From classic board games to innovative sports and the very first video game, Long Island has been the birthplace of several popular and enduring games. In this article, we'll explore five games that originated on Long Island.
The First Video Game - Before Atari or Nintendo, there was “Tennis for Two,” which may have been the first video game ever created, Brookhaven National Lab scientists built the pioneering system to entertain visitors to the Lab on October 18, 1958. The game’s creator, William Higinbotham, was a nuclear physicist who lobbied for nuclear nonproliferation as the first chair of the Federation of American Scientists. Higinbotham realized how static and non-interactive most science exhibits were at that time. As head of Brookhaven Lab’s Instrumentation Division, he would change that. While reflecting on his creation, Higinbotham wrote, “it might liven up the place to have a game that people could play, and which would convey the message that our scientific endeavors have relevance for society." Hundreds of visitors lined up for a chance to play the electronic tennis game.
Cranium - According to the obituary of Richard Tait, co-Inventor of the board game Cranium, in 1997, Tait and his wife were vacationing with another couple in the Hamptons when they could not find a board game to play. “Then Mr. Tait had a thought: What if there was a game that let everyone play to their strengths?” the paper reported. “His friend Dan Katz, who won the Scrabble game that day, remembers Mr. Tait telling the room: ‘There has to be a way for everyone to feel comfortable.’”
Trangleball - Yeah, you might never have heard of this game. Invented by Mark Miller in 1953 on Fire Island it’s a cross between handball, beach volleyball, and tennis.
Scrabble - OK we’re fudging a little bit here. Scrabble was invented in Queens but for many years Scrabble was exclusively manufactured on Long Island by Selchow & Righter. Scrabble was manufactured by Selchow & Righter in Bayshore until 1973 when the company moved operations to a space near MacArthur Airport in Holbrook. The company retained its Bay Shore plant as a warehouse. Scrabble accounted for up to 40% of the company’s business at the time. In 1986, Selchow & Righter was sold to Coleco Industries along with Scrabble. Coleco Industries went bankrupt three years later and in 1989 it was sold to Hasbro.
Rampshot - A backyard game invented by two Long Island buddies, Joshua Bonventre and Kevin Texeira. The product guide describes it as “an exciting new outdoor game that is played with 4 players. Teammates stand on opposite sides and work together to score points by either tossing the ball or catching the ball.”