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 fabulous structures limited only by the players’ imaginations.
Originally released by Mojang in 2009, and now owned by Microsoft, Minecraft is a toy-game hybrid, relying just as much on traditional construction play from building blocks as it does on computer code. Players enter a random, procedurally generated world filled with resources they need […]
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 as one of the most significant computer game designers of the 1980s and 1990s.
Like previous text-based and graphical adventure games, players used a text parser that asked them to type precise commands and read textual descriptions. But now players also moved their character around the screen, positioning him at the precise spot […]
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 of the video arcade’s golden age.
In Centipede, players use a trackball to control a cannon at the bottom of a screen and attempt to shoot a centipede zig-zagging through a field of mushrooms. Spiders, scorpions, and fleas serve as additional threats and targets. Once an entire centipede is destroyed, the screen […]
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 in history.
Bejeweled challenged players to swap colorful jewels to form vertical or horizontal chains of three or more gems of the same color. Matched gems then disappeared, with new ones filling in from the top. The game ended when there were no more swaps available in the playfield. This seemingly simplistic […]
Baby Nancy
Inducted Year: 2020
In response to the Watts Riot, Louis S. Smith, II and Robert Hall worked with civil rights activists and community members to form Operation Bootstrap with the goal of empowerment and social and economic equity. In 1968, Operation Bootstrap launched Shindana Toys, a community-owned company dedicated to making toys that “reflect Black pride, Black talent, and most of all, Black enterprise.”
In its first year, Shindana produced Baby Nancy. Smith advocated that the doll was not to be a […]
Jenga
Inducted Year: 2020
Born in East Africa, Leslie Scott grew up fluent in both English and Swahili. Jenga evolved from a stacking game her family played with simple wood blocks. Back in England in the 1980s, Scott began manufacturing her game and trademarked the name “Jenga,” a form of the Swahili word kujenga, which means “to build.”
Traditionally Jenga is played with 54 wooden blocks stacked into a tower. Each block is three times as long as it is wide, and one […]
Sidewalk Chalk
Inducted Year: 2020
Historians have every reason to believe that the earliest people played with chalk. Chalk’s use in playful pursuits relies on its physical properties. Chalk that was used on early boards was made of gypsum, which is found naturally and can be pulverized, colored, and compressed into sticks.
The art of street painting began in Europe in the 16th century when itinerant artists traveled from town to town to decorate public squares and spaces in front of churches for festivals […]
