Video Game Hall of Fame Inductees 2015

The Video Game Hall of Fame Inductees Are Out and I’m Pissed!

Video Game Hall of Fame Inductees 2015
Video Game Hall of Fame Inductees 2015 via Mashable

For a long time, I have thought there really needs to be a hall of fame for video games and I couldn’t be more excited that there finally is one!  I’ve been playing video games for 26 years and there are a ton of video games that are deserving of being in the hall of fame.  However, in choosing the inductees for the first entrants into The Strong’s World Video Game Hall of Fame, two giant mistakes were made.

Before I start ranting, I suppose I should list the inductees for The Strong’s World Video Game Hall of Fame.  This years inductees are Pong, Pac-Man, Tetris, Super Mario Bros, Doom and World of Warcraft.

The complete list of candidates for this years video game hall of fame induction included 15 games and here is the list:  Angry Birds, Doom, FIFA, The Legend of Zelda, Minecraft, The Oregon Trail, Pac-Man, Pokémon, Pong, The Sims, Sonic the Hedgehog,Space Invaders, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, and World of Warcraft.

Now, while I certainly see every game in that list as ones belonging in the video game hall of fame, there are several that absolutely don’t belong in there for the first round, including one of the inductees.  Which ones you ask?  I don’t believe that Minecraft, Angry Birds, and World of Warcraft (one of the inductees) have absolutely no place in there in the first round.

The first round round should be all about the early video games that paved the way for the rest of the industry.  That said, Pong, Tetris, Super Mario Bros, and Doom all belong on the list of inductees, but World of Warcraft certainly does not.

Before I start on why World of Warcraft should not have been considered much less inducted, lets get a smaller nitpick out of the way.  You probably noticed I didn’t mention Pac-Man in the list of games that belong on the list of inductees and there is a reason for that.  The reason is that I believe it should be Ms Pac-Man.  Ms Pac-Man is the version everybody remembers and you are still likely to find in an old pizza parlor or two around town with people still playing it.  Pac-Man was never the hit that Ms Pac-Man became so for that reason, I think it is less deserving of the honor than Ms Pac-Man.  Its really not a huge deal but in this case I think the wrong game in the franchise was credited with the honor.  Now, as for WoW…

Has it had a big impact on the industry?  Yes.  Does it deserve to be in the hall of fame at some point?  Absolutely!  However, I don’t think any game that is still in active development has any business in the hall of fame similar to how football stars have to be retired for at least 5 years before they are even eligible to be considered for the hall of fame.  To make it into the hall of fame, a game should be finished.  No more patches, no more expansions.  And honestly, it just doesn’t feel old enough anyway to really be considered yet.  Its a good thing Angry Birds didn’t get in because I would really have a fit about that!  I think the first round of games should stick to 8-bit graphics or at least no better than 16-bit (I probably would have been ok with Sonic being inducted).

So of the list of games that were considered, who do I think was most deserving to take the spot that was given to WoW?  I’d have to go with The Oregon Train.  I’m sure that it surprises many of you that I didn’t go with the Legend of Zelda since you all know I’m a huge Zelda fan but while I love the game and certainly think it belongs in the hall of fame, it has become overshadowed by better games in the franchise like Ocarina of Time so while it paved the way, I think the lack of attention it gets today makes it more of a second round inductee than a first one.

Why did I go with Oregon Trail?  I went with it because it was kind of that one game for a generation where everybody played it and knew about the game, mainly because it was played in schools.  I have some great memories myself of playing it in elementary school.  And, while the reboots were great fun, everybody remembers the old DOS version the most so I find it to be the most deserving in the franchise.  Ultimately, I think the game probably taught me more about what it was like in the early days of the USA than any class lecture I ever had.

So, in conclusion, whoever thinks that World of Warcraft is more deserving to be in the first class of The Strong’s World Video Game Hall of Fame over The Oregon Trail needs to lose all their food when their wagon sinks while trying to float across a river, get bit by a rattlesnake and then die of dysentery.

What do you think?  Let me know in the comments below!

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Comments

2 responses to “The Video Game Hall of Fame Inductees Are Out and I’m Pissed!”

  1. Harold Price Avatar

    On your Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man point, you could make the same argument for Sonic 2 over Sonic or for SMB 3 or Super Mario World over SMB, It’s about iteration, and even if Ms. Pac-Man is better than the original Pac-Man, it wouldn’t exist without it.

    I think WoW, Angry Birds, and Minecraft definitely have their place in gaming history, even if they’re a lot newer than some of the others on the list. I don’t think WoW deserves to be a first-ballot hall of famer, but it did help popularize a genre. And I think its longevity actually helps its case. I can definitely see other genre-definers like Street Fighter II (the rare exception to my previous original vs. sequel argument, as it was a huge leap over the original), League of Legends, Guitar Hero, and Skylanders as eventual hall of famers.

    I’m surprised FIFA slipped in as a finalist over Madden (unless this HoF is UK-based, then it makes sense). I’m even more surprised that you left it unquestioned with all the other objections you had.

    I’d love to get you on my podcast sometime and discuss this further.

  2. pcnerd37 Avatar

    I could maybe see Sonic 2 but as for Mario, SMB sold 40 million copies which made it the best selling video game for three decades and while I certainly prefer SMB 3 and probably even Super Mario World, SMB is perhaps the most appropriate game to go in on the first round, right after Pong that is.

    Those all definitely deserve to be in there at some point and longevity certainly helps make the case for them, especially WoW but given how “new” those games still are, I think there are at least a hundred games that belong in there before any of those games do.

    I didn’t touch the FIFA thing mainly because soccer has never been my thing so I can’t really speak to it like I can the others. I would say that Madden should be more strongly considered but that an opinion of a soccer ignorant American whose only experience was some soccer game on the NES that wasn’t even FIFA (I don’t think anyway). If I better knew the history of it and its global impact, I would have talked about that game too.

    I’d be more than happy to be on your podcast! Feel free to shoot me an e-mail at [email protected] and lets make something happen!

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