In the past months, I have noticed the steady buzz of fanfare for Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. A year’s worth of royal parades, pageants, parties, and pomp celebrates the six decades Queen Elizabeth has served as monarch. The people of the British realm certainly adore her. And to be honest, many Americans also follow news of Britain’s royal family, finding the whole notion of queens, kings, princes, and princesses fascinating despite fighting a war to stop British royals from ruling […]
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Fantastic Fiscal Fun
Buzzwords and hot topics permeate the media as the 2012 election approaches. Watch almost any news report and you’ll likely hear phrases such as “fiscal responsibility” and “balance the budget.” As gloomy as the current political circumstances or economic conditions may seem though, history tells us that it’s nothing new. People have long persisted through tough times—and even had their fair share of fun doing it.
Take for example Balance the Budget, a card game in the National Museum of Play’s […]
Death Race and Video Game Violence
Recently, ICHEG added the controversial arcade game Death Race to its collections.
Released by Exidy in 1976, Death Race became the first arcade game to spur a national controversy over violence in video games. A player of the game navigated a white car across the black screen as white stick figures, which developers called “gremlins,” ran back and forth. The driver attempted to run over the gremlins, which let out high-pitched screams and turned into tomb stones complete with crosses. With […]
Back in the Day: Early Television for Kids
“Plunk yer magic Twanger, Froggy!” Back in the early 1950s, these magic words enabled that impudent rubber frog known professionally as Froggy the Gremlin to suddenly appear out of nowhere on The Buster Brown Show. Materializing in a puff of smoke and uttering his famous “Hiya kids; Hiya, Hiya!” greeting, Froggy’s subsequent antics and smart aleck remarks visibly annoyed the show’s host, a jolly fellow known to all as Smilin’ Ed McConnell, but always delighted the kids gathered in the […]
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One Question for Lance Armstrong
The French have a saying: les pensées d’escalier, “thoughts on the stairs,” or in America, we say, “what I shoudda said.” Usually the perfect comeback doesn’t come to you until you’re leaving the event—in your overcoat on the stairwell—and it can do you no good. The witty riposte that surfaces fills you with regret. Alas, I had one of these experiences recently at a meet and greet for Lance Armstrong. He was scheduled to speak at the Ride for Roswell, […]
Don’t Call It a Comeback: The Return of Iconic 1980s Characters
Do you ever find yourself wishing that you could be a child again, just for a few hours? Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy adulthood, but I freely admit that every once in a while I find myself wanting to be a kid again, having a snack in my parents’ living room while watching Duck Tales. I miss the characters and cartoons of my youth, and suspect plenty of others share my sentiment, regardless of what era they grew up […]
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Now Playing
Nearly 600,000 guests come to The Strong annually, and many consider a visit to the arcade in eGameRevolution the highlight of their trip. Some visitors favor new games—slashing fruit on the giant touch-screen version of Fruit Ninja, munching opponents in the four-person Pac-Man Battle Royale, or playing the only Sega Giant Tetris game in North America. Old-school players make a bee-line for classics like Lunar Lander, Asteroids, or Gauntlet. The dozens of games featured in the exhibit give guests plenty […]
Play-Time: Racing Against the Clock
Consider a paradox: people who play the fastest devote great lengths of time to doing so. This presents a conundrum only slightly less challenging than a Rubik’s Cube—unless you’re the current world record holder, who solved the puzzling polyhedron in less than six seconds. If you asked champion Feliks Zemdegs, he’d probably say the goal of playing quickly is achieved slowly.
Videos abound online in which Rubik’s Cube gurus demonstrate how to solve the puzzle. Novices will have no trouble with […]
Albert Paley: Gravity, Sculpture, and Play
Less than a minute into my scheduled interview with world-renowned sculptor Albert Paley, we knew we had a problem. I wanted to talk about how he played as a child, but Paley wanted to know what I meant by play. And just like that he became the interviewer and I was the one reaching for answers. It’s a great question. I gave the answer most people interested in play can agree with: play is self-initiated, self-regulated, and self-limited. Play has […]
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