The latest round of inductees to The Strong Museum’s World Video Game Hall of Fame were announced today, and we’ve got a quad of certified icons in this lineup. Defender, GoldenEye, Tamagotchi, and Quake are the winners this year, and the legendary John Romero says it’s a “huge honor” for the 1996 FPS he designed to finally join the hall of fame.
“It’s a huge honor for Quake to be inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame,” Romero exclaimed on Twitter. “On behalf of the entire original Quake team, thanks so much @museumofplay!”
Romero’s no stranger to the World Video Game Hall of Fame, since Doom already joined on the very first ballot in 2015. While at a glance Quake offers the same kind of brooding, violent thrills as Doom, its legacy is arguably even wider-reaching. Quake helped popularize modding, online multiplayer, and esports, and it even served as an early starting point for machinima.
It’s a little ironic that Quake is joining the same day as GoldenEye 007, since the two titles effectively served as the first volleys in the decades-long war between PC and console FPS games. GoldenEye helped popularize the genre on console, and its four-player split-screen modes served as the blueprint for generations of local multiplayer.
The oldest game in this year’s lineup is Defender, the brutally difficult 1981 side-scrolling arcade shooter. While common wisdom among arcade designers at the time was that games should be easy to pick up and play, “Defender proved that players would embrace more complex games in the arcade,” as The Strong puts it. The most hardcore fans of the early days of video games certainly showed up for it.
Finally, there’s Tamagotchi. It’s a bit of an odd one out since, y’know, it’s a handheld LCD toy rather than a piece of software you plug into a computer or game console, but it’s tough to argue against Tamagotchi’s place here. They were wildly popular throughout the late ’90s, and the whole virtual pet concept continues to persist and take influence from the OG to this day.
The World Video Game Hall of Fame has inducted 49 games over the past 11 years, and I don’t think there’s a bad pick in the lot. From 1962’s Spacewar! to 2013’s The Last of Us, video games wouldn’t be quite the same without any of these titles, and I love any chance that comes around to celebrate gaming history.
That’s another of the best N64 games of all time inducted.
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