We all have our preferences, presuppositions, and favorites; the subjects, outlooks, and topics that we gravitate to again and again. That’s why I love randomness. It’s a tool I use frequently to challenge my own inherent biases in my work here at The Strong. I know that if I just follow my interests, my work will too often flow in the same channels. So sometimes I use a random number generator to call up a random artifact from our collection […]
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Nintendo’s 1989 Handsfree Controller: A Corporate Chapter in a Longer Accessibility Story
By: Hana Hanifah, 2025 Valentine-Cosman Research Fellow
In recent years, the momentum for accessibility in games has gained significant traction. Many custom configurations, such as captions, remappable controls, and adaptable hardware, are becoming the norm as more people, especially those with disabilities, play and engage in games. The Xbox Adaptive Controller and the PS5’s Access Controller have been rightly praised and documented in the mainstream media (e.g., Forbes, Wired,Time). However, decades before they emerged, Nintendo of America released its own adaptive […]
An Archivist’s “Ephemeral Expertise”
A few years ago, while chatting with a visiting research fellow in the Brian Sutton-Smith Library & Archives of Play at The Strong, they posed an interesting question, “So, what is your area of expertise? Video games, toys, something else?” I wasn’t quite sure how to answer this. Some large libraries and archives have subject librarians who focus on individual areas such as mathematics, natural sciences, or humanities. However, at The Strong, our collections encompass all of these areas and […]
Game Show Prizes 101
By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
Prizes on game shows seem fairly straightforward. Here’s a nice thing; win the prize. But there’s some slight nuance to it that’s led to muddled or mistaken information being commonly shared over the years. This month, we’re going to dive into one fairly common misunderstood tidbit about what contestants can do when they win a prize on a game show.
There’s (usually) no such thing as “requesting the value […]
Name That. . . Game Show Contestant
What would game shows be without contestants? We watch them, cheer for them, and sometimes even compete with them. But we seldom know much about them. I recently had the opportunity to learn about one remarkable game show contestant.
Now Let’s Meet Our Contestant
Born in the early 1940s, Candy Lee demonstrated an aptitude for performance at a young age. With her mother, Vilma Laska, as her promoter, she won her first beauty contest at age three and was singing for a […]
Abbott Forming Games
Curious coincidences catch the eye, and one unusual historical pattern got my attention while editing labels for the 2025 inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame. I learned that Scott Abbott was the co-creator of Trivial Pursuit, and it struck me as interesting because it seems that people named Abbott have been surprisingly important as creators of card and board games.
Anne Abbott
I first began thinking about Abbotts and game making many years ago when I learned that Anne Abbott […]
Visiting the Magic Kingdom on my Family’s Computer—Lines Included
It’s always interesting to tumble down a rabbit hole while learning the history of a video game you enjoyed growing up. I did this previously with Myst, so this time I wanted to investigate another game that brings me great nostalgia: Disney’s Virtual Magic Kingdom (VMK). This video game was a browser-based Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) that existed for only three years. Yet while searching through articles, podcasts, and fan recreations, I learned that the history of VMK stretches […]
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Celebrating 50 Years: “Let’s Play the Feud”
By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
Fifty years ago this month, in July 1976, one of the most successful game shows in America made its debut. Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions, the ABC television network, and host Richard Dawson all declared, “Let’s play the Feud!”
Family Feud came to life thanks to the success of another game show. Goodson-Todman’s Match Game on CBS was the most popular show on daytime TV in the mid-1970s. One round of […]
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Designing for Productive Failure: What Play Materials Reveal about How Children Persist
By: Joshita Manohar, 2026 Strong Research Fellow
A child picks up a puzzle piece, turns it once, then twice, and presses it into place. It does not fit. They pause. Try again. This time, they push a little harder, then pull it back out. For a moment, nothing happens. The piece stays where it is, slightly misaligned, waiting. On a tablet, the same moment might unfold differently. The piece snaps into place or it refuses to move at all.
These small differences […]
