The Strong National Museum of Play has announced the five games joining the World Video Game Hall of Fame this year: Asteroids, Myst, Resident Evil, Ultima, and SimCity. These five games beat out other classics, like Neopets, Metroid, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, to grab a place in the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s 10th class.
Last year, Barbie Fashion Designer, Computer Space, The Last of Us, and Wii Sports made it into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. The 2024 class of inductees will join these titles as part of the Strong Museum’s World Video Game Hall of Fame rotunda, which is part of the ESL Digital Worlds exhibit. A group called the International Selection Advisory Committee, which the Strong Museum said is made up of “journalists and scholars familiar with the history of video games and their roles in society,” votes on the games to be inducted. The public had also been voting, and the top three games voted in by the public were added to a single ballot.
These five games have influenced different parts of the video game industry, with Asteroids making its mark as Atari’s best-selling coin-operated arcade game; Myst in showcasing its iconic, imaginative world; SimCity by defining the city-building simulation genre; Ultima setting the tone for fantasy role-playing games; and Resident Evil putting survival horror on the map. Here’s how the Strong Museum described the games and their impact on the industry:
About Asteroids: Released in 1979, Atari’s Asteroids offered players challenging gameplay, glowing graphics, and intense sound effects in an action-packed space setting. The game quickly supplanted the popular Space Invaders in many arcades and sold more than 70,000 arcade units, becoming Atari’s bestselling coin-operated game. The home version of the game—made available on the Atari 2600—took the game’s popularity to new heights, bringing it into millions of living rooms.
Says Jeremy Saucier, assistant vice president for interpretation and electronic
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