Blog

On a recent stroll through the arcade in The Strong’s eGameRevolution exhibit, I recalled a favorite childhood memory of my hometown arcade. During the early to middle 1990s, even as arcades declined, young gamers like me hurried to our local arcades after school to pick fights. No, these weren’t real fights, but some players left with sore fingers from mashing buttons and injured egos from too many lost battles. During these years, video arcade fighting games such as Capcom’s Street […]

Continue Reading about Warrior and the Video Arcade Fighting Game Published on:
March 12, 2013

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, it used to snow a lot more that it does today; or at least it seems that way. Without getting into a debate about climate change, let me say that during my childhood there always seemed to be plenty of snow to play in all winter long. Though horse-drawn sleighs were certainly fewer and farther between in the 1950s, sledding remained a popular winter pastime as can be seen from the […]

Continue Reading about It’s Snow Fun Again! Published on:
March 5, 2013

Most everyone is some sort of a gamer, whether that means you play Call of Duty to strategically advance and complete missions or you simply log onto your iPhone for a quick game of Words with Friends. Electronic games are everywhere. The Strong has the advantage of interpreting electronic game history in the context of play history.
When a guest at The Strong views electronic games and related artifacts displayed in various exhibits, she might see how preserving the history of […]

Continue Reading about Video Games in a Museum? Published on:
February 28, 2013

I was born and raised in a small rural town in Western New York. I lived near my mother’s childhood home where I enjoyed many happy hours in the company of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Our families would often gather to play cards, bake, do laundry, or celebrate special occasions. I loved to sit quietly and listen to the grown-ups tell stories of times both present and past. The stories I recall don’t feature faraway places or extraordinary […]

Continue Reading about Room for Recollection: The Miniature World of Alice Steele Published on:
February 26, 2013

Before I came to The Strong, I taught writing and literature courses at the Rochester Institute of Technology and elsewhere, which fits right in with writing electronic games blogs. As video games occupy more and more of our playtime, it is not surprising that some educators are finding opportunities to use gaming to teach writing and critical reading skills. Here are three examples I find particularly interesting:
1. BiblioBouts
With funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Studies, researchers at the […]

Continue Reading about Video Games in the Humanities Classroom Published on:
February 23, 2013

Cinderella has a long history of influencing popular culture and playthings. You might even say that she’s left a big footprint. The popular princess and her glass slipper came to my attention recently as I read an article about the upcoming Broadway revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical Cinderella. The article focused on the creation of glass slippers—actually polyvinyl-chloride pumps bedecked with 10,000 Swarovski crystals—for the show. Stuart Weitzman, the shoemaker responsible for Cinderella’s footwear, said, “Who is the first […]

Continue Reading about Glass Slippers Galore Published on:
February 19, 2013

On a recent trip to France, I saw the beautiful Romanesque basilica of St. Sernin in Toulouse, a stop on the medieval pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Martin Sheen and Emilio Estavez celebrated and updated this journey in their movie The Way, and the thought struck me: if a modern video game pilgrim traveled to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) at The Strong, what museums might he visit along the way?

Continue Reading about Video Game Museum Tour Published on:
February 15, 2013

The recent galling decision to drop wrestling from the Olympics has me steamed, but it has me musing about the virtues of the hand-to-hand contest, too. Wrestling and the Olympics go way back—back to the beginning, in fact. The amphora pictured here depicts a wrestling match between Peleus, the Greek hero and father to Achilles, and Atalanta, the only woman to have signed on as crew with the Argonauts (whose famous quest for the Golden Fleece you may have heard […]

Continue Reading about Wrestling Rubbed Out? Now They’ve Done It! Published on:
February 15, 2013

Other than Santa’s workshop at the North Pole, where do games come from? Often they start out as prototypes, initial versions that allow game inventors to test their concepts and designs. Like the first draft of a novel or the rough cut of a movie, these prototype games help illustrate the revisions and refinements that lead to a finished product, one that might go on to become a holiday season sales sensation or your family’s favorite game. But prototypes aren’t […]

Continue Reading about The Pre-Game Show: It Starts with a Prototype Published on:
February 12, 2013