teenager, I spent so many late nights at a local pizza shop playing The Addams Family that the owner affectionately called me “Pugsley,” after the Addams’ son. The Pat Lawlor-designed machine is more than a personal favorite; it shook the pinball world during the early 1990s, at once symbolizing the industry’s resurgence, and perhaps, its last gasp of life.
Although pinball traces its roots back to the 18th—century parlor game bagatelle, modern coin-operated pinball originated in the […]

Continue Reading about The Addams Family and Pinball in the Age of Video Games Published on:
January 11, 2013

Her Interactive, creator of the popular Nancy Drew games, has donated a large collection of games, design drafts, memoranda, press materials, focus group studies, player correspondence, and other materials that document the company’s history, the development of their Nancy Drew games, and the attitudes of girls towards gaming over the past 20 years.
Nancy Drew has captured the imagination of girls since her fictional debut in 1930. Originally created by Edward Stratemeyer—whose Stratemeyer Syndicate also produced the Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins, […]

Continue Reading about Her Interactive Collections at ICHEG Published on:
January 7, 2013

Happy New Year fellow gamers! As we ring in the New Year, I wanted to take a moment to appreciate all the innovations the industry underwent throughout the last 12 months.
At the beginning of the year, Sony released the handheld PlayStation Vita (PS Vita) to North and South America, Europe, Australia, and Russia.  Several months earlier, the PS Vita made a successful debut in Japan. Sony marketed the PS Vita as a portable PlayStation 3 and players enjoyed graphics as […]

Continue Reading about Gaming in 2012 Published on:
January 4, 2013