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There has always been a close connection between bowling and video games for me. As a kid, I spent many nights playing with one of my brothers at our local candlepin bowling center. While my father hurled softball-sized balls down the bowling alley’s lanes, my brother and I often rolled digital bowling balls on a video game in the alley’s arcade. What I didn’t realize then was that while many of the first commercial video games of the 1970s centered […]

Continue Reading about Pins and Pixels: A Brief History of Home Video Game Bowling Published on:
March 17, 2023

Born in 1914, Dare Wright spent her early childhood with her mother, famed portrait artist Edith (Edie) Stevenson Wright. Edie treated Dare like a companion and the pair often created imaginary worlds through reading, writing, drawing, carpentry, and sewing. Dare loved to read Robin Hood, Grimms’ fairy tales, and The Lovely Garden, and she spent countless hours occupied by her dolls. Following Dare’s enrollment at Laurel boarding school in the fourth grade, Edith purchased Dare a 22-inch-tall Lenci doll on […]

Continue Reading about The Lonely Doll and Unconventional Connections Published on:
March 10, 2023

In the Autumn, 1975 issue of Strategic Review, the precursor to Dragon Magazine, Gary Gygax wrote:
John Bobek and Bill Hoyt have used D&D as a teaching aid in grade school classes. Bill has a great little book of accounts of adventures and illustrations of monsters prepared by his 6th graders. Wish I’d have had such luck as a child . . .
Role-play gaming as a formal and specific game type began with the invention and introduction of the original Dungeons […]

Continue Reading about Teaching Medieval History with Dungeons & Dragons Published on:
March 3, 2023

After the dropping of two bombs in 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, humanity’s ability to harvest the potential of nuclear energy became a recurring theme in play. In the beginning, nuclear power seemed like an awesome force that offered great promise, even as it was recognized as perilous and destructive. As time went on, however, its catastrophic capacity began to outweigh its potential for good in the public mind, as fears of global destruction invaded the imaginations of toy and […]

Continue Reading about Atomic Play Published on:
February 17, 2023

As video game graphics became more advanced, the tools required to create them also became more advanced. Artists today can choose from any number of free and paid software tools, allowing for the creation of both 2D and 3D graphics that could only be dreamed about just decades prior. In the past, though, developers needed to develop those specialized tools themselves.
Following the release of 1972’s Pong, Atari’s arcade games grew increasingly complex. Lunar Lander in 1979 was the company’s first […]

Continue Reading about That’s RAD! Excavating Digital Atari Art Published on:
February 10, 2023

“Your breath smells like camel spit and urine samples,” exclaimed one of my dearest friends at the top of his lungs, as a group of our friends walked to the local pool, in the summer of 2002. While the rest of our crew was caught up in the rapture of laughter at what might be the best roast I have received to this day, the challenge of a response weighed upon me. Timing was everything in these engagements. The right […]

Continue Reading about The Dozens: The Art of Tender Trash Talk Published on:
February 3, 2023

As part of an ongoing museum project, I am digging into archives to locate the history of Rochester at Play. As someone relatively new to New York and Rochester—where The Strong calls home—I am connecting more deeply to the city as I learn how and where people played historically. Rochester locals graciously share stories about sledding hills and the old play spaces unfortunately swallowed up by construction. City historians and archivists steer me to resources that spotlight the fun tales […]

Continue Reading about Highlights of Rochester at Play: Bicycling, Basketball, and Bowling Published on:
January 27, 2023

Play begins in anticipation. This is true not only for play generally but also specifically for video games. We discover a game from an advertisement or through word of mouth or perhaps from reading or watching something that someone else—often a professional journalist—has written or produced about the game. We begin to daydream about the game and think about what we’ll do in it, what surprises we’ll discover, and what challenges we will have to overcome. Our fingers itch to […]

Continue Reading about David Ahl: Getting Creative with Computers Published on:
January 20, 2023

By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
For the month of February, the National Archives of Game Show History commemorates Presidents’ Day with a look back at one of the most extraordinary segments on an American game show.
On February 9, 1956, Garry Moore dashed into the wings of the I’ve Got a Secret stage and walked out with frail, bandaged, cane-toting, 96-year-old Samuel Seymour. Seymour got three rounds of applause before the game even started. One […]

Continue Reading about President Lincoln’s TV Game Show Moment Published on:
January 17, 2023