Who eats chicken dinner? The Strong National Museum of Play has announced the 2024 Video Game Hall of Fame inductees. This list has been around since last year, when Barbie and The Last of Us beat out some arguably more deserving titles, including Quake and fan-favorite GoldenEye. It was not controversial.
This year's Hall of Fame nominees included a number of worthy games, including Elite, Metroid, and Guitar Hero. However, he only made it to the list in 5 out of 10 cases.
asteroid
The classic video game hit arcades in 1979 and sold 70,000 units, generating revenue for Taito/Midway of $150 million (over $645 million adjusted for inflation). I did. Asteroids quickly became King of the Quarter, raking in around $500 million in arcades around the world and defeating former top favorite Space Invaders. The title was eventually licensed to Atari, and with the Atari 2600 he sold 3.8 million copies, facilitating sales of over 30 million home game consoles.
mist
The early 1990s were all about fast-paced action games like Doom. However, in 1993 Rand Miller and Robin Miller released his Myst, which was the complete opposite of the first-person shooters that were very popular at the time. Myst was a relaxed, casual experience that challenged the player's mind rather than their index finger. What probably struck most people was the spectacular, surreal graphics, which were as close to photorealistic as the game could get at the time, and remained so for years to come.
resident evil
Released in 1996, Capcom called Resident Evil the first “survival horror” game. Although this claim is technically valid since the publisher coined the term, it was preceded by other works in the genre, such as 1994's System Shock and his 1992 Alone in the Dark. Either way, Resident Evil brought mature horror games into the mainstream. Those damn dogs! It has sold over 5 million copies and launched a series that will sell an additional 150 million copies as of 2023, making it the best-selling series in Capcom's history. It was so influential that it spawned books, comics, movies, and TV shows about space.
sim city
Will Wright's inspiration for SimCity came from his work on the Bungeling Bay raid in 1984. He created his map editor to help design the game, but found it just as fun to play as the finished product. There he started working and released City His Builder in 1989. The top-down, simplistic graphics were overwhelming. But what it lacked in sparkle it made up for in fun. It was very interesting to watch the city come to life and evolve, and learning about urban development through trial and error while dealing with various crises such as fires was fascinating.
altima
Like many kids in the late 1970s and early 80s, Richard Garriott loved tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. When computers came along, Garriott began programming games for his own entertainment. After being encouraged to sell by a local computer store manager, he released Akalabeth: World of Doom for his Apple II in 1979. He was only 18 years old. It sold well enough to motivate him to aim higher, so Garriott took the plunge and launched Ultima. This work sold him 20,000 copies in its first year, so he began working on a sequel, which was released in 1982, followed by Ultima III in 1983. This trilogy funded and inspired Garriott to found Origin Systems, a studio that produced several more works. Sequel to MMORPG Ultima Online and more. It also released other games that would become classic series, such as Wing Commander and System Shock.
Strong's list of 2024 Hall of Fame honorees is solid and avoids controversy like last year. Hall of Famers are arguably some of the most influential games in history. Maybe next year will be Metroid.
