Blog

During the 1950s, space adventures loomed large in American pop culture as authors, comic book illustrators, and movie directors entertained the public with a steady diet of space epics. Bizarre aliens, laser beams, and spacecraft of all shapes and sizes mesmerized children and adults alike.
In the early 1960s, President Kennedy fueled public interest in such adventures, when he announced his vision of sending astronauts to the moon and John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth.

What does this […]

Continue Reading about Fly You to the Moon? Published on:
November 30, 2009

It’s not that I play too much, quite the contrary. The Guitar Hero game I’ve had at home since last Christmas is still wrapped in cellophane. I just can’t bring myself to buy the guitar controller required to play the game.
My reluctance is not a reflection of the game, which is by all measures popular, fun, and imaginative. Guitar Hero is more than a game actually. It’s a pop culture and gaming milestone that has opened doors for an […]

Continue Reading about My Guitar Hero Problem Published on:
November 20, 2009

It’s hard to believe that Sesame Street is turning forty. But then again, it’s also hard to believe that Sir Michael Philip “Mick” Jagger, another 60’s figure, is old enough to qualify for a British “old age” pension. Sesame Street has aired long enough for its viewers now to include great-grandparents and great grand-children.
Way back before Sesame Street, “educational television” usually meant Sunrise Semester—a six a.m. televised college lecture that was so tiresome that it made you want to crawl […]

Continue Reading about Sesame Street at Forty and Still Counting Published on:
November 19, 2009

The excitement builds around the museum every autumn as we lead up to the induction of new toys into the National Toy Hall of Fame. This year, people from all over the country sent us hundreds of toy nominations, each one making the case that their favorite toy should earn a place of honor among the forty-one classics already inducted. No coordinated nomination campaigns emerged this year like 2008 when I heard from tens of thousands of Thomas the Tank […]

Continue Reading about Best in Class: Game Boy, Big Wheel, and the Ball Published on:
November 17, 2009

“You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door.” “There is a small mailbox here.”

These words introduced me to computer games, though I didn’t actually read the words on a computer screen—I read them in stacks of perforated, green-and-white-striped printouts that my older brother, Chris, brought home from school. The stacks of printouts came from an amazing game he and his friends had discovered on the high school’s computer system (a DEC […]

Continue Reading about New Interest in Old Text-Based Adventures Published on:
November 11, 2009

 

To everyone who came out to the inaugural TEDx Rochester—and especially to those who stopped by to play an arcade game or two in the lobby of host Geva Theater Center—I would like to send my deepest thanks. It was an honor to be part of this event and to speak about the rich history of electronic games and our current initiatives at NCHEG.
The “I remember when” stories many of you shared between games are a reminder of why we […]

Continue Reading about Thanks TEDx Published on:
November 6, 2009

In my last blog, I reminisced about spending summers with my mom’s parents, which led me to my career preserving cultural artifacts. And while my other grandparents didn’t shape my profession, my summers with them helped lead me to my love for baseball.
The relative isolation of another summer in the country wore on me as I grew older. I was ten now and ready to play organized baseball. Little League beckoned. My dad’s parents, who lived in the village of […]

Continue Reading about Preserving Memories: Baseball Published on:
November 3, 2009

 
As I took the field and prepared for battle, a tiny yellow flag with a double-headed eagle marked my kingdom, the Citadel of Durnin.
While this fantasy adventure took shape, my friend handed me a cardboard score chart and some tiny red plastic pegs to keep track of my men and supplies. Much of what my friends were setting up looked familiar: molded plastic warriors and dragons, cardboard tokens, and, of course, a colorful game board. And then they took it out—the […]

Continue Reading about Remembering the Dark Tower Published on:
October 30, 2009

I’ve got my Halloween candy ready for the trick-or-treaters and a plan for how I’m going to decorate my front door with construction paper bats, but it was still a bit of a surprise to arrive at the museum this morning and find half my colleagues dressed (tastefully, of course) for Halloween. I should have expected it—Halloween’s become a big deal for people of all ages.
When I was growing up, an unspoken rule said that you were supposed to drop […]

Continue Reading about Halloween Hoopla Published on:
October 30, 2009