Short answers, pulled from the story.
The World Video Game Hall of Fame opened on the 4th of June 2015, at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. Its first class included six games: Doom, Pac-Man, Pong, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, and World of Warcraft.
The hall is located at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, within the ESL Digital Worlds: High Score exhibit. Before a museum expansion in 2023, it occupied the eGameRevolution exhibit.
A staff committee at The Strong nominates games based on four criteria: icon status, longevity, geographical reach, and influence, with influence weighted most heavily. A panel of around 30 scholars and journalists then votes, joined by a public poll that counts as one additional panel member, and the committee makes the final selection.
Nintendo has had seven games inducted, more than any other developer. Atari is second with three inducted titles, and Blizzard Entertainment, Capcom, Konami, id Software, and Maxis each have two inducted games.
As of 2026-53 games have been inducted out of 92 nominated across the hall's twelve years of operation. The hall typically inducts four or five games per year from a field of twelve nominees.
Spacewar!, developed by Steve Russell and others and released in 1962, is the earliest game to be inducted. The most recent by release date is The Last of Us from 2013, made by Naughty Dog.