By 1980, Jerry Lawson was ready for a change. The 40-year-old electrical engineer had spent most of the 1970s working for Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation in Silicon Valley. In 1976, he led a team of talented engineers who took an Alpex Computer Corporation prototype and developed it into the Fairchild Channel F, the first home video game console to use interchangeable game cartridges. Although revolutionary in concept, the Channel F was quickly eclipsed by another cartridge-based console […]

Continue Reading about Jerry Lawson, Video Soft, and the History of the First Black-Owned Video Game Development Company Published on:
June 24, 2021

 

Have you ever played hockey with miniature stick-wielding players and a thumbnail-sized puck on a three-foot table covered by a plastic dome? If so, you have probably played Innovative Concepts in Entertainment’s (ICE) Chexx (or later Super Chexx) “bubble hockey” arcade games. First released in 1982, the iconic game is, in part, the work of Ralph Coppola (1948–2018), who, along with business partner Jack Willert refined David M. Barcelou’s initial invention and brought it to market. Over the course of […]

Continue Reading about The Coin-op Industry Legacy of ICE President Ralph Coppola Published on:
February 25, 2021

  How do you know if a game will be a hit or a flop with players? According to legend, video game pioneer Atari knew their 1972 coin-operated video game Pong would be a winner because players filled the test game’s coinbox with so many quarters that it jammed up the machine. As any veteran of the arcade game industry will tell you: “The coin box never lies.” But surely there should be more to it than that? In […]

Continue Reading about Carol Kantor: The Video Game Industry’s First Market Researcher Published on:
October 19, 2020

Jerome L. Singer, the distinguished psychologist who explored the depths of daydreaming, and alongside his wife the eminent developmental psychologist Dorothy G. Singer (1927–2016), became a pioneer in the study of imaginative play, died on December 14, 2019. Jerome and Dorothy were charter members of the editorial advisory board of The Strong’s American Journal of Play. With his hundreds of publications over a half century of scholarship, Jerome Singer helped us better understand the mysteries of human consciousness, […]

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May 21, 2020

Museums, schools, gyms, and malls are closed. Basketball games, poetry readings, dance recitals, and playdates are canceled. As a global pandemic casts a shadow over our daily lives, so many of the places that we see as playgrounds—including The Strong itself—are temporarily closed. But, as I was reminded this past week, play persists. A box of sidewalk chalk showed me firsthand the important role of play, and the ways in which it connects us with each other, during […]

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March 24, 2020

Vivian Gussin Paley, the teacher, author, and advocate for the importance of play for young children, died on July 26, 2019. She was a charter member of the editorial advisory board of the American Journal of Play and The Strong’s Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play cares for a collection of her personal papers. Her pioneering technique of storytelling and story acting in the early childhood classroom earned her a MacArthur “genius” grant in 1989 and influenced […]

Continue Reading about Remembering Educator and Play Advocate Vivian Gussin Paley, 1929–2019 Published on:
February 7, 2020

Ken Fedesna, former Executive Vice President and General Manager at video game developers and publishers Bally/Williams/Midway/Atari Games, has donated a collection that documents the history of Midway Games and showcases the company’s work on the TouchMaster line of multigame touchscreen video game units and projects related to connecting their coin-operated games through the internet. Fedesna joined Williams Electronics in 1977 and, over his 27 years with that company and Bally/Midway, he managed the development of countless pinball machines, […]

Continue Reading about Ken Fedesna Donation Documents Video Game Developer and Publisher Midway Games Published on:
July 12, 2019

Each year since 1967 (and twice a year between 1978 and 1994), throngs of people crowd the floors of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), eager to get a first look at the latest technological trends. In the early 1980s as video game developers such as Atari, Mattel, Imagic, General Consumer Electronics (GCE), Activision, and others vied for a share of the booming video game market, publicity teams assembled and handed out carefully curated folders filled with information about […]

Continue Reading about Video Game Press Kits as Historical Sources Published on:
February 22, 2019

Pinheads (or pinball enthusiasts, to the uninformed) rejoice! On November 8, 2018, pinball joined the 67 other iconic toys and games inducted into The Strong’s National Toy Hall of Fame. At its most basic level, pinball challenges players to use plastic flippers to control, aim, and fire a 1 1/16-inch stainless steel ball around a wooden playfield covered with objects and obstacles. It’s no surprise then, that pinball descended from centuries-old bowling, marble, billiard, and bagatelle games that all required […]

Continue Reading about Pinball Flips, Thumps, and Pops into the National Toy Hall of Fame Published on:
November 15, 2018