Video Games Archive

Every year we induct new games into the World Video Game Hall of Fame, and in 2021 those games are Animal Crossing (2001), Microsoft Flight Simulator (1982), Starcraft (1998), and Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (1985). These are all worthy games, ones that stand out from their peers because they have shaped the way we play. They are important. 
But is there a connection between them, a commonality among a flying program, a simulation of a community […]

Continue Reading about Reflections on the World Video Game Hall of Fame Class of 2021 Published on:
May 7, 2021

 

Have you ever played hockey with miniature stick-wielding players and a thumbnail-sized puck on a three-foot table covered by a plastic dome? If so, you have probably played Innovative Concepts in Entertainment’s (ICE) Chexx (or later Super Chexx) “bubble hockey” arcade games. First released in 1982, the iconic game is, in part, the work of Ralph Coppola (1948–2018), who, along with business partner Jack Willert refined David M. Barcelou’s initial invention and brought it to market. Over the course of […]

Continue Reading about The Coin-op Industry Legacy of ICE President Ralph Coppola Published on:
February 25, 2021

Adrienne Shaw, Director, Cultural Analytics Certificate
Associate Professor, Department of Media Studies and Production
Lew Klein College of Media and Communication Graduate Faculty
Temple University  
 

This fall I donated three digital collections to The Strong museum: the LGBTQ Video Game Archive Source Files, the Rainbow Arcade Collection, and the Joshua D. Savage Digital Game Documents Archive. These are part of my ongoing project documenting the history of LGBTQ content in (primarily) digital games. By donating these files, I hope to encourage future researchers to […]

Continue Reading about Preserving the LGBTQ Game Archive at The Strong Published on:
December 17, 2020

Chris Kohler, Editorial Director, Digital Eclipse
The first home video game machines were all, as we call them today, “dedicatedʺ systems—that is, the hardware and the software were all contained in one single unit. If you wanted more games, you had to buy an entire separate machine. You can imagine why this was not exactly a solid structure on which to build a new creative medium!
For most players who were around in the late 1970s, their first “programmableʺ game […]

Continue Reading about Rare Atari Cartridge is Another Clever Invention of a Video Game Pioneer Published on:
December 10, 2020

One of the most frequently asked questions about video game history is perhaps the simplest: what was the first video game? It’s a logical question to ask. After all, we’re always curious about these questions of primacy. Who was the first man on the moon? Neil Armstrong. Who was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic? Amelia Earhart. Who was the first person to climb Mount Everest? Well, in this case it was actually two people: Sir Edmund Hillary […]

Continue Reading about What was the first video game? Published on:
November 25, 2020

Denise Chaudhari was the first woman hired for the then-secret Xbox project, where she designed more than just the original “Duke” controller that launched with the system in 2001.

Continue Reading about Designing the Duke Published on:
October 23, 2020

Nolan Bushnell, Shigeru Miyamoto, Ralph Baer, Jordan Mechner, Will Wright, Hideo Kojima, John Romero. These are some of the most recognizable names in the history of video games. They’re also—well, noticeably, all men. Yet, there are obviously plenty of women who have made a huge impact on the games industry—and one of our most recent projects at The Strong seeks to highlight that.
The Women in Games initiative at The Strong began in 2017 as a key program of the museum’s […]

Continue Reading about Digital Resources from The Strong’s Women in Games Initiative Published on:
October 21, 2020

  How do you know if a game will be a hit or a flop with players? According to legend, video game pioneer Atari knew their 1972 coin-operated video game Pong would be a winner because players filled the test game’s coinbox with so many quarters that it jammed up the machine. As any veteran of the arcade game industry will tell you: “The coin box never lies.” But surely there should be more to it than that? In […]

Continue Reading about Carol Kantor: The Video Game Industry’s First Market Researcher Published on:
October 19, 2020

For most of human existence our ability to play together has been circumscribed by our physical connection with others in our immediate vicinity, a radiating circle of family, friends, and neighbors, spiced with an occasional get together with more distant associates. As I write this blog, we are in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic that has mandated new social distancing rules greatly limiting our ability to gather with others. And yet the play must go on. Fortunately for us, […]

Continue Reading about A Brief History of Online Games Published on:
August 27, 2020