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 […]
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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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Hilarious Game Show Answers
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 […]
Toys and U.S. History in Playthings Magazine
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 […]
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Game Instructions: How Do You Learn to Play in an Arcade Room?
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. […]
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Let’s Talk About Something Fun—How About Magic?
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 […]
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Brownies: From Folklore to Kodak Cameras
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 […]
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