During the early 1980s, Smith Engineering/Western Technologies founder and Microvision designer Jay Smith III led an effort to develop a portable home video game console capable of emulating such popular vector graphics-based arcade games as Asteroids (1979) and Tempest (1980). This year marks the 30th anniversary of the General Consumer Electronics (GCE) (and later Milton Bradley) Vectrex; the first vector graphics-based video game system.
I first encountered the black rectangular console with its built-in 9-inch monochrome display on Christmas morning, 1984. […]
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Tasteful Amusement
Anyone who knows me—family, friends, coworkers—will tell you that I have a playful perspective on food. I love talking about it or even singing—yes, singing—about it, making up original little ditties when something is particularly delicious. I enjoy cooking, perusing magazines for new recipes, and watching television chefs expertly combine flavors to create mouthwatering dishes. Some of my friends have suggested that I would be ideally suited to a job title of “Snacks Coordinator” because I almost always have a […]
Video Games for Cats
Recently, I discovered a game, created by a two-man development team at Hiccup, that made me realize that to be a gamer, one need not be human.
In December 2010, Game for Cats debuted on the Apple iPad. Initially a free download, the game purported to provide a world of entertainment for our feline friends. The official tagline bragged, “All the fun of your cat chasing a laser pointer without any of the work!” The game play in the initial free […]
Dominoes: A 2012 National Toy Hall of Fame Inductee
Many of us grew up playing domino games. And once the game was over, we carefully lined the dominoes up on end, just to watch them topple in a chain reaction. With a history stretching back more than 700 years, dominoes today look the same as they did two centuries ago. Dominoes are devices, like cards and dice, which provide hundreds of different games. And like playing cards, a 2010 inductee to the National Toy Hall of Fame at The […]
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Star Wars Action Figures: A 2012 National Toy Hall of Fame Inductee
If you haven’t spent the last week in a galaxy far, far away, you have probably heard that on November 15, Star Wars action figures joined the 50 other august toys honored in the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong. It seems like big honors for such itty bitty, 3.75-inch toys, but these figures demonstrate the iconic stature, longevity, and creative play essential to earning Hall of Fame status. Given their inauspicious beginnings, however, these action figures might […]
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Timeline of Video Game History
ICHEG’s website now features a new timeline charting the development of video games from the experiments of a few early computer pioneers to the products of a multibillion dollar industry. Some years on the timeline present an important or groundbreaking game or system; other entries symbolize a trend, such as the development of social and mobile gaming.
Some years presented easy and obvious selections. The home version of Pong, for example, stood out in 1975. Nintendo’s Game Boy was a sure […]
About Time: How Kids Perceive It, and Why They Wear Watches
Did you wear a wristwatch when you were a kid? I recall owning at least half a dozen watches, all prized possessions, but I don’t remember checking my wrist very often. When a collections project here at the National Museum of Play at The Strong unearthed a Funtime Barbie watch that sent me into a fit of nostalgia, I started thinking about how kids perceive time—and it rarely has to do with clocks.
Sure, kids have to live by clock time […]
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Aliens, Astronauts, and Video Games
Since the 17th century, individuals have discussed the possibility of extraterrestrial beings. What is the possibility of extraterrestrial life? “Guaranteed,” Harvard physicist and search for extraterrestrial intelligent life leader Paul Horowitz declared in a 1996 interview with Time Magazine. It is “so overwhelmingly likely that I’d give you almost any odds you’d like,” he said. Not everyone shares Horowitz’s confidence, but most people still delight in films, books, TV, and educational programming about the subject. From Space Attack to Aliens […]
Go Play with the Dog!
When I came across a 100-year-old paper dining room play set in the National Museum of Play’s collections recently, the paper dog begging beside the table got me to thinking about the dogs in my life. When I was a child, there always seemed to be a dog waiting patiently every night a few steps from our dinner table, too. Dogs also played a role beyond dinnertime. Living in a small, rural hamlet, my few nearby friends weren’t always available […]