Chicago’s Gaming History

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, this year’s One Book One Chicago pick, explores, among many themes and topics, the last 40 or so years of video game history and development, from a standalone Donkey Kong arcade game to massive multiplayer online games. People have been connecting with each other through gaming for far longer than that, however, long before immersive screens entered the scene. Chicagoans of the past were no different.

Several companies based right here in Chicago, like Exhibit Supply Company, H.C. Evans & Company and K.C. Card Co., sold games, game supplies, casino equipment and coin-operated carnival attractions to customers near and far. These companies, and others, helped make Chicago a center for the production of coin-operated amusements. Novelties like the ones featured in the image gallery above can be seen as predecessors to the kinds of games Sadie and Sam, our OBOC protagonists, play and create. Pages from these companies' catalogs show a wide range of products from bingo cages and playing cards to penny arcades and shooting galleries to dice wheels and the intriguing Evans' Coin Operated Psycho Meter.

Sadie and Sam do the hard coding work to build their games, but they also spend as much time developing the rules and the worlds for their games, seeking to evoke emotional responses in their players. In the 1930s, the Chicago Park District took a more literal approach in its game-building classes. Part of an extensive woodworking curriculum, the Park District and its predecessor Park Commissions, taught Chicagoans how to build various game boards and structures for games like Halma, foosball, checkers and more. The images in the second gallery show these design plans and people building and playing the games.

If you’d like to see more from our Trade Catalog Collection or from our Chicago Park District collections, please make an appointment to visit Special Collections.