ROCHESTER, NY – The Strong National Museum of Play was closed to the public for the past week as it completes a major expansion project. The Strong staff gave News10NBC a sneak peek at the upcoming new exhibits.
The star of the show is a 90,000-square-foot brand new building that will house three new video game-themed exhibitions.
The Strong National Museum of Play completes a major expansion project. (News10NBC)
“Video games have become a dominant form of gaming, and as the national gaming museum, we felt the need to preserve, educate and celebrate them,” said CEO and President Steve Dubnik.
A new exhibit called Level Up features a life-size video game in which players can create an avatar of themselves as the main character. The second book, High Score, details the history of video games and even includes a recreation of the first video game ever made. The last is a gallery highlighting art in video games.
The building also houses the new entrance as well as a gift shop three times the size of the old one. Outside at the old entrance is the Hasbro Playground, which features 17,000 square feet of larger-than-life games for guests to play with outdoors.
A 20-foot fire- and water-breathing dragon from Dungeons & Dragons is among the newest exhibits at the Strong National Museum of Play.
Dubnik’s favorite novelty is in this park: a 20-foot tall fire- and water-breathing dragon from the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop role-playing game. Kids (and adults) can press a bright red D-20 to activate the five-headed dragon.
But for Dubnik, it’s not just about the new. It’s also about what’s in stock.
“We have a collection of more than 500,000 things, only a small part of which is ever exhibited,” he said. “So expanding and creating new exhibitions gives us an opportunity to increase the visibility of what we have.”
He says the interior of the old museum will also get a facelift. Since The Strong is open almost every day of the year, they take the opportunity to give almost everything in the museum a thorough cleaning.
Outside there are also two new common areas that will be open to the public.
“The museum expansion is really central to the game’s neighborhood,” Dubnik said. “And within that there are places to live, places to work, places to eat, places to party and places to stay in the hotel that was built.”
Placards will hang in the plazas reading “Play Happened Here,” which will talk about the game’s history, which stretches back to the indigenous communities of western New York.
As a leap into the future, the expansion will also bring to life an augmented reality butterfly experience where people can see virtual butterflies flying around them.
“And it’s just a lot of wonders, a lot of things that nobody out here has seen,” Dubnik said.
When asked how high-tech the museum was, he laughed.
“It has to be,” he said. “Gaming has become high tech, hasn’t it? And that’s why we have to be there with how people play.”
The Strong Museum of Play will reopen to the public on June 30th at 1pm.