Game developers rejoice. Defender, GoldenEye 007, Quake, and Tamagotchi have joined the World Video Game Hall of Fame at The Strong National Museum of Play.
These four games—which have significantly influenced popular culture and the video game industry—emerged from a field of finalists that also included Age of Empires, Angry Birds, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Frogger, Golden Tee, Harvest Moon, Mattel Football, and NBA 2K. Here’s last year’s winners.
The games were announced at a special ceremony that included members of the Defender development team, with team lead Eugene Jarvis; John Romero, co-creator of Quake; and Tara Badie, the head of Tamagotchi for Bandai Namco. The games are now enshrined in the Strong National Museum of Play‘s World Video Game Hall of Fame rotunda, part of the ESL Digital Worlds exhibit.
About Defender: Released by Williams Electronics in 1981, Defender proved that players would embrace more complex and challenging games in the arcade. Defender married intense gameplay and a complicated control scheme with a horizontally scrolling spacer shooter. It sold more than 55,000 units—making it a bestseller—and helped create a new market for more difficult games.
Says Jeremy Saucier, assistant vice president for interpretation and electronic games, “Defender’s punishing gameplay raised the level of competition in arcades, and it was among the first games to truly separate dedicated players from more casual ones. By challenging conventional wisdom about game mastery and the idea that players would reject more complex arcade video games, Defender paved the way for richer video game possibilities for developers and players alike.”
About GoldenEye 007: In 1997, Rare and Nintendo partnered to release GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 console, a first-person shooter based on author Ian Fleming’s …