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Video game historians hoping to trace the intellectual and cultural influences of some games may find themselves crossing oceans to do so. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Japanese video games spread to North America and across the globe, exporting Japanese culture and energizing the slumping home console industry. ICHEG’s recent acquisition of a collection of nearly 7,000 Japanese video games helps preserve and document that history. As part of The Strong’s comprehensive collection of tens of thousands of other electronic, board, […]

Continue Reading about Wizardry, Dragon Quest, and the Japanese Role-Playing Video Game Published on:
November 7, 2013

In 1994, Nintendo released the second installment of the Mother trilogy, Mother 2: Gyiyg no Gyakushuu (Gyiyg Strikes Back) for the Super Famicom. The game first appeared in the Japanese market and players enjoyed designer Shigesato Itoi’s use of satire to depict Western culture. Mother 2 also became one of the most popular games of the role-playing genre.

Continue Reading about Mother 2: A Parody, a Satire, a Cult Video Game Classic Published on:
October 28, 2013

Hello, autumn. As pumpkins, parsnips, and apples signal the harvest, I’m gathering artifacts from The Strong’s collections related to a time when farmers were called away to war and civilians rescued the food supply.
World War I sent many of Europe’s male food growers to the front, leaving farms shorthanded at best. The war efforts commandeered rail lines essential for food distribution and disrupted trade between conflicting countries. Food shortages forced severe rationing, leaving Europe in dire straits. One month before […]

Continue Reading about War Gardens: Winning the Food Fight on Home Soil Published on:
October 28, 2013

Some games resonate with political history, and so do some movies. I watched Tea with Mussolini, director Franco Zefferelli’s 1999 semi-biographical film, and it reminded me of a game The Strong acquired in 2012. Monopoli (yes, that’s the correct spelling) is a 1937 Italian version from Monopoly’s heyday. What?! Monopoly is all about American-style capitalism and crushing opponents’ bank accounts! How did this happen under the Fascist regime of prime minister Benito Mussolini? The answer demonstrates Monopoly’s popularity in the […]

Continue Reading about Tea or Monopoly with Mussolini? Published on:
October 16, 2013

ICHEG has acquired a collection of nearly 7,000 Japanese video games produced for 22 game systems made by Nintendo, NEC, Sega, and Pioneer. Assembled by André and Sylvio Hodos—collectors who began playing Japanese games as teenagers in France—and who then set out to amass full-sets of the systems included in this collection, these beautifully-preserved games will be a tremendous resource for anyone interested in the history of video games, their impact on the way we play, and the global rise […]

Continue Reading about The Strong’s ICHEG Acquires Massive Japanese Video Game Collection Published on:
October 7, 2013

Night after summer night, my friends and I would gather under the one streetlamp in our small hamlet to shoot marbles, devising our own simple games with the materials at hand. We didn’t know that the game of marbles, in one form or another, has endured for centuries. Even the Romans played marbles. In 1560, painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder depicted children playing marbles in his masterpiece “Children’s Games.” More recently, marbles have served as playing pieces in the misnamed […]

Continue Reading about Playing for “Keepsies”: Marble Play Published on:
October 4, 2013

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I love music. On more than one occasion I’ve enthusiastically announced to friends, “I love songs!” because my musical enthusiasm encompasses a broad range of forms—scores, jingles, top 40 hits, or even the impromptu songs I compose while driving (a regular occurrence). A recent encounter with Milton Bradley’s Name That Tune board game made me consider the many ways in which music contributes to play and our daily lives.

Continue Reading about Playing Along: Music in Our Daily Lives Published on:
September 25, 2013

On September 22, 2010, game developer and publisher Square Enix released Final Fantasy XIV (FFXIV), the latest addition to one of the top-grossing video game franchises ever created. This marked the second game in the series to be part of the massively-multiplayer online (MMO) genre. Almost immediately, negative responses from gamers and critics poured into the company, citing the game’s clunky interface, poor player economy, restrictive quest lines, and many other bugs and glitches that made the game nearly unplayable. In […]

Continue Reading about Realm Reborn: A Not-So-Final Fantasy Published on:
September 23, 2013

With more than 4,000 examples of trading cards in its collections, The Strong has documented the form’s evolution over more than a century and currently shows off more than 800 examples as part of the museum’s Online Collections. From cigarette cards from the 1890s that feature actresses of the day to Star Wars collecting cards from the 1990s, there’s a lot more to discover than just baseball players and their statistics.
I completely understand the museum’s collecting motivation since trading cards […]

Continue Reading about Trading Cards: Beyond Baseball Published on:
September 16, 2013