Video Games Archive

In 2018, The Strong embarked on a project to digitize floppy disks using a device called the Kryoflux to capture the data stored on 3.5- and 5.25-inch floppy disks. Reading a floppy disk in the 21st century was the first step necessary to preserve hundreds of floppy disks in The Strong’s archival collections. In some cases, the Kryoflux was a useful tool to capture old games and development materials but, with more than 1,500 floppy disk images in […]

Continue Reading about Digging for GEM icons in an Atari ST Floppy Disk Published on:
April 28, 2020

Digital Games Curator Andrew Borman uncovers the history of Atari’s Gremlins The Arcade Game, from its initial conception in 1983 to its cancellation in 1985. 

Continue Reading about Game Saves: Unreleased Gremlins The Arcade Game by Atari Published on:
February 12, 2020

Ian Larson, 2019 Strong Research Fellow
PhD Student, University of California, Irvine; Irvine, California
Any new popular device is bound to have its share of imitators and copycats. This certainly was the case in 1972 after Ralph H. Baer and Magnavox released the first-ever home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. While Baer’s Odyssey failed to spark a revolution, one of its many games, Table Tennis, would become the inspiration for the game that did: Nolan Bushnell and Atari’s PONG, the first […]

Continue Reading about Clones in the Archives: Console and Software Cloning Practices in the Early Years of Video Games Published on:
January 23, 2020

Playing in the Past
Robert Whitaker
2019 G. Rollie Adams Research Fellow
Research Fellow, The Waggonner Center, Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, LA
To study the early history of digital games is to study games with historical settings. Whether the game was designed for educational use like MECC’s The Oregon Trail, or commercial profit like SSI’s Computer Bismarck, history games are an essential part of the early history of digital games as a medium.

For the past six years I’ve been studying the relationship […]

Continue Reading about Playing in the Past Published on:
December 9, 2019

In the beginning (or at least in the late 19th century), there was film. Capturing moving images and playing them back for astonished audiences at the cinema more than a century ago was magical. Though many people are still familiar with film, which has endured as a medium despite changing technologies, there are plenty of moving image formats which have been rendered obsolete over time and have found their way into the holdings of numerous libraries, archives, and museums.

I previously […]

Continue Reading about What’s Up with U-Matic? Published on:
November 22, 2019

Jana Rosinski
2018 Strong Research Fellow
Syracuse University, NY

I came to The Strong to explore the design of early computer and video games for girls, looking to account for how female designers and games create different play experiences and player representations, along with the spaces, voices, and ways of playing they have made available. I pored over the collections of Dani Bunten Berry (for her conception of the social potential in multiplayer games), Carol Shaw (widely recognized as the first female game […]

Continue Reading about A ROM of One’s Own: Snapshots from the Games-for-Girls Movement Published on:
October 25, 2019

Alec S. Hurley, 2018 Strong Research Fellow
PhD Student, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX

 
 
Despite growing up in Rochester and routinely passing The Strong museum en route to the family business on Oregon Street, I failed to take advantage of the museum’s wonderful exhibits and its abundant collections until late June of 2018. Then, over the course of five days leading up to the July 4th holiday, I was fortunate enough to take a break from my doctoral studies at the […]

Continue Reading about My Week with Brian: A Conversation with the Collected Works of Brian Sutton-Smith Published on:
October 18, 2019

In 2006, when we began our efforts at The Strong to preserve the history of video games, we knew we were onto an important subject, but we did not truly foresee the vast array of challenges that we would face in preserving video games. Over the years as we founded the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) and grew our collection to more than 60,000 video games and related objects we’ve learned quite a bit about how […]

Continue Reading about A Laboratory for Video Game Preservation Published on:
October 11, 2019

Video games have become increasingly popular over the last few years. In fact, a recent survey suggests that approximately 2/3rds of American adults partake in the pursuit. But even with this emerging success, gaming continues to be dogged by decades-old accusations. Many of the medium’s most ardent critics argue that games offer only vacuous experiences. Lying beyond the pixels, polygons, and interactive scenes is just empty entertainment. Or, even worse, they argue that games are only a vehicle for mindless […]

Continue Reading about “Serious” Fun: Social, Moral, and Political Content in Video Games Published on:
October 4, 2019