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 […]
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Trading Cards: Beyond Baseball
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 […]
Video Games Explore Ancient Myths and Folklore
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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Ping Pong Patriots
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 […]
Video Games and the Wonders of Window Shopping
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 […]
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Hidden Gems of the ICHEG Arcade Collection
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 […]
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The Kids Are Alright
I met some naughty kids when I worked as a babysitter and camp counselor. But after five years with the National Museum of Play at The Strong, I’ve observed enough children to know the good ones far outnumber the brats and that misbehavior, when it occurs, isn’t limited to one gender. So why do little boys get a bad rap? Look at the way cartoonists have portrayed them over the years. If I may paraphrase a line from Jessica Rabbit: […]
Hercules: The Pinball Legend
In 1976, game designer Ron Halliburton of Arcade Engineering created a jumbo-sized pinball machine concept for the Bally Manufacturing Corporation. Bally created two prototypes for the electro-mechanical game they called Bigfoot and determined not to move it to production. Allan Reizman, Engineering Lab Supervisor at Bally, reported that the intense vibrations and stress the oversized components placed on the frame caused the game to shake itself apart. Yet, Halliburton’s former employee, Gene Lipkin, believed the game had potential. Bally sold […]
Colonel Mustard in the National Toy Hall of Fame with the Candlestick?
It doesn’t take much detective work to discover that many people enjoy mysteries. For example, I can vividly remember being enthralled when I first read Agatha Christie’s novel And Then There Were None. I know I’m joined by millions who eagerly follow the crime-solving exploits of Christie’s hero, the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Certainly Poirot could easily deduce the lure of the board game Clue, with its mysterious mansion where someone has committed murder and the players must sleuth out clues […]
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