First Games Inducted Into the World Video Game Hall of Fame 277
An anonymous reader writes: From 15 finalists, the first inductees to the World Video Game Hall of Fame were picked for 2015. Only one of the titles added to the list of legends was launched in the last 15 years. The six games inducted this year are: Pong, Pac-Man, Tetris, Super Mario Bros, Doom, and World of Warcraft. The World Video Game Hall of Fame says it recognizes games across all platforms, and all have the possibility of being included.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree - both are worth to consider. I played Star Trek on a Teletype ASR-33 [bytecollector.com] once. Should have had ear plugs...
Re:WoW? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
My best guess is that they really wanted to include a "massively multiplayer" game in some fashion and what better representative of MMOs is there than WoW?
But I agree, they would have been far better served just leaving MMOs out entirely than including WoW in the first iteration. WoW probably deserves to be in a "gaming hall of fame" - eventually.
There's a huge catalog of games and genres that are just flat-out more deserving of recognition than MMOs in general and WoW in particular. WoW can wait.
Re:WoW? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
All the games on the list were played by tens (if not hundreds) of millions of people...and even if you ask someone who's never played a video game in their life, they'll probably know of those six. They've also greatly influenced a huge number of other games, and more or less defined the mechanics in their particular genre.
Whether you 'like' them or think of them as 'classics' or not is a far more subjective criteria.
(Also, the ratio of good to bad music hasn't changed since you were young. It just meant m
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not a WOW fan, but I doubt there is anyone in the world who has heard of any other MMO game, yet not heard of World of Warcraft.
Re: (Score:3)
Where's XCOM? (Score:2)
Personally I think XCOM should have been picked over WoW. It's super iconic, consistently ranks as one of the best videogames ever made, and I would argue has had more influence on video game development than WoW.
Re: (Score:2)
More influence? Nah.
X-COM sold less than a million, ever. WoW peaked at 12 million subscribers, and that's not every player ever- just the most playing at once.
WoW belongs on this list. The game that only us nerds have played and literally no one else? No. It does not. WoW is influential and well known everywhere, X-COM is absolutely not.
Re: (Score:2)
Picking wow as opposed to picking lineage (or ultima online) is akin to picking super mario world as opposed to super mario bros.
Re:WoW? (Score:5, Insightful)
Name the single most iconic MMO of all time. WoW. "They have to be iconic, have longevity, have reached across international boundaries and also have exerted influence on the design and development of other games, on other forms of entertainment or on popular culture and society." Yes it strongly fits in all of those categories. You can't say that for any other MMO.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Ultima Online.
Re: (Score:2)
Ultima Online never escaped the nerd kingdom.
WOW was/is played by just about every kind of person you can imagine at some point.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
EVERYBODY played Pac-Man.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:WoW? (Score:5, Informative)
That's not how I remember it. There were arcades everywhere and video games in every bar back in the 80's and everybody (not just nerds) dropped quarters in them. Pac man and even more so ms pac man, pole position, galaga, sinistar, tempest, defender, asteroids and a pile of other games being played non-stop by all sorts of people, not just so called nerds.
Re: (Score:3)
Frogger.
Re: (Score:2)
It's okay to be wrong, just not to stay wrong. You can stop trying now.
Re: (Score:3)
Most people back then didn't go to arcades and had never even heard of Pac-Man.
Pac-Man was ubiquitous because the video game craze extended well beyond the arcade. You could find them at movie theaters, liquor stores, pizza parlors, bowling alleys, kiosk space in the mall, even just past the checkout lanes at the grocery store. I don't know anyone who hadn't heard of Pac-Man by 1981.
Re: (Score:2)
Gee, then I guess my whole high school class was comprised of arcade-going "nerds." The same as every other town around here.
Arcades were the place to hang out.
Re:WoW? (Score:4, Informative)
Fact: I'm older than you are and I was around when Pac-Man was brand new. Nobody but arcade-going nerds played Pac-Man or any video games, really.
That you are older than the OP might even be a fact, but another fact is that a song about a video game [wikipedia.org] that, according to you, "nobody played" peaked at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States in March 1982.
RT.
Re: (Score:3)
Are you going for a "Reverse No True Scotsman"? Only nerds play pac-man, so anyone who played pac-man had to be a nerd. That is just flat out wrong. Back in the early 80's games like Pac-man and Frogger and Centipede were everywhere, every bar, every bowling alley, every pizza joint, every 7-11 had a few arcade games. All sorts of people played them, some were nerds, but a whole lot of them were not.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fuck that logic.
UO was some niche whatever that no one played. WoW still has megasubs. It's its own genre. UO was a rounding error, a tech demo.
Re:WoW? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't have existed if it weren't for adventure games either. At least one of them should have been on the list. Either Zork or Colossal Cave. MMOs are too new, with huge fanbases that go after each others' throats like it was politics. Adventure games was a full genre that includes later RPGs and MMOs and MUDs, and whatnot.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah!! Remember when South Park had an entire episode done in the style of Ultima Online?
Re:WoW? (Score:4, Insightful)
What about EverQuest? It predates WoW and had quite a following. Both games suck IMHO but people liked them. I would also argue that Everquest influenced WoW's development.
WoW is too modern to be a "Hall of Fame" contender and many games like it have existed over the years.
Personally I think BattleZone, Tempest or the Star Wars Arcade Game should have been on the list. Vector games never get any love in popularity contests targeted at today's 12 year olds though.
Re:WoW? (Score:5, Insightful)
What about EverQuest? It predates WoW and had quite a following.
EverQuest and Ultima Online have the same problem. Outside of gamers, only in one or two countries do people other than gamers know anything about them. But WoW is culturally pervasive across much of the world. The same logic must have placed Doom over Wolf3D.
Personally I think BattleZone, Tempest or the Star Wars Arcade Game should have been on the list. Vector games never get any love in popularity contests targeted at today's 12 year olds though.
The problem with any of those games is that they don't have cultural influence. Only gamers know about them. (The SW arcade game is still one of my favorites of all time, if I could own just one cabinet...) Space Invaders, on the other hand... that's got some influence, I think it ought to have made the list.
Re:WoW? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
It's still on its ten year run. It went down to like 6 megasubs from 10 and everyone is like "ok, that's it, it's dead". But... other games don't even have a tenth of what WoW does now and aren't considered failures. And nothing else is really even close.
Re: (Score:2)
That's the cat girl one right, where everyone is a cat girl?
Re: (Score:3)
EQ a rounding error.
Super Mario Brothers- sold 40 million copies.
Ultima online- peak subscribers 250,000.
Everquest- peaked at less than half a million subs.
WoW- peaked at TWELVE MEGASUBS. That's ludicrous. It was at 10 megasubs earlier this year.
Everquest is some niche game that eventually started copying WoW like the rest.
Ultima Online was an even more niche game that essentially no one played.
WoW got where it was on its own. A zillion games "copied EQ". Now, if you make a game like this, you are copy
Re: (Score:3)
Said the Blizzard marketing shill.
Re: (Score:3)
UO or EverQuest should have made it before WoW.......simply put, WoW was just the better implementation of an existing game. The others that made the list were all ground-breaking (I probably would have gone Wolfenstein over Doom, but Doom really did define the genre). I agree WoW should be in the HoF, but there were plenty of more worthy candidates that should have gone in BEFORE WoW.
Re: (Score:3)
I can't believe they didn't include Goldeneye on those criteria. The game made more money than the movie, and brought the multi-player deathmatch model to the masses at a time when most people either didn't have an internet connection or were on dial-up.
Re:WoW? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe they didn't include Goldeneye on those criteria. The game made more money than the movie, and brought the multi-player deathmatch model to the masses
No, stop right there. The masses didn't have an N64, so the masses couldn't even play Goldeneye. It was the least popular platform of the generation. That the game made so much money on it is a testament to its popularity, but it's another thing that nobody but gamers knows about. If you say Goldeneye, they will say "movie".
Goldeneye was also an awful game compared to FPSes on the PC at the time. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Goldeneye was the defining moment in the "Console vs. PC Master Race" war, although we didn't call it that. That's the precise moment at which the split occurred. Console gamers were all excited by their new toy, and PC gamers were looking at them like "are you new?"
Re: (Score:2)
Everquest.
Re: (Score:3)
If I wanted to put forward a game that pushed the limits of home gaming (at the time) it would have to be Commander Keen, followed quickly by Wolfenstein
Re: (Score:2)
How did Commander Keen advance gaming beyond NES games like Metroid or The Goonies, especially given how much more of a limited platform they had to run on? Or hell, Faxanadu?
Re: (Score:3)
It brought it to common desktop computers
Re: (Score:2)
It brought it to common desktop computers
Barely. Side-scrollers were not a significant genre on desktop computers. They lacked scrolling hardware and proper controllers for it. At best Keen showed just how important Super Mario Brothers was to the gaming world.
Re: (Score:3)
It brought it to common desktop computers
I disagree. The most famous side-scroller of the era was Karateka, which should need no link. Platform gaming in now-familiar form was brought to common desktop computers by Conan: Hall of Volta [wikipedia.org] , split-screen multiplayer with objectives and a fairly sizable environment came with Spy vs. Spy [wikipedia.org] , complex environments and objectives with Castle Wolfenstein [wikipedia.org] . Oh wait, I just remembered some more games I've played on personal computers which have similar complexity and are older... Montezuma's Revenge [wikipedia.org], for ex
Re: (Score:2)
If I wanted to put forward a game that pushed the limits of home gaming (at the time) it would have to be Commander Keen...
... You can't be serious. Commander Keen was what you played because all you had was a 286 and your dad wouldn't get you an NES. Now I am kidding to a degree, but Commander Keen was trying to be an NES game on a machine that lacked the hardware to do what an NES could do. It did not push the limits of gaming, at best it slightly expanded the genres available to the PC. Games like Keen were a dime-a-dozen on most of the 8-bit consoles.
... followed quickly by Wolfenstein
I could be persuaded to agree with this. I mean, heck, even SNES had
Re: (Score:2)
The sheer magnitude of the number of players and money that WoW has brought to the gaming world probably eclipses any other game ever made.
Tetris is orders of magnitude bigger than WoW.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As much as I loved those games, really, Sonic deserves to be in place of WoW.
If Sonic the Hedgehog belongs on the list, then Super Mario Bros. belongs on it twice. But maybe Sonic can get in later. Putting him in at the same time as Mario would have been douchey. Mario is ten times the star that Sonic will ever be.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd put Space Invaders before either. It had far more impact on both the industry and game design.
Re: (Score:2)
Deus Ex [bfram.es]
what? when did this happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
when did a hall of fame for games get created that wasn't just some guy's opinion?
Where is this?
Re: (Score:2)
when did a hall of fame for games get created that wasn't just some guy's opinion?
This year, 2015.
Where is this?
Rochester, New York
Re: (Score:2)
... I know but... like... I've seen nothing about this until now and who the fuck are these people... and etc etc?
I mean, should I take this more seriously than any jackass saying "I like this"... is this supposed to be like the academy awards or golden globes or something?
The very idea of this thing is baffling to me because I don't think the community or industry is organized enough to have such a thing.
I don't really have a problem with their selections, I just think the way in which they go through this
Re: (Score:3)
I mean, should I take this more seriously than any jackass saying "I like this"...
No, probably not.
is this supposed to be like the academy awards or golden globes or something?
I am sure that the people doing it see it that way.
I don't think the community or industry is organized enough to have such a thing.
That means that anyone can start such a thing, and no one is organized enough to stop them.
I just think the way in which they go through this needs to be declared and obvious.
Why? If you don't like the way they do it, then start your own hall of fame. They don't owe you anything.
Re:what? when did this happen? (Score:5, Informative)
... I know but... like... I've seen nothing about this until now and who the fuck are these people... and etc etc?
I mean, should I take this more seriously than any jackass saying "I like this"... is this supposed to be like the academy awards or golden globes or something?
The very idea of this thing is baffling to me because I don't think the community or industry is organized enough to have such a thing.
I don't really have a problem with their selections, I just think the way in which they go through this needs to be declared and obvious.
It's at the Strong Museum of Play which is the recognized Toy Hall of Fame by the International Toy Industry and the Strong Museuem is also home to the International History of Electronic Games. The Strong also has over 65,000 video game artifacts in its collection which is the largest collection in the world. It's a world-class museum. So yes it is worthy of creating this Hall. You should check it out if you ever have a chance. It's arcade game collection is also amazing.
...and the award for Lifetime Achievement goes to: (Score:5, Funny)
aw, it's just the World (Score:2)
History... (Score:3)
Space Invaders, Defender and Tempest see the obvious omissions to me...
Who's With Me (Score:2)
Anyone play Grave Robbers on C-64 datasette, that's the best game ever.
Seriously? (Score:2)
No Half-Life or CS? or Unreal for that matter.
Re: (Score:3)
Half-Life changed video games forever. It's an order of magnitude more important than WoW.
Re: (Score:2)
Half-Life changed video games forever. It's an order of magnitude more important than WoW.
If you ask a random person on the street who Mario is, you're likely to find out he's a plumber from a Nintendo game, or you'll have a good shot at it. If you ask a random person on the street who Gordon Freeman is, they'll probably say "wasn't he involved in the civil rights movement?" Consequently, Pablo Picasso was never... no, wait. You know how this paragraph is supposed to end. That just popped into my head for some reason.
Re: (Score:3)
Not even close. Half-Life invented the NPC that actually paid attention. It was a sea change in how people viewed their own character vis-a-vis the characters that populate the world.
Re: (Score:2)
Their eyes stayed on you as you moved about. This small innovation has done more to change the way we relate to NPCs than almost anything else.
All NPCs in all games are "entirely scripted" by the way.
Some of the others should be in already. (Score:2)
They have to be iconic, have longevity, have reached across international boundaries and also have exerted influence on the design and development of other games, on other forms of entertainment or on popular culture and society.
[...]
Of the 15 finalists that were announced in late April, nine did not have what it took to be inducted at this time. Those titles included: The Legend of Zelda, Minecraft, The Oregon Trail, Angry Birds, FIFA, Pokemon, The Sims, Sonic the Hedgehog and space Invaders.
I question whether any sports game will ever truly belong in the video game hall of game; if anything it would probably be Golden Tee, which probably has done more to bring video gaming to old white farts than any other title. But I think it's clear that Zelda, Minecraft, Pokemon, The Sims, and Space Invaders all belong in the hall of fame by this criteria.
Back on the subject of sports games, since I feel I have to defend my statement; the games don't influence society, the sport does, and the games are one
Re: (Score:2)
Probably better than a 1 in 10 chance that any random woman you meet on the street knows what a plumbob is.
Uh oh, I thought I knew what a plumbob was until you said that. Then I had to go look it up. So yes, I still know what a plumbob is, but indeed what most people know as a plumbob does not match my definition. I've even PLAYED the Sims, probably have 40 or 50 hours in from about 10 years back, and didn't know that thing over their head was called a plumbob.
Re: (Score:2)
I know what both a plumb bob and a plumbob are, sadly. And I think I may actually have every Sims game, and I have lots of expansions... but I've only spent a total of a couple hours on all the titles combined, they're just readily available at yard sales, flea markets, and the like for a buck or less. Which in itself ought to say something...
Missing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Zork. It just has to be there. It's like having a basketball hall of fame, and not having Michael Jordan in it.
Miner2049er. Again iconic.
Myst, I'm not a big fan, but in it's time it was iconic.
Re: (Score:2)
Zork. It just has to be there. It's like having a basketball hall of fame, and not having Michael Jordan in it.
On one hand, I want to agree with you. On the other hand, only nerds know what Zork is. It's never made the leap out to the real world.
Myst, I'm not a big fan, but in it's time it was iconic.
Probably it will weasel its way in there someday, but that genre has pretty much died for a reason, and that reason is that it's boring. Of course, now we have a rash of walking simulators, so I could be wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand, only nerds know what Zork is. It's never made the leap out to the real world.
You've made essentially this same comment about other games in this thread, and I'm not sure it is a good metric to go by.
It would be like judging all of music by what is popular, since that is the only thing to have a real cultural impact (at least monetarily).
I'd rather if it were video game aficionado's pointing the way to the general public as to why these games are important, and perhaps how they shortchanged themselves by only following what is popular.
And a vote for Sini-Star.
Re: (Score:2)
You've made essentially this same comment about other games in this thread, and I'm not sure it is a good metric to go by.
Well, RTFA and complain to the owners of the HoF, it's their metric. It's not mine. Although, the more time I've spent with this article, the more I agree that it's a worthy criteria. It eliminates a lot of similar games which otherwise would all be clamoring for inclusion.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm a gamer and I've never heard of them. Sorry.
If you think you're a gamer but you've never heard of Zork, you've got another think coming. It's part of our collective subconscious. Those other titles are pretty fringey though, especially Miner. A lot of people forget to look for international appeal. If you're in the UK you might be tempted to call out titles which appeared on your quaint local platforms but nobody else in the world cares. But back in the early, early days of PC gaming, everybody played "Arcade Beach Volleyball". It was at the cutting
Interesting list of game choices (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm. That list seems to make sense, though WoW is perhaps the outsider.
But, what about Asteroids, Space Invaders, even Street Fighter? Civilization or Sim City? No love (yet) for strategy games at all, which should probably start with either those or Dune II, or perhaps something from the Command & Conquer series (either C&C1 or Red Alert 1). Although, maybe I'm a bit too much of a geek - quite likely, Age of Empires would beat some of those to the list.
However, these, and most of the other suggestions being made, are more about iconic or revolutionary (started a genre) games, as opposed to simply famous. And, they put the requirement of it influencing outside culture (so recognisable by more than gamers). The Sims, Minecraft, Sonic, and yes, as much as we geeks don't want to admit it, Angry Birds (as derivative as that is - i.e. there's no Scorched Earth, a much earlier artillery game) are all legitimate nominations I think. Perhaps they might have had less ire if they kept to solely classic games for the first round, although I do remember hearing something about an unofficial WoW theme park in China... Interesting that WoW gets in before Warcraft though.
I can see how difficult it would be to be objective on something like this, so I applaud their attempting it, even if I don't entirely agree with the choices. Maybe they included WoW to try and have something relevant to a modern audience? (Although, arguably Minecraft is more recognisable today, if perhaps still a little new. I expect it will get there soon enough though).
Re: (Score:2)
Street Fighter II (NOT the original Street Fighter, which no one played) should be on that list. Asteroids, I just don't think so. Space Invaders, probably.
Starcraft would be on the list way before Dune II or C&C. Or Warcraft II.
Re: (Score:2)
Minecraft will probably hit that list at some point, but WoW is just as "recognizable" today (it had 10 megasubs a few months ago) as it was at its peak of 12. It's not some has-been, though at some point it will be. Minecraft should definitely show up at some point though. It's ludic popular.
Dungeon Master (Score:2)
As the title says: Dungeon Master.
No Street Fighter 2? (Score:2)
It should have been wolfenstein not Doom (Score:2)
Doom may have been more popular but it didn't really develop the genre. It was an incremental improvement hardly revolutionary.
Belated thought: another nominee (Score:2)
Here's my forgotten nominee: Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer [wikipedia.org]. Another game that brought interest in computers to a whole range of old white men who would otherwise have stuck with fly-tying.
Cynicism (Score:2)
Is it bad that my first thought was wondering which pack of SJWs was behind this excuse to narrate the history of our "thing" and hand out trophies to their friends?
Decent selections... (Score:3)
WoW was not the first, but it did something in the modern era that nothing else really did.
It pushed it's presence into a household name. It's marketing was huge. People who didn't know the game, knew of the addiction.
DOOM wasn't the first. I mean Wolfenstein 3D was really more original. But DOOM had a far broader acceptance and influence long term.
***
I could see some others ...
For this era, I think Angry Birds might be a good candidate. Needs a few more years to see. But it went far beyond video game and became a fad.
TETRIS...
Halo Series
I can't contest any of those picks. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
+1 Lode Runner - Also Chopper Rescue (Apple II) was excellent. Some of the early SGI games were great not to mention those text adventures.
Too many to list eg Meteors etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Totally agree on Star Raiders and Lode Runner. Either one should have taken WoW's spot on that list.
ooh street fighter (Score:3)
You are so right about that one, AC. Specifically, SF2, which is where it really went nuts in the market with all the modded machines and so on. That game really created the modern fighting game phenomenon. I know, people out there are now pounding tables and shouting about MK, but SF was a major thing before MK.
Re: (Score:3)
Also SF discovered combo moves. I'd say invented, but they were actually a bug according to the designer which allowed you to trigger a new move one frame before the end of the previous one allowing them to be chained together very fast. Combos are now of course a staple of fighting games.
The other cause for early triggering was landing: a fighter in the middle of kick-while-jumping sequence would instantly transition to standing-ready upon landing no matter how soon the latter happened. This allowed one to
Re: (Score:2)
The genius of SF2 was to introduce a real fighting system. Previous games gave each character moves but didn't really think about how players would use them. With SF2 everything was designed like a game of chess, where players could use both strategy and skill to win. It was the end result of a long build up by Capcom, with games like the original Street Figher and Final Fight along the way where the designers explored ways to make fighting games into something that players could learn and master, rather th
Re: (Score:2)
Street Fighter II is the only one on that list that would apply. Anybody who had a 16-bit system and a Blockbuster Card at the time would understand why.
Re:leisure suit larry (Score:4, Informative)
Don't forget learning useless trivia from the previous generation to get past the age check before you discovered the key-combo to bypass it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because DooM was fat, far far more than Wolf 3D ever was. It's a hall of fame, not a hall of which games got there (for some version of there) first. Doom is an indisputable icon (well I guess you're disputing it).
As for angry birds... well... It's a massive, massive cultural phenomemon whether we like it or not. I think it will fade and have less ultimate impact than, say, DooM, but it is pretty major at the moment.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's at 6 megasubs right now. No fucking past tense dude. I'm not a fan of their recent changes (and I turned off all my accounts months ago), but get your shit together. It's hugely popular right this second.
Re: (Score:2)
The only reason it was even remotely popular is because it's a blizzard game.
You can tell how boring and flash-in-the-pan it was by the way half the people who played that game were subscribed for more than a year.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Goldeneye was never the best game by a long shot. It might have been the best FPS on N64, but that's saying very little.
Re: (Score:2)
It was also the best selling console game of the year for two different years, if I remember correctly, which is saying a lot.
Re: (Score:3)
No Battletoads?
Unfortunately, somebody must have actually finished the game in order for it to be eligible for entry into the Hall of Fame.
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of games would deserve inclusion above battletoads. Megaman 2, without doubt, a ton of stuff in the Playstation era... I mean, I'm always sad when a list of any games doesn't include The Guardian Legend, but these are niche games.