Margaret Woodbury Strong, the museum’s founder, was an avid collector of dollhouses. A ticket from 1958 invited guests to the “First Public Showing of Mrs. Homer Strong’s World-Famous Collection of Doll Houses” at her residence in Pittsford, New York. The nearly 100 dollhouses exhibited represented only a portion of her collection. In celebration of Margaret Woodbury Strong’s fascination with spectacular miniatures, The Strong National Museum of Play has opened Dollhouses Unveiled. The exhibit provides a unique opportunity to view dozens of rare dollhouses and miniatures from The Strong’s collections (many not seen on public view in decades along with others new to the museum).

The dollhouses on display provide a sample of design and play patterns from the 1830s to present day. A few highlights include the Mystery House and Blue Roof Victorian Mansion, as they have been called. Around 1890, the famed FAO Schwarz toy store carried a line of dollhouses with delicately carved wood accents. Dollhouse expert Flora Gill Jacobs later named the series “Mystery Doll Houses,” because she couldn’t identify the maker, though some speculated that prisoners made them. The elaborate houses signaled luxury and were correspondingly expensive. One version sold for $80—nearly a half-month’s salary for a lawyer at the time. During the same decade, the Mortiz Gottschalk Company created an elaborate mansion with a blue roof. FAO Schwartz also featured this house as a Christmas exclusive. Its construction of lithographed paper on wood created a spectacular design with a wondrous concoction of gables, turrets, spindles, and balustrades.

Nearly 100 years later, Barbie moved into her Magical Mansion. Felix Burrichter, co-editor of Barbie Dreamhouse: An Architectural Survey, said the pale walls and fluffy sofa reminded him of the suburban house in the 1987 thriller Fatal Attraction. Snobs might have scoffed, but kids loved ringing the functioning doorbell and phone. While thinking about life in plastic, one of the most striking objects on display is the Kaleidoscope House manufactured by Bozart Toys in 2001. Designed by artist Laurie Simmons and architect Peter Wheelwright, the Kaleidoscope House has sliding transparent walls, an arced-slab partial roof, and modern art pieces. The creators sought to update the conventional dollhouse with subtle touches, like sliding walls that allow for play with color, design, and light. The Kaleidoscope House provides just one example of how the history of dollhouses reveals shifting ideas about domestic life, innovative design, and imaginative play.

Aside from the dollhouses that include Margaret Strong’s childhood dollhouse and elaborate recent  residences marketed to grownups, guests to the exhibit can complete a scavenger hunt for teeny tiny miniatures that replicate everyday life, play with the lights and sounds we’ve added to the 1837 Amsterdam House, and view vintage dollhouse advertisements and photographs. Dollhouses Unveiled will be on display through January 4, 2026.

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Back in 2010, The Strong opened eGameRevolution, the museum’s first permanent exhibit to focus on the history of video games. For more than a decade, that exhibit informed and delighted millions of museum guests. We recognized early on that the exhibit’s arcade was a hit with guests who loved playing and learning more about coin-operated video games. So, when the museum opened its ESL Digital Worlds: High Score and Level Up exhibits as part of its 90,000-sq. ft. expansion in 2023, we started developing a new exhibit that would transform eGameRevolution into a space dedicated entirely to arcade games. In the fall of 2025, The Strong opened Infinity Arcade, an exhibit that invites guests to explore more than a century of arcade history. But what can you expect to see and do in Infinity Arcade?

Arcade Ancestors on Display

Beginning in the late 19th century, Americans dropped coins into games that tested their skill and pressed their luck in a seemingly endless variety of ways. Today, many of us forget that the newer electronic arcade games we encounter in modern arcades and family entertainment centers trace their origins back to earlier forms of play, and earlier arcade games. Guests visiting Infinity Arcade can learn more about this history through a series of artifact displays featuring examples of early coin-operated countertop games and larger shooting, athletic, fortune telling, and pinball games. For example, these displays include smaller, countertop trade stimulators (or games used by retailers to encourage the sale of cigars, gum, or other items) like The Bicycle (about 1890s), which capitalized on the popularity of cycling and asked players to spin the bike’s wheels for a chance to win a prize. Also on display are larger arcade cabinets like Sky Fighter (1940), a shooting game that surged in popularity during World War II by challenging players to take down enemy planes.

Arcade Icons and New Classics for Play

As a museum dedicated to all things play, we know that playing is one of the best ways to learn. That’s why a video game arcade period room anchors the exhibit, offering guests opportunities to play original arcade games from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Although game titles are rotated frequently, guests are likely to see and play iconic arcade video games like the rock blaster Asteroids (1979), maze runner Pac-Man (1980), space shooter Defender (1981), and the two-player brawler Street Fighter II (1991). But the exhibit is also filled with many other kinds of arcade games, including examples of electromechanical or mechanical action arcade games like the helicopter flying game Whirly Bird (1969), the classic bubble hockey game Chexx, and the bowling game Skee-Ball. More recent arcade video games include the massive, four-player shooter Halo: Fire Team Raven (2018); the six-player, adrenaline-fueled racer Hot Wheels: King of the Road (2020), and the exhilarating, four-player basketball game NBA Superstars (2024).

While many of the games throughout the museum are free of charge, the arcade games in Infinity Arcade require purchased tokens. The funds collected from the sale of tokens are used to care for these original artifacts and keep them running for future generations. Tokens themselves have played such an important role in the history of arcades that the exhibit even includes a display of 50 tokens collected from arcades throughout the United States.

Thematic Cases and Rare Artifacts

The exhibit also features a series of displays with rare or one-of-a-kind artifacts and that explore topics such as how arcade games are made, moral panics (or widespread and often excessive public fears) surrounding arcades and arcade games, how arcade games entered the home in the forms of board game adaptations and other tabletop electronic games, and Pac-Man as a mass cultural phenomenon. For example, the case focused on making arcade games features a display of original designer notes, the first prototype printed circuit board, and a prototype arcade cabinet for Atari’s all-time bestselling coin-op game, Asteroids. The display also includes an engineering drawing of The Addams Family pinball’s The Thing playfield toy and one of the original metal rotational molds used to manufacture the game’s plastic Thing hand. The case about arcade moral panics features original video from game industry promotions and news programs produced at the height of the arcade craze of the early 1980s.

Arcade Video Game History Timeline

For guests interested in a chronological overview, a large graphical timeline surveys the first 50 years of arcade video game history. From the first arcade video game, the dueling space shooter Computer Space (1971) to the modern, environmental shooters Jurassic Park Arcade (2015) and Halo: Fire Team Raven (2018), guests can see how coin-operated video games have evolved over five decades. After spending some time in Infinity Arcade, guests may also want to test their knowledge of coin-op game history by playing a custom arcade trivia game. Can you beat the latest high score?

There’s so much more to discover for yourself, but it’s easy to see how you could spend hours playing and learning about the history of the arcade and the significant role that coin-operated games have played in American life, culture, and play for more than a century.

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While I have run multiple tabletop role-play games (TTRPG) for friends, I had only recently started dipping my toes into the role of Dungeon Master (DM) —the term used for the person who is running a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Before this, I had also exclusively run games online, over a Discord voice call using Roll20, a virtual tabletop service. In that setting, we don’t use cameras for our games so no one can see my facial expressions as I do silly character voices or see me searching for music while players talk to each other. The idea of standing in front of people while doing this can be intimidating. And it is no wonder why DMs are harder to find than players in the TTRPG community—it’s a lot of work to prepare such a game, even a short one! Nonetheless, I undertook the challenge, hoping to share this wonderful game we were celebrating at the museum with my co-workers.

The first question was if I was going to undertake a homebrewed adventure or use something pre-written. I immediately decided since I had access to many published short adventures, we would use one of those, since I could be confident they had been tested and designed with beginners to the game in mind. I searched and searched online and consulted many modules I own, but nothing felt quite right for what was needed . . . that is until LEGO announced their Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale set and free module. I couldn’t believe our luck that they were coming out with exactly what was needed: A short and sweet 5th edition module designed to teach the game to new players, complete with pre-made character sheets, a delightful silly adventure, and they even provided music to play alongside gameplay for DMs! Not only that, but Wizards of the Coast streamed an actual play of the module run by Anjali Bhimani, so I got to see how the module should play out.

While it had almost everything a few things were missing. For monster stat blocks or descriptions of certain spells and items, the module referred to the 2014 5th-Edition books, which thankfully the museum has in our collection. As a result, I was able to look up everything I needed and have those descriptions at the ready for the games. There also was the small issue that the LEGO set itself was not going to be released in time for our event, so maps and miniatures for the characters were going to have to be a little different. Thankfully the internet offers access to a wealth of wonderful people who provide 3D print files for miniatures as well as maps! And Martin Reinhardt, our Arcade Conservation Technician here at the museum, was happy to help in printing everything for us!

Map and miniatures, ready! Module, ready! Music at the ready! Now to teach a game that has been around for 50 years, has had multiple editions, and is intimidating for newcomers to approach. I fully acknowledge that Dungeons & Dragons is a lot to learn and can be hard to get into if all you see with the game are people rolling dice, doing math, accessorized with massive books that are essentially textbooks for the game. I also will fully admit to players I often do not know all the rules—I applaud those who have it all memorized though! So where to start? I knew we needed a game that was going to provide a very general overview of various encounters and the most used mechanics of the game.

The first sessions I ran for members of our Collections Team were with co-workers who had played TTRPGs or knew a little of them beforehand, so we could jump in more easily. We played the full module over the course of two 2.5-hour sessions. The second group, our Marketing Team, were almost all new to roleplay games, so I decided to consider what would have been helpful to me when I started playing this massive and intimidating game. Having dice provided and a sheet made for me was a must, plus a clear idea of what I could do during each round of combat felt like a good place to start. Carefully I put together little binders with sheets, spell cards, magical item cards, dry erase markers to mark off on the sheets with, a bag of dice, and this handy free PDF by Matthew Perkins that explains what players can do on their turns in combat in 5e. Perkins’ website even acknowledges in the description of the PDF that “This game is complicated!” and explains he made the sheets to help onboard new players.

With the binders made, I decided to also cut out some pieces of the LEGO module to narrow in on the experience of a “typical game.” I knew I wanted to have a combat encounter, some investigation, a small social encounter to get into the roleplaying, but I didn’t want us to linger too long on Skill Checks or posing optional scenes to players. Also, for both groups and in general as a DM, I am a huge fan of what is called “Rule of Cool” in my games. This means that while the game’s rules may say: you can only move x amount of feet and only do this, I say: if it sounds cool and is within reason then give it a try, let’s have a dice roll still determine if you can do it or not. I always try to provide the space for my players to find alternative solutions. This could mean allowing a player character to talk their way out of combat or to sneak around to avoid an encounter.

Providing the space for players to make the adventure theirs has always been a goal of mine as a DM. After all, to quote Matthew Mercer from Critical Role, “How do you want to do this?” is what we ask players when they are about to defeat a foe in combat! We provide the player with the moment to shine and take control of the narrative of how they want to finish the enemies. But it can be hard to answer this question when just learning TTRPGs. When we started one game and I asked a player this question, the player hesitantly started to describe their finishing blow during the first combat encounter. But by the end of the game, we had excited descriptions and gestures as our heroes saved the day from the evil sorcerer! To see this transformation in just over two hours was amazing and I was so happy to see everyone enjoying the game.

Getting to share this game that has generated so many stories and imaginations for half a century now with co-workers was truly a delight. And I was happy to have the opportunity to be the one to run a game for them. The experience also provided me with a moment to step back and remember that, despite all the books, lore, and changes to the game over the years, it is just that: a game. And having fun with it, adjusting it to the players is always important as a DM. So even though I was there to teach others, I also learned a great deal from this experience and am ready for more stories to tell, whether it be online with friends or at work!

The post Teaching Dungeons & Dragons: Continuing the Years of Storytelling appeared first on The Strong National Museum of Play.

In addition to these material components, however, at the root of every TTRPG experience are stories created by the players and sonic performances that happen as a result. In tabletop role-playing games, sound and story are inseparable. The players at the TTRPG table must evoke worlds, actions, and people through description—recounting what is seen, experienced, and heard within the theater of the mind.

Thanks to the generosity of The Strong National Museum of Play, I was awarded a Valentine-Cosman Research Fellowship. With this fellowship, I was able to spend two weeks going through The Strong’s extensive collection of TTRPG artifacts and associated archival documents in the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play to support my dissertation research on music and sound within TTRPG communities. What I found during my time demonstrated how sound and music has spurred creativity, conveyed literary genre, and inspired storytelling among both TTRPG writers and players since the inception of the genre.

The vast collection of TTRPG sourcebooks at The Strong includes games that span five decades of TTRPG play and cover the gamut of literary genres, ranging from the ubiquitous Dungeons & Dragons (1974) to obscure titles such as Woof Meow (1988). These books serve as manuals on the rules of play, “how-to guides” for acting as a character, and as primers for creative writing and sonic performance. In most of the books I examined, the designers of these games emphasized the need for dramatic storytelling. In a playtest copy of Dungeons and Dragons for Beginners (1979), Gary Gygax and Eric Holmes describe “Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art,” that laid out the needs for theatrics:

“Dramatize the adventure as much as possible, describe the scenery, if any. Non-player characters should have appropriate speech, orcs are gruff and ungrammatical, knights talk in flowery phrases and always say “thou” rather than “you.” … The dramatic talents of the Dungeon Master should be used to their fullest extent. It adds to the fun.”

In other games, the role of the game master extends beyond general descriptions and into evoking source material and genre through audio. Star Trek: Roleplaying Game (1999), from Last Unicorn Games, establishes the need for musical props and sonic “recognitional signals” like writing and performing a Star Trek-esque “Captain’s Log” in the style of the television series, or playing Alexander Courage and Gene Rodenberry’s iconic Star Trek theme song to establish mood at the beginning of a session.

Cyberpunk (1988) from R. Talsorian Games Inc. presses the need for atmosphere to evoke the game’s dark, futuristic setting and suggests an appropriate sonic environment, instructing players to:

Get out your heaviest rock tapes and play them during your run. Encourage your players to wear leather and mirror-shades. Adopt the slang and invent your own… This is the dark future here; and it can’t be accurately portrayed in a brightly lit room with milk and cookies on the table.

Additionally, Cyberpunk doubles down on the sonic atmosphere for its setting, providing the option of playing as a “Rockerboy/girl” who uses music of any genre to make political statements, as well as provide in-narrative music reviews of fictional bands and albums such as Johnny Silverhand’s A Cool Metal Fire.

TTRPG companies’ attention to sonic and musical detail also extended into providing musical material as role-playing aids, starting as early as 1984. In an official game adventure for TSR’s Advanced Dungeons & Dragons entitled Dragonlance: Dragons of Despair (1984), the author Tracy Hickman, along with members of the design staff Michael Williams and Carl Smith, composed “Song of Goldmoon,” a song specifically for use in the module. Hickman calls out this piece as vital to the adventure and instructs that one of the players read the lyrics aloud, or, if any players have “natural minstrel abilities,” to sing it with the music provided. TSR’s foray into musical material continued into the 1990s. The Strong houses one of TSRs Advanced Dungeons & Dragons audio adventures that includes a CD for use during play.

Ravenloft: A Light in The Belfry (1995) is a full campaign for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons set in D&D’s horror genre setting, Ravenloft. Along with the text, the adventure includes a CD with 87 different tracks that include narrative performances of the in-game story and atmospheric descriptions, as well as sound effects that enhance a spooky atmosphere. The CD is integral to play as the first 13 tracks tell the story of the adventure’s antagonist, Morgoroth, that players discover as a part of the game. The tracks on the CD are meant to be played as the players explore a haunted house, with each of its rooms having a dedicated narration and musical elements associated with the horror genre, such as eerie strings, bells, and synthesizers.

In addition to the musical and sonic work published by game companies, The Strong houses collections of unpublished materials from various game designers as well as materials created by TTRPG players for personal and public play. In particular, the Play Generated Map and Document Archive papers (PlaGMaDA) contain thousands of player-generated documents including character sheets, maps, GM notes, and homebrew adventures. PlaGMaDa offers insight into a lived TTRPG past and shows how players from various backgrounds interacted with sonic and musical ideas. Within the parts of PlaGMaDA that I was able to look through during my short time in the archives, I found that players experienced and engaged with music in different ways.

Many of these instances consisted of small notes of things that implied the presence of musical objects. In a collection of notes and maps for a game of Chaosium Inc.’s Call of Cthulhu, the game master detailed a short list of things in an apartment: “Liquor, Hi-Fi jazz records, promo glossies, occult books.” Despite the innocuous nature of this note, its inclusion suggests the owner of this apartment listened to “Hi-Fi Jazz,” and this in turn generates assumptions based on what the game master and the players associate with that genre of music.

Players also explored the possibilities of music within their games in another collection of character sheets dated between 2004-2007. A player drafted a song for a character they were playing in Mage: The Ascension (White Wolf Publishing, Inc., 1993). Set in the gothic-punk universe of the World of Darkness games, the song features edgy lyrics typical of a punk song.

The document shows how the player engaged with music by writing lyrics themselves, as well as implies that they were thinking critically about their writing. The crossed-out lyrics and rewritten lines imply that the player spent more than a few moments on their writing. In a sticky note attached to these lyrics the donor states: “Draft of a song [player’s name] wrote on as his MagePC [player character] Rain from the 06 game.” There is no record indicating whether this song was ever performed or what it possibly sounded like; however, its presence demonstrates how TTRPGs provide space in which creativity and musical practice can be explored through a play environment.

My time during my fellowship at The Strong has had a profound impact on my research into music and TTRPG communities. Contemporary TTRPG communities often consider the use of sound as a modern phenomenon that align with the resurgence of popularity in the genre since the mid-2010s. However, I hope my research conducted at The Strong will establish that music and sound have long been integral to TTRPGs as a creative practice.

Play, especially play through music and sound, is often ephemeral, as these moments between friends are not (usually) recorded.  I was confronted by this ephemerality while examining the William J. Hoyt Dungeon’s & Dragons Collection housed at The Strong. Hoyt was one of the first people to play Dungeons & Dragonsin the 1960s as a part of Dave Arneson’s wargaming group in the Twin Cities area. In a short 15-second sound clip from a slideshow Hoyt put together about the creation of D&D, he shows a copy of the game Dungeon! (TSR, 1975) and reminisced on these decades-ago moments that exist now only in Hoyt’s memory. Like so many gaming groups in today’s world, Hoyt describes these playful moments with fondness, and speaks to the sustained importance of music and sound in TTRPG play:

“This is my first copy of Dungeon!. We played this game over, and over, and just loved this game. We played it, and made up songs, and just had a great time playing this game.”

Written by Andrew Borecky, 2024 Valentine-Cosman Research Fellow

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At first, I reviewed pretty much every new item and collection that came in, but as the pace of acquisitions quickened and the size of our staff expanded to do all this work, I’ve found myself with fewer and fewer opportunities to dig deep into these collections. That’s why it was such a pleasure to spend time going through the Bruce C. Shelley Papers at The Strong as we developed an exhibit on Age of Empires as part of our major expansion project in the summer of 2023.

The materials Bruce Shelley donated to The Strong encompass both physical papers and digital files, and in totality they help trace key parts of his career. They are particularly important because his career parallels the development of computer gaming in general.

A fan of war, simulation, and role-playing games, Shelley helped found Iron Crown Enterprises, whose first role-playing tabletop games came out in 1980, and then he worked at other board game companies such as Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI) and Avalon Hill. His early efforts often involved minding the fine-grained details necessary to produce high-quality games. For example, the archives are filled with Shelley’s handwritten notes for games like Titan specifying font size or type changes; subtle tweaks to game instructions to make them more understandable for the player; and decisions about components.

In addition to his personal notes and correspondence, the files also contain a wide variety of pamphlets, newsletters, catalogs, conference programs, and other ephemeral publications that provide insights into the nature of culture and communication of the board game world in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I particularly like the program for a softball game between the staff of the game publishers Avalon Hill and S.P.I. that was held at the 1978 Origins game conference.

Like many other board game designers of the period, Shelley made the transition to the world of computer games in the 1980s and early 1990s. Geographically he didn’t have to go far. Avalon Hill, the leading war game company, was based in Maryland, as was the up-and-coming computer game company Microprose where Shelley started working in the late 1980s. There he teamed with game developer Sid Meier on best-selling games such as Railroad Tycoon and Civilization. Both Shelley and Meier were firm believers in continually testing games, and the papers contain interesting records of “Questions regarding game play” for the game Colonization.

In 1995, after a move to Chicago, Bruce Shelley reconnected with two old friends, Tony and Rich Goodman, to work on a game that they were developing (they had originally met in the 1970s at a board game club at the University of Virginia). That game became Age of Empires, one of the most successful real-time strategy games of all time. Here’s where Shelley’s donation of materials is particularly rich. The paper materials he gave to the museum offer some documentation, but the electronic materials are especially valuable in offering crucial insights into the development of the game.

These digital materials contain a wide range of files, from meeting notes to outlines for technology trees for civilizations in the games to presentations about the game and the creators’ strategies and principles. I particularly enjoyed clicking through a folder from 1996 that contained the various proposed .WAV files of sounds in the game, from waving grass to taunting phrases. 

Video games are almost always a collaborative enterprise, so it’s not surprising that the papers reveal some key materials created by other people. I found a 1997 memo from Dave Pottinger that outlines an early version of the AI for the computer players (i.e., the opponents of the human player in a single player game). Pottinger’s document explains the mathematical basis for determining the decisions of the different active elements in the game, assigning each a strategic number (abbreviated as SN at the start of every variable name).  

Being able to care for these digital materials is the result of expertise that The Strong has built up over almost 20 years of work engaged in safeguarding the history of video games. When the collection first came in, our digital preservation team made sure to migrate the data off the original disks and onto more secure storage. In the process, The Strong’s digital games curator Andrew Borman discovered the earliest known prototype of Age of Empires called “Dawn of Man.”

By doing this work, we can preserve a record for researchers to understand how games were created, what decisions individuals and companies made, and why things developed as they did. Video games are a transformative industry, and it is a vital work of cultural heritage to preserve these sorts of materials. In this case, the materials Bruce Shelley donated helped us create an exhibit on Age of Empires that debuted in June of 2023. By using materials from the Bruce Shelley papers, as well as other donations such as those from Tony and Suzanne Goodman and Age of Empires art director Brad Crow, we’re able to unfold, for our guests, the rich, detailed work that goes into making important video games.

Bruce Shelley’s papers are of great value for anyone interested in understanding his career, the development of Age of Empires specifically, and the history of the craft more broadly. We are honored to preserve them.

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We know that the ease with which objects are perceived also predicts positive engagement (known as perceptual fluency). So if game components are to be fun, these objects must be designed in the most fluent way possible. A nice example of perceptual fluency exists in the various iterations of the board game Candy Land. Given the young age of the target audience, movement is communicated with cards containing 1 or 2 colored squares rather than the more complex interpretations involved in dice throwing.

We also know that the brain processes certain combinations of information more effectively due to things called “correspondences.” For example, we must build a physically large musical instrument if we want to produce low pitches (compare a violin with a double bass). From this, we predict that large objects correspond to low pitches. By spending time at a piano, we learn that lower pitches come from hitting leftward keys, but higher notes come from hitting rightward keys. As such, we predict low tones should come from locations on the left and high tones from locations on the right. As a final example, as we walk outside (perhaps to take a stroll around the Hasbro Game Park at The Strong) we see that the grass is beneath us and the sky is above us. For this reason, we might regularly expect the color blue to be above the color green.

As part of my fellowship, I asked whether any of these correspondences related to color, location, and sound existed in the classic electronic game Simon. In the basic game, the player must reproduce an ever-increasing tonal sequence by pressing one of four colored quadrants in the correct order. If the player successfully reproduces the pattern, Simon adds one more element to the sequence.

The first observation that took me by surprise was that Simon was actually inspired by an earlier arcade unit by Atari. As described in the notes of game developer Ralph Baer: “Touch-Me was in a waist-high cabinet with four large dark buttons facing the player . . . during the game, the buttons lit up in random sequences. . . . It was the player’s job to follow the light sequence of the buttons . . . nice game idea, terrible execution . . . visually lousy, miserable sounds!”

While The Strong has one of these Touch-Me cabinets in the museum’s collection, it was in the process of repair and I never got to experience the “‘lousy” sounds and colors of this inspirational design. Happily, a hand-held version of the Atari game was available, enabling comparison with an incredible range of hand-held Simon-style units.

Just comparing the ways in which colors corresponded to location, there were lots of variation in design choice. For example, in the original Touch Me unit, blue is top-left and green is bottom-right. So this particular design contains one correspondence that we have learnt to expect: grass below, sky above. What is intriguing then is the reversal of this correspondence of most Simon variants where green is now above blue. The exception here is very cute Pocket Simon (1980), which reinstates green on the bottom and blue on the top.

Thanks to a healthy supply of variously sized batteries, I was able to make these units shine and sing again. The sounds were not as strident or as confident as you might have expected from an electronic game. The tones were often frail or uncertain, reminding us all that there is a delicacy in maturity. While listening to the sounds, I continued to pore over the notes of Ralph Baer that tracked the development of the initial Simon game. Indeed, much of the writing looked quite similar to my own laboratory notebooks: ideas sketched, hypotheses generated, data collected, and fed back into the next iteration of ideas. A quite beautiful document was the sketching of the four “bugle” sounds (and the error or “razz” noise) that made it into the final version of the game. But how did these sounds correspond to locations?

Sound-location mappings were inconsistent across units, and not in line with my predictions that lower sounds should be associated with lower and leftward locations. For example, the original 1979 version of Simon (and the more contemporary Simon Swipe from 2014) gets the vertical mapping “correct” in that lower tones are associated with lower quadrants (yellow and blue), but gets the horizontal mapping “incorrect” in that lower tones are associated with more rightward locations (red and blue).

Further surprising correspondences were also waiting for me on the exhibit floor of The Strong. In particular, I was delighted to find a huge, aerobic version of Simon outside in the Hasbro Game Park. As you can see from the picture, color-location is again in the canonical, but curious configuration where green is above blue. On playing this large-scale version however, I noticed that the sounds had been rearranged from the hand-held version—low tones now came from the high locations and high tones came from the low locations!

In reviewing Simon games with a scientific lens, I was struck by the disconnection between psychological principles and gamification principles. I predicted that the organization of color-location-sound elements in the Simon game would have been set up in a way that reflected how the brain processes information: play is—after all—our brain’s favorite way of learning. But is it appropriate to call these mappings “correct” or ”incorrect?” From a player point-of-view, perhaps there is additional fun in the incongruency between the elements in this game. Indeed, play might be the very best environment in which to experience the world not as we expect it but as it could be.

As a scientist, the “perfect” design of a particular game can be approached empirically. Processing fluency can be measured using speed and accuracy, and much of my laboratory’s future work will be in the use of games as scientific paradigms. Simon is essentially a measure of working memory capacity, and we will directly study the effects that correspondences have on game performance. It is my hope that in the same way games may reveal something novel about science, the application of science may provide us with novel opportunities for play.

By, Ben Dyson, 2023 Valentine-Cosman Research Fellow at The Strong

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Inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2000, Mr. Potato Head checks off all of the hall of fame criteria: icon-status, longevity, discovery, and innovation. He was invented by George Lerner in 1949, and the original product was designed to be used on potatoes and other vegetables, consisting of a variety of facial features and accessories to press into the veggie. With parents expressing displeasure with the rotting vegetables their kids were leaving around, eventually the plastic potato body would be supplied alongside the accessories. Mr. Potato Head’s advertising campaign also broke new ground with television commercials targeting children, not just adults.

Mr. Potato Head has become an icon over his 70+ years of existence. His feature role in four Toy Story films took the popular toy and gave him life and voice via Don Rickles, turning a childhood playmate into a movie star. One of the first things most kids enthuse about as they enter The Strong’s G. Rollie Adams Atrium is the giant Mr. Potato Head above them. I’ve observed many stopping to stare or getting their adult’s attention to point out the large spud. He’s certainly become an intergenerational celebrity.

Little did our earlier young guest know, but he wasn’t so far off in his mistaken name for our potato friend, as the Mr. Potato Head franchise wasn’t always just potatoes. The early kits were marketed to be used on a variety of produce, empowering children to create a family as diverse as their garden or pantry. Once the plastic bodies were in use, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head and their family were joined by friends like Pete the Pepper, Oscar the Orange, Katie the Carrot, and Kooky/Cooky the Cucumber. A picnic-themed playset also included friends like Willy Burger, Mr. Ketchup Head, Frenchy Fry, Mr. Soda Pop Head, Frankie Frank, and Mr. Mustard Head, ready to be customized with a variety of accessories.

These non-potato friends are no longer in production, but a variety of spud variations are, often featuring licenses like Star Wars and Marvel. You too can own The Yamdalorian and the Tot. While we may have to stick to Veggie Tales for Bob the Tomato or Larry the Cucumber, Mr. Potato Head and family aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. His place in American culture is solidified, and in fact he’s taken on a new pedestal at The Strong. With the opening of the Hasbro Game Park, he is now featured prominently among other Hasbro licenses in the title wall for a garden exhibit area that evokes nostalgia and play for guests.

And who knows, maybe Pete the Pepper will make a resurgence someday alongside a new Mr. Tomato Head.

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Tiamat is from the Forgotten Realms setting of Dungeons & Dragons. The first mention of her in the tabletop role-play game was in 1975 in the first supplement to Dungeons & Dragons: Greyhawk. This supplement, however, referred to her as simply “The Dragon Queen” or “the Chromatic Dragon.” There she is described, not too differently from what you see in the game park: “a huge creature with five heads, one of each color of the five Chaotic Dragons. Her body is striped in these same colors, and her tail is that of a Wyvern. She can employ all heads at once, either to breath or cast spells… her major aim is to spread evil.” Quite the foe for adventurers to face! But one major difference I noticed in reading this description was the location of her home; in Greyhawk, it only says her “abode is a stupendous cavern far beneath the earth.” If you jump forward to the next book that featured Tiamat, the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual from 1977, there is a shift in her descriptions. For starters now she is the “Chromatic Dragon (Tiamat)” in the manual, giving her a name. But it mentions she “rules the first plane of the Nine Hells where she spawns all of evil dragonkind… she is seldom (10%) outside her lair, but occasionally she comes to earth to place a new dragon or to seek more treasure. She can travel astrally or ethereally.” This description then sets into place Tiamat living not within the earth, but within the Nine Hells instead, where she stays all the way to 5^th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, the version most players are familiar with today. In the manual we also find out more about her powers: each head has distinct types of attacks and deals different damages, her breath weapon—a feature dragon monsters have—corresponds to the color head that is in use, hence our friend in Hasbro Game Park who doesn’t just breathe fire.

While Tiamat does appear in more publications, next I looked to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2^nd edition rules supplement: Monster Mythology from 1992. Now she is described as a deity, not just an evil dragon, which then gives rise to her cult later in the lore. In the Manual of the Planes her stat block is quite a sight compared to her original stat block from Greyhawk. Now her abilities fill an entire page as we get more details on her breath weapons:

• The white head deals a cone of cold damage
• The black head deals a line of acid damage
• The green head breathes corrosive gas
• The blue produces lightning
• The red breathes fire

She also has features that allow her to see invisibility, mimic sounds and voices of others, and she has the spells of a 20^th level sorcerer and 20^th level cleric—a big bad evil guy (BBEG) that will have the members of your party on their toes.

Skipping ahead to the now in use 5^th edition, Tiamat is featured as the main villain in one of the first adventures for the edition: the two-part Tyranny of Dragons. In this adventure players work to stop the “Cult of the Dragon and the Red Wizards of Thay as they try to free Tiamat from her prison in the Nine Hells”. The Tyranny of Dragons adventure ends with an epic battle. Should adventurers struggle to stop the ritual to free Tiamat, the adventure text tells the Dungeon Master (DM) to start describing Tiamat’s heads starting to appear and to emphasize “this is no mere monster they face… Tiamat is a god.” Considering she is seen by many to be the most fearsome dragon in Dungeons & Dragonshistory, with her challenge rating (CR) standing at 30, it is no wonder the book warns that while a fight with Tiamat at her full strength would be pretty epic, for the finale of the adventure “the [player] characters might not survive as anything more than mere memories.” Looking at her stat block now, we see the five heads have kept the same abilities, but now Tiamat has a list of resistances and legendary actions that are sure to make players need to get creative to stop her. How your adventuring party goes about solving the puzzle of stopping the Dragon Queen and her cult is completely up to them and the roll of their dice.

So, when you visit The Strong National Museum of Play and see the Hasbro Game Park, be sure to try your own luck with the d20 that stands before the famous Chromatic Dragon. Give her some love as she has come far in the history of Dungeons & Dragons, from just a small mention in a supplement, to having her own adventure in 5^th Edition, to now standing tall and proud in Rochester, New York!

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Six Thematic Sections

Because video games are a complex medium that blends art forms, technologies, and traditions, we’ve organized High Score around six major thematic sections focused on art, story, play, technology, business, and society. Each area includes a display of remarkable video game artifacts. For example, the technology section features a display of video game pioneer Ralph Baer’s desk from his Florida home, Denise Chaudhari’s Xbox controller design drawing, and designer and programmer Mark Lesser’s prototype for Mattel Electronic Football (1977). The society section includes an original protest sign from the November 2010 rally on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments for the Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association case. In this section, guests can also see and play a recreated version of Death Race, the 1976 arcade game that sparked the first public outcry over video game violence.

World Video Game Hall of Fame

At the center of High Score, a circle of towering columns and four enormous overhead screens introduce guests to The Strong’s World Video Game Hall of Fame. Here, we celebrate, and explore the Hall of Fame’s inductees through informative videos, playable games, and a series of artifact cases that highlight the key criteria for hall of fame induction, such as icon-status, longevity, geographical reach, and influence.

Timeline of Video Game History

Guests looking for a chronological view of video game history are in luck. High Score features a massive 90-foot-long multimedia timeline that explores more than five decades of video game history. See iconic artifacts like a recreation of one of the earliest video games, Tennis for Two (1958); the first commercial video game, Computer Space (1971), and an Atari 2600 E.T.: The Extraterrestrial (1982) video game cartridge dumped by Atari and excavated from an Alamogordo, New Mexico landfill in 2013. Along the way, play a version of the 1962 minicomputer game Spacewar! and sit in a period room where guests can compete at the fighting game Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001).

Video Game Luminaries

Because video game histories often focus on the games themselves at the expense of the people who helped build the industry, guests can learn about key video game luminaries through a series of eight displays. These 9-foot-tall graphic panels and accompanying artifact cases, help shine a light on the work of trailblazers such as Jerry Lawson, the Black engineer who led the team that developed the first cartridge-based home video game console, and Carol Kantor, who created the game industry’s first market research program while working at Atari.

Women in Games Initiative

High Score is also the new home for The Strong’s Women in Games Initiative. Although women’s stories are featured throughout High Score, guests interested in focusing on these stories in particular can take the Women in Games Artifact Tour using the Bloomberg Connects app. The tour highlights 12 Women in Games artifacts, including Sierra Online cofounder Roberta Williams’ game design notes from King’s Quest II (1985), and artist and graphic designer Evelyn Seto’s Wonder Woman pinball prototype playfield artwork.

Indie Arcade

The independent games movement has transformed gaming over the last two decades. Initially viewed as a reaction to the growth of big budget games, today independent and experimental games offer genre- and convention-breaking alternatives to mainstream titles. In High Score’s Indie Arcade, guests can play a variety of independent games, including Trombone Champ (2022), a game that lets you play a digital trombone with a computer mouse. Guest can also play an arcade version of Hair Nah, artist Momo Pixel’s 2017 game about “a Black woman who is tired of people touching her hair.”

In addition to all this, guests can also play video game tennis on a giant 1970s-style console television or dodge digital tacklers on an oversized handheld electronic football game. There’s so much to play, see, and discover in High Score, there’s no doubt you’ll walk away with a new, or greater, appreciation for the history of gaming.

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One innovator is primarily responsible for the systematizing of this toyification of time. Grandmaster Flash contributed to the ludic scaffolding by using an item often relegated to grade school. Marking the starting point of the “get down,” or drummer solo, on his records with a white crayon afforded him unprecedented precision. As a result of the marks, he was able switch between the songs on the exact beat intended, fostering a symphony of synergy between the two turntables. In a 2018 demonstration, the venerable DJ explicated the numeric pacing required to utilize the markings. Letting the record spin, he counted to six before stopping the record. He used his fader to allow audio from the adjacent record so that he could demonstrate the skill in real time. Over the music, he informed the audience that it took six counterclockwise spins to get the record in place, and four back and forth motions to check the placement. As he said this, the fader switched to the other record, enabling him to remove the other one without skipping a single beat. This demonstration illustrated the groundbreaking technique that shaped the trajectory of hip hop.

If DJ Kool Herc was responsible for converting the turntable into an instrument to be played, then Grandmaster Flash provided the means to play the scales. Moreover, their joint contributions to the capabilities of the device endowed DJs with the ability to make time a plaything. In recognition of his significance to music and popular culture, toy company Super 7’s ReAction line has released an adult collectible figure in Grandmaster Flash’s image. The tracksuited and Kangol-clad four-inch figure is a welcome addition to The Strong’s growing collection of hip-hop-themed artifacts.

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