As an extremely active collecting museum, The Strong National Museum of Play is home to the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of historical materials related to play. While it’s our mission to collect and preserve artifacts, sometimes the items we collect have the potential to cause harm, whether that’s from the inherent materials that were used during production, materials that were added to the artifact later, or artifacts that pose risks from handling. While some obvious collection items that […]
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Japanese Games at The Strong, Part II
I previously blogged about some Japanese Super Nintendo video games I had cataloged during my first few months as Curator of Electronic Games. Reflecting on my own memories of playing Super Nintendo and other systems of that generation and seeing the Japanese games I was cataloging, I recognized that many genres popular overseas often did not make it stateside.
The Sega Saturn was immensely popular in Japan, its library totaling more than one thousand games. By contrast, the American Saturn library […]
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A Donkey Kong Game Show? Starcade Provided Video Gaming Star Power
By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
The Strong’s latest expansion—opening June 30, 2023—includes the world’s largest, playable Donkey Kong arcade game. Using a motherboard from an original Donkey Kong cabinet, this monolithic version stands nearly 20 feet tall. In honor of this new addition to The Strong, the National Archives of Game Show History is flashing back 40 years to a short-lived but much-loved game show that starred Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, the Mario Brothers, and […]
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Just Call Me Ash Ketchum
One of the joys of working in a museum collection is seeing the variety of objects that come into the museum. In 2022, my weekly round of photography brought me in contact with a mix of Pokémon plush figures. But photographing some classic Pokémon wasn’t my only interaction with the franchise. I spent February 2022 exploring the open world of Pokémon Legends: Arceus. In December, I completed my Pokédex in Pokémon Scarlet. I continued to procrastinate on several planned Pokémon […]
Why Barbie Fashion Designer is a GREAT Selection for the World Video Game Hall of Fame
Most years when we pick the finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame—and then when our International Selection Advisory Committee and fans help determine the inductees—there is controversy over one of the picks. Our very first year in 2015, for example, we named Angry Birds as a finalist along with eventual inductees Doom, Pac-Man, Pong, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, and World of Warcraft. Hardcore gamers were outraged, even after it wasn’t selected— “Angry Birds does not deserve to […]
“Play Like a Man!”: How Atari Gave Adults Permission to Play
“Hey, you! Greenhorn. Come on out and play like a man!” challenged the dozen cowboys staring me down from an ad in an issue of Electronic Games magazine. This rhetoric surprised me in 2023, but I imagine it would have been even more jarring for readers in 1981 when the ad for Activision’s Stampede first appeared. “Play like a man!” seemed unusual, because playfulness is so rarely connected to conventional forms of American masculinity as a key trait. Yet here […]
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The Game Show…Show
By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
Here at the National Archives of Game Show history, we like to explore the history and culture of game shows. Happily, we are not alone. Beginning on May 10, 2023, ABC will devote four Wednesday evenings to exploring and celebrating the genre with “The Game Show Show,” a documentary miniseries. (Two of the people involved with the National Archives of Game Show History will be featured on the show!)
Opening […]
Lawn Games: From Croquet to Jarts
How we play sometimes depends on where we play. Activities indoors are often constricted by space, crowding, and the presence of breakable objects. “Go outside and play,” is a cry of desperation uttered by a frustrated parent whose rambunctious kids have been cooped up inside too long. But where does that play take place?
For most of human history, kids spent their free time in the half-cultivated land around settlements or the adjacent fields or woodlots. As cities grew and more […]
Game Influencer: The Career of Arnold Hendrick
Game design is learned by doing. Get a game with a level editor or a scenario maker or whatever and create something. Get some friends to try it. Don’t TELL them how to play. Instead, watch them and see what happens.—Arnold Hendrick
Granting a rare interview in 2009 and reflecting on his career, Arnold Hendrick (1961–2020) described his passion for wargaming and then for game design. His first published game appeared as the game supplement in the wargaming magazine Strategy & […]
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