6 games make World Video Game Hall of Fame: Is your favorite on the list?.
THE first inductees into the new World Video Game Hall of Fame include “Pong,” the game that introduced millions to electronic play, “Doom,” which triggered a debate over the role of games and violence in society, and “Super Mario Bros.,” whose mustachioed hero has migrated to everything from fruit snacks to sneakers. The industry granddaddy launched in 1972, and even though game play was simple — two paddles batted a ball back and forth — it still entranced millions of players and helped make Atari the top name in video games. Pong, one of the first games ever to go global in popularity, is one of the inductees, alongside Doom and current generation role-playing game World of Warcraft. An international selection advisory committee made recommendations based on a pool of nominations submitted by the public, and the finalists were ultimately determined by an internal selection committee. The six who have made it in this year stretch across decades, platforms and playing styles, but all of them are likely to give you a healthy dose of nostalgia.
The oldest inductee is Pong, first released in 1972, followed by Pac-Man in 1980. (To play both at once, try out the free online game Pacapong.) Both arcade titles, the games would also see releases, and rereleases, on home consoles, though that market dramatically picked up with the release of the NES and the original Super Mario Bros. in 1985. Its big break came in 1989, when Nintendo packaged it with the debut of the Game Boy handheld system. “Tetris” went on to sell hundreds of millions of copies on various platforms.
Tetris, released in 1984, has seen any number of different releases and variations made, but the original game is still as fun to play as it was when it first released. It involves two paddles and a ball, and was the first game to “grab wide-scale public attention.” Tetris, which stemmed from the Soviet Union in 1984, spread to other Eastern European countries and conquered North America and Europe in 1987. They haven’t gotten the sort of museum level recognition that they deserve,” Grant says in an interview with the Monitor. “ I think we don’t have a lot of fluency, both in the academic and the broader cultural sense, in the merit of video games.” Some efforts have been made in recent years to celebrate the cultural significance of gaming, such as an exhibition at the Smithsonian entitled “The Art of Video Games.” Grant was also involved in the creation of Game Canon, a list of games for under consideration for preservation in the Library of Congress, similar to the National Film Registry. DOOM, which was introduced in 1993, introduced the concept of a game engine and was a boost to multiplayer interaction and the first-person shooter genre. Game Canon was started in 2007 by a fellow advisory committee member, Henry Lowood, who is Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections and Film & Media Collections in the Stanford University Libraries.
The blood-drenched game was the focus of criticism in the years after its release, and some blamed it for helping to inspire the Columbine shooting after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were discovered to have been fans. The game, which managed to expand the video game market beyond space shooters and pong derivatives, featured the iconic yellow Pacman’s journey as he attempts to collect all the pellets in the maze while avoiding four ghosts. The game we’ve all spent entire afternoons in arcades with, Pac-Man, much like Mario, is about as recognisable as they come in terms of virtual characters. The first in the Super Mario series, Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers chronicles the exploits of Mario’s journey through the Mushroom Kingdom to rescue Princess Peach from villain Bowser and features a two-player mode where players can play as Mario’s brother Luigi.
Obviously if they put Doom in there, morality is not playing a role in their selection process.” Thompson filed a lawsuit on behalf of the parents of three children killed in the Heath High School shooting in 1997 claiming that Doom, among other violent video games, was responsible for the tragedy. The 1993 id Software science-fiction first-person shooter chronicles the journey of an unnamed space marine as he fights for survival against hordes of hellish demons. The highest grossing game of all time, Blizzard Entertainment’s multiplayer online role-playing game allows gamers to quest, interact and explore the world of Azeroth. Other games nominated included: The Sims, Angry Birds, The Legend of Zelda, Minecraft, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Oregon Trail, Electronic Art’s soccer series FIFA, Pokemon and Space Invaders.
