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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 […]

Continue Reading about Gunfighter Gaming: A History of the Video Game Western Part 2 (1984 to 1994) Published on:
February 7, 2025

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. […]

Continue Reading about Beyond Banner Ads (My Neopet Loves McDonalds) Published on:
January 31, 2025

By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
While going through some filing cabinets filled with memos and paperwork from the CBS game shows of the 1980s, we found a marvelous document titled, “I Heard It on the Pyramid-Vine.” The authors, Jerry Martz and Tom Buchanan, were CBS audio technicians. Both of them worked many tapings of The $25,000 Pyramid and The $100,000 Pyramid. As a refresher on these shows, celebrities and contestants teamed up for a […]

Continue Reading about Hilarious Game Show Answers Published on:
January 29, 2025

Sometimes, the “a-ha” moment comes from what you don’t find. I came to The Strong Museum to search the earliest (1902–1929) issues of the toy industry journal Playthings for images and stories of the American past. I have spent the past two decades researching the American children’s literature industry, which regularly strived to convey this past to young readers in ways that served its moral and commercial interests. As a scholar new to the toy industry, I was surprised to […]

Continue Reading about Toys and U.S. History in Playthings Magazine Published on:
January 24, 2025

In August and September 2024, I had the chance to work in the exhibits and archives of The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. Coming from Switzerland, a country in which the historical study and preservation of video games is still in its early stages, I was impressed by the wealth and the diversity of objects held by this institution.
As part of my doctoral research, I’m working mainly on video games designed for the domestic space, i.e. […]

Continue Reading about Game Instructions: How Do You Learn to Play in an Arcade Room? Published on:
January 17, 2025

From Dungeons & Dragons (1974) to Elden Ring (2023), modern games have asked us time and again to crack our knuckles, dust off our wizard cloaks, and test our magical mettle against fantasy’s most fearsome foes. But for all the magic our in-game spellbooks may contain, it was the pages of video game magazines that had the power to skyrocket an obscure game to national acclaim—or rain financial ruin upon a decorated studio for its latest flop. But how did […]

Continue Reading about Let’s Talk About Something Fun—How About Magic? Published on:
January 10, 2025

While cataloging some older books found within the museum’s collection, I kept coming across ones that had “Brownie” in the title. These books were written and illustrated by Palmer Cox, and the artwork within had whimsical characters (almost resembling Elf on the Shelf) travelling and causing mischief. Curious about who these characters were and the story behind them, I started doing some research and uncovered some surprising connections between them and some Rochester New York history!
As someone who indulges in […]

Continue Reading about Brownies: From Folklore to Kodak Cameras Published on:
January 3, 2025

Video games are many things, but in the main they consist of three primary elements: art, play, and story. Of course, these elements may not be distributed equally in every game. In Tetris (1985), for example, the play element predominates; there is no story and the art is mere adornment (as evident by the fact that Alexey Pajitnov created it originally on a Soviet minicomputer, the Electronika 60, using only basic characters for graphics). Flower (2009) offers minimal play and […]

Continue Reading about The Stories of Michael and Muffy Berlyn Published on:
December 20, 2024

“You are a toy!” Could the oft-recited line from the 1995 feature film Toy Story—a beloved classic—hide a more profound meaning? The film’s portrayal of toys, which are sentient in their private world but lifeless in the presence of humans, can be interpreted as a commentary on the performative aspects of existence under oppressive systems. Moreover, it sketches a rough outline of a protective practice deployed by African Americans for centuries.
The central theme of Toy Story revolves around the life […]

Continue Reading about Hush Harbors: Life in the Toy Box Published on:
December 12, 2024