Get Your Game on at the Museum

The Strong National Museum of Play, located in Rochester, New York, has just announced that the videogame-related collection of the National Center for the History of Electronic Games has reached 15,000 pieces, including all gaming consoles created from 1972 to the present and about 100 types of handhelds.

The most interesting thing about the collection is that it's not limited to what most of us associate with videogaming, meaning hardware and software. The people managing the collection say that they also have a lot of packaging of games, especially old ones; there are advertising objects related to videogames, publications, consumer products that were videogame-branded or inspired by games housed alongside more exotic offerings like “literary and popular inspirations of electronic-games imagery, historical records, personal and business papers.” It would be nice for the museum to put up some images detailing the most spectacular pieces in its videogaming collection.

G. Rollie Adams, who is the president and the Chief Executive Officer of the museum, said that “Electronic games are not only changing the way we play; they are having a profound effect on the way we learn and the way we interact with each other. Because Strong National Museum of Play is dedicated to exploring the role of play in American life, we are especially interested in the growing impact that electronic games have on it. The National Center for the History of Electronic Games is the museum's mechanism for collecting games and related artifacts and documentation; and for interpreting them through exhibits, publications, and other means.”

If you want to know more about the National Center for the History of Electronic Games go to the official site of the institution. You can also contact the people at the museum if you wish to donate something related to videogaming.