Reimagine Learning

Nintendo Past & Present - Games for Four Generations

Brian Regan, Lead Game Producer  

The Switch is one of Nintendo‘s most successful and influential systems ever. There’s something unique about carrying a home-console-quality gaming device everywhere you go. Figuring out what to play, though—that’s getting harder every year, as the roster of first-party and indie games grows deeper and deeper.

WIRED recently asked their team to list their favorite Switch games

We thought it was an excellent time to remind everyone about the Original Mobile Games project. The Original Mobile Games collection puts 149 years of playable game history into the hands of game enthusiasts around the world! The game features playable digital reproductions of historic dexterity games and puzzles, complete with original art, photographs and background information for each game straight from the archives of the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. The games all use motion controls and require the player to tilt, turn  and tap their Switch to complete the puzzles.  

The initial launch features, among others:

  • Pigs in Clover: An 1889 game in which players navigate four balls through a maze
  • Aero Race: Players “Pilot” three “jumping beans” from one corner of the game to the other as they recreate the competition to fly from New York to Paris
  • Niagara Puzzle: Players must send a stream of balls into the whirlpool at the bottom of the Falls

Staff from The Strong, Second Avenue  and faculty and students from RIT spent months researching, playing, and photographing the original games in The Strong’s collection to capture this history and the games’ exact mechanics. It was a fun collaboration. 

These games are  available  to download in the App Store and Google Play

Have a great summer everyone,
Brian