The World Video Game Hall of Fame inductees have finally been revealed

(Credit: Museum of Play)

• 🥇 The Strong Museum has announced its four inductees into its prestigious World Video Game Hall of Fame

• 👍 Out of a series of 12 nominees, there's an arcade game, two PC/console shooters and a trendy toy

• 👉 To be specific, it's Defender, Goldeneye 007, Quake and the Tamagotchi

• 🤔 The games were selected based on everything from their geographical reach to their longevity and status

The Strong Museum just announced this year's entrants into the World Video Game Hall of Fame, and there are some deserving entrants.

Out of a total list of 12 nominees, four have been picked to sit alongside other games with legendary status.

The four inductees are:

• Defender

• GoldenEye 007

• Quake

• Tamagotchi

Interestingly, two of those games are first-person shooters, in both GoldenEye 007 and Quake, although each released on different platforms. GoldenEye, of course, is from the iconic James Bond series, and first released in 1997 for the Nintendo 64, becoming the third best-selling game in the platform's run. It received a remastered version on Xbox consoles in 2023 and recently came to Nintendo Switch Online.

Quake, meanwhile, had a much wider release, and was the start of the longstanding series of the same name that followed on from id Software's other big hit, Doom. The original game was first released in 1996 for Windows and DOS systems, before receiving a wider release on MacOS and Linux machines, and the Sega Saturn console the following year. It came to the N64 in 1998.

Defender also takes the form of a shooter-style game, but shipped in 1981 as an arcade cabinet courtesy of Williams. It's a fiendishly difficult title with complicated controls and quick, intensive gameplay that's given it an enduring legacy.

The Tamagotchi isn't necessarily a 'game' in the sense of it being software, but more in the sense of it being the handheld pet that was everywhere in the mid-nineties and early 2000s that you had to take care of. As of June 2023, the unit has shifted over 90 million copies, and spawned several spin-off versions and actual games.

The original list of twelve encompassed a lot of different mediums, from mobile games such as Angry Birds, as well as electronic toys such as Mattel Football and real-time strategy game Age of Empires.

The way the winners were selected was based on everything from their status and longevity to their influence and even geographical reach. All of the things you'd expect for a game to be considered an entrant.

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Reece Bithrey is a journalist with bylines for Trusted Reviews, Digital Foundry, PC Gamer, TechRadar and more. He also has his own blog, UNTITLED, and graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in International History and Politics in 2023.