Not long ago in this blog I recounted a story about my star-struck meeting with seven time Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong, a hero whose image has since much tarnished.
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Brenda Romero: “The Mechanic is the Message”
The current “serious gaming” trend in both electronic and traditional play uses games to increase awareness of significant cultural, historical, and current events. Game designers Brenda Brathwaite Romero and John Romero recently visited The Strong and provided a compelling demonstration of this trend to staff.
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The Wheel Thing
Any state fair, carnival, or amusement park needs to have a Ferris wheel. Ferris wheels rank up there with carousels, roller coasters, and cotton candy as essential elements of those summer destinations. Despite their familiarity today, the Ferris wheel first impressed riders and onlookers as a dazzling new mechanical wonder more than 100 years ago.
Rock and Roll Video Game
I recently went to a Guns and Roses concert. Axl Rose, the only original member, proved a bit soft around the edges and failed to hit the high notes like he used to—during a few songs, I thought of the 1984 mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap. I also realized heavy metal, glam rock, and hard-pop from the late 70s and early 80s prove resilient. That reminded me of some particular video games that featured bands from that era.
Line Up for a Game, Comrades!
Board games and serious politics usually don’t mix. But in 2011, a Polish government think tank known as The Institute of National Remembrance created an interesting board game called Kolejka that The Strong recently acquired for its collections. The Institute researches crimes committed by the Nazi and Communist parties in Poland and makes that information available to the public. Interestingly, part of its outreach includes the publication of board games, which provide historical context in an approachable format.
While working for […]
Finding Video Game History in the Archives
Traditional library and archival materials help flesh out the history of video games. In addition to the personal papers of famous game designers like Ralph Baer, Ken and Roberta Williams, Dan Bunten, and Bill Budge, The Strong collections include many items that shed light on the formative decades for the development of electronic games.
Our many computer and other trade magazines offer abundant information about computer games during the 1960s and 1970s. No dedicated video game magazines existed until the 1980s, […]
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The Home Front: Toy Production during World War II
Life at The Strong provides me with access to wonderful historical resources. As cataloger for the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play, I typically deal with toy trade catalogs that date from the 1960s through the 1990s. Recently, however, I’ve dealt with some older catalogs from the 1930s through the 1950s. As I worked with a 1942 pamphlet from Holgate Brothers Company, a small slip of paper tucked in it caught my attention. It was a notice from the […]
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A Boy and His Bike
Most of us recall our first bike with great fondness. We remember how long we waited for it, how difficult it was to first master, and how much fun we had with it. The day we received that bike was one to be remembered—a milestone, whether it was Christmas, the first day of spring, a birthday, or just an average Thursday. No wonder the bicycle holds a place of honor in the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong.
Like […]
Gauntlet by Design: Creating the Four-Player-at-Once Arcade Game Experience
During the 1970s and 1980s, Atari programmers and designers crafted hundreds of new video game play experiences for millions of people. This summer The Strong will open Atari by Design, a temporary exhibit (June 22 – September 8, 2013) that features one-of-a kind concept art and design documents and explores the designs behind some of Atari’s most significant arcade video games and video game consoles. There are few better examples of Atari’s cutting-edge game and industrial design work during the […]
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