Inducted Games

Grand Theft Auto III

  Inducted Year: 2016 Grand Theft Auto III’s vast open world made it famous while its mature content made it infamous. It wasn’t the first 3-D “sandbox” game to allow …

The Oregon Trail

  Inducted Year: 2016 As the longest-published, most successful educational game of all time, The Oregon Trail has blazed a path for the use of video games in learning. MS-DOS …

The Legend of Zelda

  Inducted Year: 2016 Inspired by creator Shigeru Miyamoto’s childhood expeditions through woods and caves, The Legend of Zelda popularized non-linear, open-world exploration games and paved the way for some …

The Sims

  Inducted Year: 2016 The relationships and routines of everyday life became endless fun with The Sims. Whereas many video games explore themes of fantasy and adventure, The Sims found …

Sonic the Hedgehog

  Inducted Year: 2016 Sonic the Hedgehog took the 16-bit gaming era by storm in 1991 with its lightning-fast game play and cool, hip title character, temporarily vaulting Sega ahead …

Space Invaders

Inducted Year: 2016 Space Invaders conquered arcades and living rooms, catapulting video games into the mainstream. Space Invaders, 1978 Designed by Tomohiro Nishikado and released in Japan in 1978, Taito’s …

Tetris

  Inducted Year: 2015 Tetris is a truly international game that’s been persistently popular around the world because its rules are simple but its play possibilities are endless. The challenge …

Super Mario Bros.

  Inducted Year: 2015 Who is more memorable than Mario? Created by legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto and published by Nintendo, the side-scrolling platformer Super Mario Bros. first appeared in …

Pac-Man

  Inducted Year: 2015 Pac-Man (or Puck Man as it was known in Japan) made video games a mass cultural phenomenon. Midway Mfg. Co. Pac-Man Flyer, 1980 Created by programmer …

World of Warcraft

  Inducted Year: 2015 By bringing tens of millions of people together in a compelling virtual universe, World of Warcraft is reshaping the way people think about their online lives …

DOOM

  Inducted Year: 2015 DOOM shaped the course of gaming history. Led by John Carmack and John Romero, the development team at id Software created a landmark game in 1993 …

Pong

  Inducted Year: 2015 By most measures of popular impact, Pong launched the video game industry. Atari Pong Flyer, 1972 A simple game involving two paddles and a ball, Pong …

Halo: Combat Evolved

  Inducted Year: 2017 Halo: Combat Evolved became one of the most popular first-person shooter games of all time, and re-defined players’ expectations for the genre. Microsoft Xbox Halo: Combat …

Street Fighter II

  Inducted Year: 2017 Street Fighter II made arcade fighting games a video game phenomenon. Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, 1992 Released by Capcom in 1991, the second in a …

Donkey Kong

  Inducted Year: 2017 Necessity is the mother of invention, and Donkey Kong became an instant classic because of an immediate need. In 1981, Nintendo’s fledgling North American video game …

StarCraft

  Inducted Year: 2021 California-based developer Blizzard Entertainment began development on StarCraft in 1995. The real-time strategy genre was not new for the company, having released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans …

Microsoft Flight Simulator

  Inducted Year: 2021 Flying has fascinated humanity since ancient times, but it was only in the twentieth century that heavier-than-air flight took off. Thousands of amateur and professional aviators …

Animal Crossing

Inducted Year: 2021 “So, you mind if I sit here? I promise I won’t fall asleep, tumble onto you, and start drooling on your shirt!” While this dialogue may resemble …

Minecraft

  Inducted Year: 2020 The building game Minecraft has become a global phenomenon with endless game play options, enabling players to mine and use sets of pixilated blocks to build …

King’s Quest

  Inducted Year: 2020 Originally released in 1984 for IBM’s ill-fated PCjr, King’s Quest set the standard for the graphical adventure game genre and cemented Sierra On-Line’s cofounder Roberta Williams …

Centipede

Inducted Year: 2020 Co-designed by Ed Logg and Dona Bailey in 1981, Atari’s Centipede is a fixed shooter arcade game that ultimately became one of the most commercially successful titles …

Bejeweled

Inducted Year: 2020 In 2001, PopCap Games published Bejeweled, a web-based Flash game that popularized the “match three” puzzle game sub-genre and became one of the most iconic mobile games …

Super Mario Kart

  Inducted Year: 2019 When Nintendo released Super Mario Kart in 1992 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, they combined the thrill of driving games with characters from their beloved …

Mortal Kombat

  Inducted Year: 2019 When arcade game manufacturer Midway Games asked programmer Ed Boon and artist John Tobias to create a game to compete with the surging popularity of Capcom’s …

Microsoft Solitaire

  Inducted Year: 2019 Microsoft Solitaire, 1990 Microsoft Solitaire meets all the criteria for the World Video Game Hall of Fame: influence, longevity, geographical reach, and icon-status. And yet it …

Colossal Cave Adventure

Inducted Year: 2019 The best games fire the imagination, and anyone who has typed commands like “get lamp” into Colossal Cave Adventure experienced how the game could conjure up a …

Tomb Raider

  Inducted Year: 2018 Developed by Core Design in 1996, Tomb Raider was far from the first action-adventure video game, but its added emphasis on puzzle solving and difficult jumping maneuvers provided …

Spacewar!

  Inducted Year: 2018 No game deserves more credit than Spacewar! for inspiring the modern video game industry. During the 1960s, America was in a fierce space race with the Soviet Union. …

John Madden Football

  Inducted Year: 2018 John Madden Football redefined sports video games. Sega Genesis John Madden Football, 1990 In 1988, Electronic Arts (EA) was all but ready to throw in the towel …

Final Fantasy VII

  Inducted Year: 2018 In 1987, developer Square released a role-playing game called Final Fantasy. Designed by Hironobu Sakeguchi, this game allowed players to control the Four Warriors of Light in …

Pokémon Red and Green

  Inducted Year: 2017 Game developer Satoshi Tajiri spent hours of his childhood bug collecting, and when Nintendo released the Game Boy handheld in 1989, he had a vision of …