CSULB Center for the History of Video Games, Technology and Critical Play

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CSULB Center for the History of Video Games, Technology and Critical Play

Promoting the critical study/teaching of video game history and historical representations in games Our project is solely funded by gifts and donations.

The Center is entering its seventh year of development and continues in its mission to act as a collaborative, interdisciplinary space where researchers, students and the university community at CSULB can engage in the critical study and teaching of video games and their impact on culture. Games occupy an essential place in the contemporary media ecology and in our students’ lives, and should be r

egarded as important objects of critical and historical analysis. The Center fosters this study through its pedagogical approaches history (see History 306 and History 307 on our research page) and through a variety of research projects, talks and presentations. Through which we hope to develop productive interactions between scholarly disciplines, students from a variety of majors, gamers, and the general public. To accomplish these objectives, the Center has actively promoted student and faculty work on history and games through a center-funded website. The website continues to function as a network for like-minded scholars, programs, and projects. It is also home to our blog dedicated to publishing articles by the CSULB community and partners related to games study and history gaming, our video series, and a place to connect with our students. In this way, we hope to engage in an interdisciplinary conversation with other games scholars and extend that research to a wider scholarly and public audience. The Center has facilitated the creation of new gaming-related courses, and we currently in talks to organize academic conference that invites students and scholars to share their work on history and video game topics. For the past five years we’ve invited several speakers to campus, and provide a vocational space for critical gaming. Core to the Center’s mission is the creation of a “playable” archive of gaming technology and software. The archive currently houses both vintage video game systems and software donated to the Center by the public or bought through the Center’s funds, as well as machines running contemporary emulation software for older coin-operated video games and console systems. A playable experience such as this offers researchers and students the opportunity to write about games from a player’s perspective. Experiencing the source material helps create more accurate histories of these games and their meaning within a specific cultural context. Having a playable archive of games also means exposing researchers and students to the evolution of game mechanics in video games. Offering them a glimpse at how mechanics can influence narrative (the history told in these games) and how narrative can influence the creation of new gaming mechanics. The critical play center offers an opportunity to create, stream or post critical “let’s play” videos, bringing a critical analysis of video games to a broad audience. Along with the playable archive, the Center will also house an Oral History Archive of Gaming Experiences. In conjunction with our History 402 Oral History Methods and History 305 Digital History Methods, students will collect and create a public digital archive of the oral histories and experiences of gamers from the late 1970s forward. These oral histories will be used by researchers interested in gaming as a cultural phenomenon as well a shed light on the experience of players based on their gender, race, or ethnicity. A collection of stories such as these will help fill in the gaps missing in today’s historical research into video games and gaming culture. The Center is made possible by a generous gift from Erik Maier, and sponsored by the History Department at California State University, Long Beach. To donate to the archive or support the Center's work please contact either Sean Smith or Jeff Lawler. You can visit the archive at California State University, Long Beach. We are located in FO2-209.

11/04/2026

Our archive is more popular with the “dads” according to our students.

15/07/2024

Recent donations to the collection and additions to our library. We are happy to take donations regardless of their state. These consoles, controllers and cables had sat in a storage unit or garage for some time but cleaned well and have been ingested into the collection and will be made available to our students and other researchers in the fall. If you’d like to help us build our archive and support our students research into gaming’s past, please consider donating to our Archive. We’ll happily take any books, vintage games, software, consoles, or any other video game ephemera cluttering your offices, garages, or basements. You can contact us at our website criticalplay.org/contact.

22/06/2024

Pinball time!

11/06/2024

We haven’t posted in a while but we have been busy. Today, we received these new additions to our archive. Two Packard Bell PB 500 computers with matching crt monitors and ps2 keyboard. These computers were originally released in around 1988 are compact IBM PC XT clones running Intel 8088 CPUs with a clock speed of 4.77 mhz but they have a turbo mode capable of runnin twice that speed 9.54 mhz. The computers feature 20mb hard drives and 5.25” floppy drives and run DOS 3.3 well. We need to clean these up and get them into working order. We hope that these will serve as early DOS Gaming pcs for student researchers. Most of our collection is self funded or like these machines collected through donations from our community and our followers. We appreciate everyone who has donated to the archive and are reaching out to our followers to let them know that we continue to seek donations and we’d be happy to accept any books, vintage games, software, consoles, or any other video game ephemera cluttering your offices, garages, or basements. If you have the means and desire to help please contact us at our website criticalplay.org.

13/01/2024

While we wait for the chips to arrive I cleaned and rebuilt the C64’s keyboard. Like the rest of the machine the keyboard was filthy, many of the springs under the key caps were corroded but thankfully the plungers and contacts were in really good shape and the keyboard cleaned up well. Looking forward to seeing if it worked.

12/01/2024

As suspected the corrosion on the C64 motherboard has taken its toll. The worst was the CIA chip (a MOS 6526) where corrosion ate three legs and weakened several others. Fortunately these ICs are still available, though they are becoming a bit costly. The other more unfortunate loss was the main microprocessor (MOS 6510). Corrosion ate away one of its address line pins and weakened two other to the point they’re not connecting to the socket (or showing continuity to the board). Finding a replacement for this chip, especially with the early date code of the original, is proving tricky and more expensive. The cost of the replacement chips is nearly the cost of the entire machine. This is the can of worms one opens when trying to maintain retro computers. The other photos show how dirty the machine was bug parts, mud, corrosion and more! The saga continues and I hope we’ll be able to restore this machine.

21/09/2023

“Because within every football fan beats the heart of a frustrated quarterback.” Computamatic Football by Computamatic Games. Recently donated to the archive Computamatic football was distributed but Electronic Data Controls Corp. in 1970 - 72. An electronic strategy The board is finished in a brilliant 1970s woodgrain with brass computer accents and push button actuators that allow players to call plays and compete with one another. Our example is in near perfect condition. We haven’t played it yet nor tested to see if it works but as an object it is a great piece. We’ll give it a once over, see if it works and report later. The ad comes from “Sports Illustrated” Nov. 1971.
 If you’d like to help us build our archive and support our students research into gaming’s past, please consider donating to our Archive. We’ll happily take any books, vintage games, software, consoles, or any other video game ephemera in any condition, cluttering your offices, garages, or basements. You can contact us at our website criticalplay.org/contact.

18/09/2023

While not quite as exciting as an arcade cabinet these new additions to our collection are still important. I’m fascinated by early edutainment software like the “Scholastic Microzine: Computer Learning Library on a Disk” software packages that we’ve just received. Microzines were sold through Scholastic Book Fairs and through their “Book Club Forms” that those of us of a certain age remember fondly. Scholastic sold these software compilation “magazines” from 1983 until the early 1990s and each contained three or four disks and a booklet that provided context for parents and teachers. The disks contained games and programming software, in this case for the Apple ][e (later other platforms would be supported as well) that promised to provide “Learning Opportunities in Reading for detail and comprehension, map skills, math skills, creative writing , art and design, history, deductive reasoning, and computer literacy.” It’s a wonder we needed teachers at all, the computer promised to do it all! In all seriousness these software packages suggest a time where the utopian hopes of technology still lived. Computers were going to make the world more connected and more democratic.   The team that worked on “Microzine” included Dan Klassen had previously worked with MECC (Minnesota Technology Design Associates) the publishers of the original “Oregon Trail” and other edutainment software products. He was also instrumental in getting Apple II computers into schools in Minnesota in the late 1970s. The editions we received include issue 23 that features the text based adventure Escape from “ANTcatraz,” issue 24 with “Captains of the China Trade,” and a one-off game called “Agent USA.”

If you’d like to help us build our archive and support our students research into gaming’s past, please consider donating to our Archive. You can contact us at our website criticalplay.org/contact.

08/09/2023

Today’s adventure. picking up an arcade cabinet from Disney Anaheim. More about the cabinet later…

17/08/2023

See our stories for a video tour of the archive. We spent some time today organizing and shelving our collection. Our playable archive has been made possible by kind donations from the community and have truly benefited our students. Part of what we do in the archive is the restoration and preservation of these important historical objects.

If you have questions about our program, the archive, or our history and video games courses please feel free to contact us.

If you’d would like to help us build our archive and support our students research into both gaming’s past and how the past is represented in games, please consider donating to our Playable Archive. We’ll happily take any books, vintage games, software, consoles, or any other video game ephemera in any condition, cluttering your offices, garages, or basements. You can contact us at our website criticalplay.org/contact.

28/07/2023

In the middle to late 1970s several companies reimagined the hand held calculator as gaming machines. Mattel, Coleco and Texas Instruments led the way creating and marketing a very important early part of the gaming industry. We’re happy to add these to our collection of 70s LED based handheld. Coleco’s “Electronic Quarterback” manufactured in 1978 in an attempt to compete with Mattel’s Electronic Football, offered two levels of difficulty and the ability to switch between running and pass plays and the ability to run both forward and backwards. Features the original Mattel football lacked. They would release “Football II” later in the year to compete with Coleco. Also in the donation is Texas Instruments “Little Professor” a calculator and educational gaming handheld. Notable as one of the first educational electronic handheld gaming devices (and in the Smithsonian’s American History Collection), Little professor sold more than a million units in its first year (1976 -1977) and went on to a staple of kids toy boxes throughout the 80s and remains an important point of nostalgia for many. A 1990s redesign saw the addition of solar power and a new version (still selling today) was released in the 2000s. Both of these will be cleaned and cared for before adding them to our display collection.

If you have questions about our program, the archive, or our history and video games courses please feel free to contact us.

If you’d would like to help us build our archive and support our students research into both gaming’s past and how the past is represented in games, please consider donating to our Playable Archive. We’ll happily take any books, vintage games, software, consoles, or any other video game ephemera in any condition, cluttering your offices, garages, or basements. You can contact us at our website criticalplay.org/contact.

21/07/2023

Welcome to The Center for the History of Video Games, Technology and Critical Play. We are an interdisciplinary research center and playable archive. The Center is entering its seventh year of development and continues in its mission as space where researchers, students the university community at CSULB, and the public can engage in the critical study and teaching of video games and their impact on culture. It's our belief that games occupy an essential place in the contemporary popular cultural landscape and in our students’ lives, and should be regarded as important objects of critical and historical analysis. Our Center is dedicated to this scholarship and fosters the study of video games, their history and the ways in which they represent history and their preservation in a variety of ways. We hope to develop productive interactions between games scholars across disciplines, students from a variety of majors, gamers, and the general public and look forward to using this space to promote the activities of the center and to engage with those interested in the history of games and gaming.

Address

History Department 1250 Bellflower Blvd.

90840

Website

http://criticalplay.org/

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