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A few years ago, I asked my students in an American cultural history course to identify logos and slogans from their lifetime. Not surprisingly, since advertising bombards us through print, radio, television, and the Internet, the students did this easily (try this Logo Quiz game for yourself). After this exercise, the class discussed how advertising illustrates changes in social and cultural history. Take for example, the changes in television commercials from three different generations of video game consoles—the Magnavox Odyssey, […]

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February 6, 2013

Few things beat a good party game for putting people at ease—be they best friends or acquaintances at best. I attended a baby shower whose host displayed a platter of adorable infant-related items and instructed us to commit them to memory. After Jackie and her tray left the room, her mother-in-law distributed pencils and paper. However, instead of asking us to list the contents of the tray—which I’d been repeating under my breath—she asked us, “What was Jackie wearing?” Oops. […]

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February 5, 2013

“And so, the Four Horsemen were unleashed as foretold, and their names are Famine, Pestilence, War and Death. I am the line that separates life from death, war from peace and good from evil. I am known as Abaddon. And though I walk through the shadow of death I shall fear no evil…because evil fears me.”
~ Original game tagline from 3DO
The 3DO Company began developing their first M-rated video game title, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, in 2002. The game’s […]

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January 31, 2013

The presents have been unwrapped, the new year celebrated, and the holiday treats devoured. Now what? For many folks, the post-holiday season appears bleak, with only frigid weather and sunless days stretching out over the weeks ahead. But for some, the fun has only begun. If you’re an avid skier, snowboarder, or snowmobiler, you’ve just started enjoying the season and delighting in fresh white blankets of snow. Perhaps you’ve even pulled out your snowshoes or the old Sno Bronco.

As a […]

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January 29, 2013

I have wanderlust. In college, I found like-minded companions in Dean and Sal from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. In one passage, Sal recognized why he felt compelled to travel and explained that he had “no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, rolling under the stars.” I still relate to his sentiments; however, my lifestyle does not always permit sporadic adventures. Now when I feel the need […]

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January 24, 2013

In the big picture of play, all toys have a purpose: they teach physical and mental skills, develop young imaginations, and encourage kids to think in new ways. However one category of toys has puzzled me for years: housekeeping toys. The term seems like an oxymoron. I love a well-cooked meal, nicely laundered and pressed clothes, and a thoroughly cleaned house as much as the next neatnik, but housekeeping as play? Only the young could think so—because they are too […]

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January 22, 2013

Have you ever yearned for a particular gift only to receive an inferior substitute? That I imagine is what happened under a number of Christmas trees in the mid-1970s, when Marx Toys marketed its T.V. Tennis, an electromechanical version of home video game systems. ICHEG recently acquired a working copy of T.V. Tennis.
Let’s set the stage. In 1972, Magnavox introduced Odyssey, a home gaming system featuring, among other activities, a tennis game. The game consisted of two player-controlled paddles that […]

Continue Reading about But Mom, I Wanted PONG! Published on:
January 18, 2013

I never ran short of things to do as a kid, and rarely felt bored. Beyond the puzzles, games, and toys that I enjoyed, I had one activity that I truly cherished—coloring. Like many children, I was introduced to arts and crafts at an early age. Although the crafts part never really took, I developed a strong interest in the arts side of things. While my works of art would never have stood in comparison to the output of Leonardo […]

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January 15, 2013

As a teenager, I spent so many late nights at a local pizza shop playing The Addams Family that the owner affectionately called me “Pugsley,” after the Addams’ son. The Pat Lawlor-designed machine is more than a personal favorite; it shook the pinball world during the early 1990s, at once symbolizing the industry’s resurgence, and perhaps, its last gasp of life.
Although pinball traces its roots back to the 18th—century parlor game bagatelle, modern coin-operated pinball originated in the […]

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January 11, 2013