World Video Game Hall of Fame announced its 2nd class of Inductees

[7th lutz]

http://www.polygon.com/2016/5/5/1159...e-hall-of-fame

The 2nd Class of Inductees are the following:
Grand Theft Auto 3
The Legend of Zelda
The Oregon Trail
The Sims
Sonic the Hedgehog
Space Invaders


Here are the Finalists that weren't inducted:
Elite
Final Fantasy
John Madden Football
Minecraft
Nurburgring
Pokemon Red and Green
Side Meier's Civilization
Street Fighter 2
Tomb Raider

[7th lutz]

Grand Theft Auto 3 being one of the 6 Inductees was a mistake to be inducted this early in the Video Game Hall of Fame's existence. That game got in too early at a time when a couple of the games I nominated didn't even became a finalist such as Donkey Kong and Adventure.

Final Fantasy or Street Fighter 2 in my view would of have been more worthy than Grand Theft Auto 3 for being inducted into the 2nd class instead of being a finalist.

I have no problem with Sonic 1 being inducted at all due to its importance of giving the Sega Genesis the console sales it had. Space Invaders is a game that I thought it should've been in its first class because of its importance in the arcades and for the Atari 2600. I have no problem with Oregon Trail because I think every grade school that had a computer room in the 1980's and at least in the early 1990's had this game.

The World Video Game Hall of Fame does allow anyone to Nominate. Here is the link for Nominating games: http://www.worldvideogamehalloffame.org/nominate

[bb_hood]

Grand Theft Auto 3 being one of the 6 Inductees was a mistake to be inducted this early in the Video Game Hall of Fame's existence. That game got in too early at a time when a couple of the games I nominated didn't even became a finalist such as Donkey Kong and Adventure.

Final Fantasy or Street Fighter 2 in my view would of have been more worthy than Grand Theft Auto 3 for being inducted into the 2nd class instead of being a finalist. The best way to put it is I Nominated games for the 2016 class that weren't finalists, but

Yeah, I read your first post and thats exactly what I thought. GTA3 doesnt deserve to get in over Final Fantasy or SF2. Both of FF and SF2 were much more influential and original games. Grand Theft Auto was a good game yes, but it was really just super popular because you could jack peoples' cars and gun down cops and pedestrians.

[Aussie2B]

Final Fantasy, Pokemon, and Street Fighter 2 would've been better choices than GTA3, The Oregon Trail, and The Sims, in my opinion. I don't know much about this Hall of Fame, though, so if it's about how iconic/well-known these franchises are and about sales figures, maybe their choices are a better fit. I also wouldn't be surprised at all if they're trying to balance out Japanese versus Western inductees. But, anyway, in my wholly subjective opinion, the GTA games are just violent dreck, The Oregon Trail is funny and memorable as a shared cultural experience but not really something you WANT to play, just something to reminisce about and associate with childhood nostalgia, and The Sims, as the article says, is more of a virtual dollhouse than an actual game and has zero appeal to me personally.

[Koa Zo]

I'd like to know what the provenance is for that Link shield the Strong Museum is showing with the Zelda memorabilia.

Unfortunately the Strong is spreading Nintendo bias misinformation by stating that "The United States release of The Legend of Zelda was also the first console game to include an internal battery for backing up saved data."

As we should all know, the first game cartridge with battery back up was Pop & Chips for the Super Cassette Vision.

edit: I tracked down a contact email for the PR people and they forwarded it to their historians. They were thankful for the notice of the error and are revising the press release to correct the misinformation about Zelda and battery back up.

[celerystalker]

I have to admit, I truly don't understand the purpose of this sort of thing. I mean, I love games, and they're an important part of my life as my primary hobby. Having a hall of fame for games feels like just some way to create some kind of bigger top ten list. Maybe it's just meant to call attention to the hobby, but I have trouble imagining an outsider getting interested due to its existence.

I feel like I'm missing something.

[Koa Zo]

I feel like I'm missing something.

It's just a marketing gimmick for the Strong Museum of Play.

Here's the main page for their Hall of Fame

[celerystalker]

It's just a marketing gimmick for the Strong Museum of Play.

Here's the main page for their Hall of Fame

Ah. Makes sense. Even their own criteria is dumb, then. "Geographical Reach" for Oregon Trail? Yeah...

[Porksta]

Is it bad that I have never heard of the games Elite or Nurburgring?

[Aussie2B]

Is it bad that I have never heard of the games Elite or Nurburgring?

Same. Well, "Elite" is such a generic title that I wouldn't be surprised if I've heard of it before, but it's not like "oh yeah, I know that game". I wonder if these are games that were more popular in Europe than the US.

[celerystalker]

Nurburgring is better known in the US as Night Driver. I think they just wanted to sound cool using the euro name. Elite is a british PC game centered around trade economics in space. Somehow both are more relevant than, oh, Dragon Quest, Ultima, Dragon Slayer, OutRun, Virtua Fighter, SimCity, Donkey Kong...

Edit: After double checking myself, Night Driver is a spiritual successor to Nurburgring that used a similar cabinet design.

[bb_hood]

I have to admit, I truly don't understand the purpose of this sort of thing. I mean, I love games, and they're an important part of my life as my primary hobby. Having a hall of fame for games feels like just some way to create some kind of bigger top ten list. Maybe it's just meant to call attention to the hobby, but I have trouble imagining an outsider getting interested due to its existence.

I feel like I'm missing something.

I agree its kinda dumb. Everyone has to put out some kind of poll to try and sound like experts. Like we really need some kinda poll to tell us that Zelda is and was popular.

Is it bad that I have never heard of the games Elite or Nurburgring?

I have simply heard of Elite, but never played either.

Oregon Trail was pretty huge though.

[badinsults]

I have to admit, I truly don't understand the purpose of this sort of thing. I mean, I love games, and they're an important part of my life as my primary hobby. Having a hall of fame for games feels like just some way to create some kind of bigger top ten list. Maybe it's just meant to call attention to the hobby, but I have trouble imagining an outsider getting interested due to its existence.

I feel like I'm missing something.

Why have a Rock N Roll Hall of Fame? Why have a Baseball Hall of Fame? You could argue that music and baseball are just "hobbies", but I would argue that they (and video games) are part of our culture, and are parts of what makes humanity more than just a bunch of soulless robots.

The Strong Museum is a Museum, and probably the biggest video game museum in the world. It is entirely appropriate that they select a bunch of games they feel were particularly deserving of recognition as being influential on the medium as a whole. As for those who are saying that something like Final Fantasy should have gone in before GTA III - I think that GTA III was probably the first fully immersive 3D world exploration game, while Final Fantasy was pretty much an incremental upgrade of stuff like Ultima and Dragon Quest. I think it is entirely appropriate to include in a hall of fame, even if it is only the second selection of titles.

[Koa Zo]

Why have a Rock N Roll Hall of Fame? Why have a Baseball Hall of Fame? You could argue that music and baseball are just "hobbies", but I would argue that they (and video games) are part of our culture, and are parts of what makes humanity more than just a bunch of soulless robots.

Music and professional sports are consumer products, just like videogames. Industrial consumption is what makes our humanity - best to be able to market it to keep the system going - hence "Hall of Fames"

[celerystalker]

Why have a Rock N Roll Hall of Fame? Why have a Baseball Hall of Fame? You could argue that music and baseball are just "hobbies", but I would argue that they (and video games) are part of our culture, and are parts of what makes humanity more than just a bunch of soulless robots.

The Strong Museum is a Museum, and probably the biggest video game museum in the world. It is entirely appropriate that they select a bunch of games they feel were particularly deserving of recognition as being influential on the medium as a whole. As for those who are saying that something like Final Fantasy should have gone in before GTA III - I think that GTA III was probably the first fully immersive 3D world exploration game, while Final Fantasy was pretty much an incremental upgrade of stuff like Ultima and Dragon Quest. I think it is entirely appropriate to include in a hall of fame, even if it is only the second selection of titles.

The difference I see is that the rock and roll and baseball halls of fame celebrate the achievements and history of athletes and artists, not individual pieces of their work. Honoring a creator like a Miyamoto or Kojima, or a composer like Yuzo Koshiro or Hip Tanaka is more analogous, but this is like having a Rock & Roll Hall of fame for individual songs or albums.

[Aussie2B]

It'd be great to have a hall of fame for game creators, but I think the public would stop caring real fast. Even diehard game fans are often ignorant of the people behind the games they love. After you induct the widely known people like Miyamoto and Kojima, then what? Gamers will probably be scratching their heads wondering who the heck the inductees are after the first dozen or so. Most gamers probably have no idea who Yuzo Koshiro and Hip Tanaka are.

[badinsults]

It'd be great to have a hall of fame for game creators, but I think the public would stop caring real fast. Even diehard game fans are often ignorant of the people behind the games they love. After you induct the widely known people like Miyamoto and Kojima, then what? Gamers will probably be scratching their heads wondering who the heck the inductees are after the first dozen or so. Most gamers probably have no idea who Yuzo Koshiro and Hip Tanaka are.

I think this is very much the point. It is pretty rare for a video game to be developed from the ground up by an individual or even a small group of individuals (like a band). Hell, even with the baseball analogy, many players are great, but the best teams are the ones that win the championships. There is room for both individual and group achievements in the art of video games, just like it is in movies. But when it comes down to it, there are extremely few big names that can be definitely pointed out as being responsible for the success of a large number of video games.

[celerystalker]

Honestly, I don't think games need a hall of fame. It's not a good institutional fit in my opinion, but if people enjoy it, that's just fine. I just don't understand is all, and maybe that's on me... I always considered these halls to be an honor of the achievements of individuals or groups, but marketing ploys are probably more realistic.

[Mayhem]

Elite is a british PC game centered around trade economics in space. Somehow both are more relevant than, oh, Dragon Quest, Ultima, Dragon Slayer, OutRun, Virtua Fighter, SimCity, Donkey Kong...

Elite was effectively the first "sandbox" game. You know, the basis of an awful lot of games today, and the inspiration in part for GTA. You could choose to do what you wanted; you could trade goods, fight pirates, smuggle illegal stuff, take on the police, and then if you became good enough, you'd unlock some secret missions to take part in. The original was released in 1984 for the BBC Micro, a machine that took an awful lot of memory up with some of its video modes, and yet Braben and Bell shoved this game into 32k of memory. ANYONE of my era in Europe knows Elite.

Comments like this are why European retrogamers shake their heads at the utter console-centricness of US "history" of that era... like the computers never existed.

[celerystalker]

Elite was effectively the first "sandbox" game. You know, the basis of an awful lot of games today, and the inspiration in part for GTA. You could choose to do what you wanted; you could trade goods, fight pirates, smuggle illegal stuff, take on the police, and then if you became good enough, you'd unlock some secret missions to take part in. The original was released in 1984 for the BBC Micro, a machine that took an awful lot of memory up with some of its video modes, and yet Braben and Bell shoved this game into 32k of memory. ANYONE of my era in Europe knows Elite.

Comments like this are why European retrogamers shake their heads at the utter console-centricness of US "history" of that era... like the computers never existed.

Everyone in Japan knows Dragon Slayer, a PC game, as is Ultima, and SimCity for that matter... literally half of the games I listed. I'm not judging games on a personal bias. I am criticizing the choices based on the criteria listed on the Strong website. A lot of games innovated in a lot of ways, but international geographical appeal is one of their major categories, and a game like Ultima both innovated and had more international influence. My comment wasn't disparaging the quality of Elite, but was in the greater context of the early part of the thread questioning some of the choices for such an early class of inductees, not grasping at some console or even US-centered game history.