The summer of 2023 brought a massive 90,000-sq.-foot expansion to The Strong National Museum of Play. This transformative space included three major exhibit spaces, an outdoor game park, as well as other new and improved programs and spaces to enhance the museum and build its capacity for the years ahead.
Among the aforementioned updates, to me, some of the most exciting changes are those that occurred strictly behind the scenes. A brand-new vault to store both archival materials and electronic games […]
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A Puzzling Tradition
Do you have traditions that you associate with the holidays? For some folks, that tradition involves seasonal baked goods with flavors and aromas that create a special aura. For others, it’s a beverage, perhaps a glass of eggnog or a mug of hot chocolate. In my family, there’s the annual Christmas jigsaw puzzle.
From my perspective, there are a couple great things about associating jigsaw puzzles with the holidays. For one, it gives me an automatic gift idea for my sister […]
The Value of Interns and Museums: Creating Pathways to Careers in Museums
Internships are typically a rite of passage for most students in undergraduate and graduate programs with goals of ultimately working in a museum. Internships provide a unique opportunity for students to test the waters and explore various career paths, while learning what working in a certain position or institution may really be like. Internships are greatly beneficial because they provide the ever so important hands-on experience for a student, allowing a practical application of the theories, practices, and ethics that […]
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Teaching Dungeons & Dragons: Continuing the Years of Storytelling
It is always an exciting thing to have your personal hobbies suddenly become relevant to your work. But imagine my shock when I got asked by multiple teams here at The Strong Museum to run Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) games so that my colleagues could get familiar with the game in preparation for working on our Dungeons & Dragons: 50 Years of Storytelling exhibit!
While I have run multiple tabletop role-play games (TTRPG) for friends, I had only recently started dipping […]
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Bill Cullen: The Man Who Hosted 29 Game Shows
By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
The most prolific name in the history of game shows was a man who once admitted to TV Guide, “I’m certainly not the man who appeals to women ages 18-35.”
Bill Cullen was right about that. He appealed to everybody. For 40 years, he appeared on one game show or another; often one game show and another. His gigs overlapped and he had no qualms about taking on whatever work […]
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Fanfare for the Fan
While transferring a few artifacts between storage spaces here at The Strong National Museum of Play, something I had not seen in quite some time caught my eye. Seeing the church fan was like bumping into an old friend. I want to share a few fond memories about its playful properties.
When I was knee-high to a grasshopper, the hours spent listening to old men sing long meter hymns off-key, followed by even older men yelling prayers, interspersed with an A […]
Maximizing Authenticity with New Arcade Preservation and Conservation Methods
What does it mean to preserve an experience? Think about going to the beach. Can you feel the hot sand on your feet? Can you smell the ocean air? Now think of an arcade cabinet. The Arcade Conservation Lab at The Strong National Museum of Play is responsible for the physical conservation and preservation of arcade and pinball games, including the preservation of the experience of playing these games as originally intended. We keep and maintain original CRT monitors that […]
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Gunfighter Gaming: A History of the Video Game Western Part 2 (1984 to 1994)
My previous blog post explored the emergence of video game Westerns in the 1970s. Driven by a mixture of technological limitations and public familiarity with Westerns and electromechanical shooting games, these new video game Westerns asked players to take on the role of the gunfighter in a relatively small digital world. Set in the mythic West of films, television, and novels, these games relied heavily on visual symbols such as pixelated covered wagons, cowboy hats, and pistols in arcade games […]
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Beyond Banner Ads (My Neopet Loves McDonalds)
Having been born in the 1990s, I grew up during an era of growing availability of home computers and internet. Each new piece of technology, software, and online game was a novelty. I remember buying the Catz 5 and Dogz 5 games before we had a computer capable of running them and reading the manuals over and over until I could finally play. The advent of online gaming sites, especially those geared toward children, holds the most nostalgia for me. […]
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