Inducted Year: 2023
Baseball players began posing for photos in the mid-19th century. Photography, like baseball, was becoming more widespread and popular. The late 1880s saw tobacco manufacturers including the cards in packages, to stiffen them and as incentives toward purchase. Soon candy manufacturers offered these premiums too, and went a step further, manufacturing their own cards. The production of cards burgeoned in the 1930s, when famous players like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were featured, and cards were printed […]
Wii Sports
Inducted: 2023
If Atari’s Pong (1972) helped usher in the video game revolution with a simple tennis game, more than three decades later Nintendo’s Wii Sports returned video games to the masses with simple, though unique versions of tennis, bowling, baseball, boxing, and golf.
Released in 2006 and bundled with Nintendo Wii home video game consoles sold outside of Japan, Wii Sports best demonstrated how the company redefined the way video games could be played. Relying on a motion-sensitive Wii Remote, Wii […]
The Last of Us
Inducted: 2023
Post-apocalyptic settings and zombie enemies have cropped up in countless popular video games, not to mention books, films, and television shows. So it can be difficult to imagine how a newcomer could put a distinct stamp on the genre or offer an original experience for experienced gamers. In 2013, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us accomplished this feat. The game brought together motion capture technology, skilled voice acting, and layered storytelling to create an affective, character-centered journey of survival […]
Computer Space
Inducted: 2023
There was no video game industry in 1970. The games that we’d now call video games were still mostly locked away on computers in university and research labs, inaccessible to the public. Engineering student Nolan Bushnell played the most popular of these games, Spacewar! (1962), in a computer lab in the 1960s. The game’s spaceships—dueling in cosmic combat while orbiting a star—captivated the young Bushnell. Having worked summers at a Utah amusement park managing coin-operated pinball and arcade games, […]
Barbie Fashion Designer
Inducted: 2023
In 1996, at a time when most games were marketed toward male players, Barbie Fashion Designer proved that a game designed for girls could succeed. Widely acknowledged as the first market success in games for girls, in two months the game sold over 500,000 copies, outselling contemporary market leaders like Quake and DOOM. A market success, the game made $120 million in the first year.
Barbie Fashion Designer bridged the gap between the digital and the physical. Players used the […]
Nerf Toys
Inducted Year: 2023
In the late 1960s, game designer Reyn Guyer and his co-workers at Winsor Concepts developed a game idea inspired by the popular Stone Age characters from The Flintstones television series. Guyer’s game required players to toss foam “rocks” at their opponents while protecting their own piles of ammo. Guyer offered the game to Parker Brothers, but the toy giant tossed out the game and kept the foam, preferring the notion of a ball that kids could play with […]
Fisher-Price Corn Popper
Inducted Year: 2023
In the 1950s, scientist and inventor Arthur Holt designed the Corn Popper, a stick with a plastic dome filled with gumball-sized balls. As a child pushed the Corn Popper, the toy sent the colorful balls airborne. When the balls hit the dome, they made a popping noise. The seemingly simple design reflected progressive thinking about how children play and learn—Holt intended for youngsters to use the toy while learning to walk. The Corn Popper’s usefulness and good looks […]
Cabbage Patch Kids
Inducted Year: 2023
Influenced by Martha Nelson Thomas’ Doll Babies, art student Xavier Roberts created fabric sculptures he called Little People in the 1970s. Roberts’ creations featured a pudgy face with close-set eyes and hair fashioned of colored yarn. Roberts did not exactly “sell” his Little People to customers. Instead, he offered the dolls up for “adoption”—in return for a fee. Roberts included a birth certificate and adoption papers with each doll.
As interest in his Little People spread, Roberts organized the […]
