Recently ICHEG added a display of rare PlayStation software development materials to its eGameRevolution exhibit. Among these materials are an MW.3 or “PS-X” and blue and green debugging stations on loan from the PlayStation Museum. These artifacts shine a light on the often overlooked game developer, while illustrating the ways in which software development helped establish the PlayStation as one of the best-selling, and for many gamers—essential consumer products of the 1990s.
Before Sony launched its PlayStation in Japan in December […]
Search by Category
Costume Quest: Nostalgic Halloween Gaming
It’s almost Halloween. My neighborhood is filled with decorative plastic ghosts, goblins, and skeletons. Advertisements for scary movie marathons inundate television channels, and bookstores carry special displays of Dracula and Frankenstein. As a gamer, this is the best time to play chilling classics like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, or Left 4 Dead. But not all Halloween games fall into the traditional survival horror genre. I recently discovered a game that calls attention to my favorite part of this holiday: costumes.
Costume […]
Continue Reading about Costume Quest: Nostalgic Halloween Gaming
A Fabulous Collection of Atari Concept Art
ICHEG has acquired a collection of more than 250 drawings that document how designers at Atari created some of the most important games of the arcade era. Sketches show the development of games such as Gran Trak 10, the first cabinet to use a steering wheel, shifter, and gas and brake pedals; Touch Me, which inspired Ralph Baer’s Simon; the pioneering 3D dogfight simulator Red Baron; and the legendary dungeon crawler Gauntlet.
The artists who designed these cabinets made magic by […]
Continue Reading about A Fabulous Collection of Atari Concept Art
Using Woodblocks to Reshape Video Game Art: An Interview with Incredipede’s Thomas Shahan
Not that long ago, critics debated whether video games qualified as art. Now, thanks in large part to artist and microphotographer Thomas Shahan, Colin Northway’s forthcoming game Icredipede, available for preview, many put the question to rest.
Shahan specializes in capturing the personalities of countless insects and spiders in his arthropod portraiture. His muses—Tabanus Horse flies, Damselflies, and Phidippus jumping spiders, to name a few—have been featured in National Geographic and Popular Photography, among others. Northway, an independent game designer and programmer, saw […]
From Training, to Toy, to Treatment: The Many Lives of Full Spectrum Warrior
How do people use games, toys, and other playthings? It’s a question play scholars and historians must grapple with. A blanket, for instance, serves as a warm companion on a cold night, but it may also act as, among other things, a superhero’s cape or a princess’s gown. One needs only to scan ICHEG’s online collections to get a sense of the variety of ways in which video games might be used to entertain and educate. However, as media theorist […]
Continue Reading about From Training, to Toy, to Treatment: The Many Lives of Full Spectrum Warrior
Games on a Plane
When I hear the word “vacation” I feel happy and relaxed, but the word “travel” often evokes just the opposite. Earlier this month, I took a trip to New Orleans, Louisiana. In order to keep myself occupied during travel, I packed a carry-on bag full of fun diversions, including music, books, and video games.
Despite the compact size of portable video games, I still had to choose carefully among my favorites. I settled on games for the differing circumstances in which […]
Video Games Take Flight
As a young child, I loved to climb the stairs of my aunt and uncle’s house to my cousin’s room filled with model airplanes he had assembled. Spitfires, Zeros, Messerchmitts, and B-17 Fighting Fortresses lined the shelves, parked on bureaus, and hung suspended from the ceiling. I still remember how I felt as I gazed in wonder at the formations of planes flying overhead.
Ever since the Wright Brothers first flight, the romance of aviation has entered our play. In the […]
Bill Budge, Pinball Construction Set, and the Popularization of User-Customized Video Games
As a kid, I enjoyed racing my virtual dirt bike up 8-bit hill after 8-bit hill in designer Shigeru Miyamoto’s Excitebike (1984) for the Nintendo Entertainment System. What kept me riding was a design mode to create my own tracks. Designing a track on screen changed the way I saw video games. Suddenly, I wasn’t just playing; I was creating part of what I played. And a few well-placed speed bumps and mud puddles could trip up my computer opponent […]
Less is More in These Video Games
Designer Robert Morris once said that “simplicity of form is not necessarily simplicity of experience.” I found this especially pertinent to the simple, yet stunning game play of both PixelJunk Eden and NightSky.
In PixelJunk Eden, a player controls Grimp as he jumps and swings across plant life to activate seeds in the different gardens. Multi-media artist Baiyon’s (Tomohisa Kuramitsu) work inspired the game, and the visual aesthetics of the gardens remain relatively simple. The color-schemes of each present various shades […]