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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

Scholars’ perceptions of mass media’s impact on folklore and mythology are complicated. Some scholars believe that tale dissemination via movies, television programs, and video games encourages viewers to rediscover classic stories. Others argue that film adaptations of folk and myth narratives may create “definitive texts,” which threaten to “replace the more fluid oral variants.” What is at stake when we adapt folklore and mythology to mass media? I suspect it leads to engaging discourse and creative expression. The video game […]

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September 13, 2013

Summer, even late summer, means tennis for many who love the warm weather, the sunshine, and the great outdoors. And for those of us who hate to swelter and prefer to get our exercise in air-conditioned splendor, there’s always indoor tennis. The tabletop game goes by many names: table tennis and Ping Pong sound familiar, but some early players knew it as Gossima, Whiff Whaff, parlour tennis, Pom-Pom, Netto, or tennis de salon. According to historians, it began among the […]

Continue Reading about Ping Pong Patriots Published on:
September 6, 2013

Childhood trips to a local Kmart always meant two things: my mother searching for “blue light specials” and the chance to slip away to see and play new video games in an environment awash in electronic sights and sounds. What I didn’t realize then was that all those video game packages, aisles of shelves, elaborate displays, and flashy kiosks had been carefully designed and displayed to encourage me to purchase new games. Although I almost never bought anything, I engaged […]

Continue Reading about Video Games and the Wonders of Window Shopping Published on:
September 5, 2013

ICHEG’s collection of nearly 200 arcade cabinets documents the rich history of arcade gaming. The collection features popular titles like Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong. It also includes many less well-known games like Breakout and Death Race. Many of these more obscure titles mark key technological or cultural moments in the history of video games.
 Gun Fight is one such game. Taito, a company based in Japan, first developed the shoot-out game under the title Western Gun, and it became the first […]

Continue Reading about Hidden Gems of the ICHEG Arcade Collection Published on:
August 30, 2013