World Video Game Hall of Fame | 2024 Inductees

[Moonface]

World Video Game Hall of Fame
Official Website

The Strong National Museum of Play has announced the five games joining the World Video Game Hall of Fame this year: Asteroids, Myst, Resident Evil, Ultima, and SimCity. There were a total of twelve games nominated to be inducted this year, with these seven failing to make the cut: Elite, Guitar Hero, Metroid, Neopets, Tokimeki Memorial, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and You Don’t Know Jack.

For the five games that were inducted, they have influenced different parts of the video game industry, with Asteroids making its mark as Atari’s best-selling coin-operated arcade game; Myst in showcasing its iconic, imaginative world; SimCity by defining the city-building simulation genre; Ultima setting the tone for fantasy role-playing games; and Resident Evil putting survival horror on the map.

With these five games, this is how the current roster of inducted games into the World Video Game Hall of Fame looks:

• 2024
  • Asteroids
    
  • Myst
    
  • Resident Evil
    
  • SimCity
    
  • Ultima
    
• 2023
  • Barbie Fashion Designer
    
  • Computer Space
    
  • The Last of Us
    
  • Wii Sports
    
• 2022
  • Dance Dance Revolution
    
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
    
  • Ms. Pac-Man
    
  • Sid Meier's Civilization
    
• 2021
  • Animal Crossing
    
  • Microsoft Flight Simulator
    
  • StarCraft
    
  • Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
    
• 2020
  • Bejeweled
    
  • Centipede
    
  • King's Quest
    
  • Minecraft
    
• 2019
  • Colossal Cave Adventure
    
  • Microsoft Solitaire
    
  • Mortal Kombat
    
  • Super Mario Kart
    
• 2018
  • Final Fantasy VII
    
  • John Madden Football
    
  • Spacewar!
    
  • Tomb Raider
    
• 2017
  • Donkey Kong
    
  • Street Fighter II
    
  • Halo: Combat Evolved
    
  • Pokémon Red and Green
    
• 2016
  • Grand Theft Auto III
    
  • The Oregon Trail
    
  • The Legend of Zelda
    
  • The Sims
    
  • Sonic the Hedgehog
    
  • Space Invaders
    
• 2015
  • Doom
    
  • Pac-Man
    
  • Pong
    
  • Super Mario Bros.
    
  • Tetris
    
  • World of Warcraft
    

The reasonings for each inductee can be read on their respective pages found at this link: https://www.museumofplay.org/exhibits/wo...ted-games/


What are your thoughts on this years inductees, and are there any games you think might be fitting for a spot in a future year?

[Maniakkid25]

How the flying fuck did it take ten years for Asteroids and Myst to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame for video games?! It got beat by Carmen Sandiego and fucking BARBIE?! And Bejeweled?!

Look, I get you can't induct everyone at once, but I was honestly in disbelief looking at some of these inductees.

...AND WHY ISN'T FINAL FANTASY 1 ON THERE?!

[Eric]

Those are a solid five choices. I'd be a terrible judge on whatever panel makes these decisions. My opinion would only be as good as the last blockbuster game I played with a half-decent story.

[Moonface]

How the flying fuck did it take ten years for Asteroids and Myst to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame for video games?! It got beat by Carmen Sandiego and fucking BARBIE?! And Bejeweled?!

Look, I get you can't induct everyone at once, but I was honestly in disbelief looking at some of these inductees.

...AND WHY ISN'T FINAL FANTASY 1 ON THERE?!

Yeah, it makes me wonder how the nominees are decided each year and what causes some games that feel more notable to get a later induction. The most I've noticed is that usually anything not inducted one year but got a nomination is likely to get in the next year, but if the finalists are always roughly 12 nominees I'd have expected the first few years of this to be utterly stacked just from the amount of choices available. Best I can guess is maybe they try to avoid putting in multiples from the same genre or release year so that the lists always have a variety to them.

As for FF1, it seems it was nominated back in 2016 but hasn't since. I wonder what it did enough of to get a nomination but lacked to end up becoming an inductee or even getting a second nomination?

Also, looking at the nominees per year makes for some interesting observations about the five inductees for this year:

• Myst was nominated in 2017 and 2019.
  
• Resident Evil was also nominated in 2017, as well as in 2022.
  
• Asteroids was nominated in 2018.
  
• Ultima has never received a nomination until this year.
  
• SimCity also didn't receive a nomination until this year.
  

The Wikipedia page for this whole thing has all of the nominees per year for anyone wanting to see every game ever nominated by year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Vide...ll_of_Fame

[Maniakkid25]

Also, I love that Spacewar! and Computer Space are among the inductees, considering Computer Space is well-known (and freely admitted) to be heavily based on Spacewar!

For those that don't know, Spacewar! is a video game written on a then state of the art PDP-1 computer at MIT... in 1962. Yeah, gaming goes back a lot farther than you think. It turns out that identifying the very first video game is heavily dependent on what you define as a video game (the further back you go, the fuzzier the boundaries become), but Spacewar! is the first game that was installed on multiple systems (that we know of), as the game spread like wildfire across campuses.

As for the gameplay, you've probably played it without even knowing it. Two spaceships are in a duel where the only way to move is fire thrusters, and ships maintain momentum (just like real space flight!). BUT, there is a gravitational body in the center of the screen trying to pull you and your bullets into it. Avoid crashing or being shot, and shoot your opponent to score points. Very primitive, but very effective.

[Moonface]

I actually got to learn about Spacewar! and Computer Space during my video game studies class this past semester, and my teacher showed us this neat brief documentary/video on Spacewar!:



It was part of our first class where we got a rundown on the history of video games but focusing on the more obscure stuff rather than what most people would immediately think of like Nintendo and such. It was super neat!