World Video Game Hall of Fame

• 1. Introduction

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  The World Video Game Hall of Fame opened its doors on the 4th of June 2015, inside The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. Its first class of six inductees included Doom, Pac-Man, Pong, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, and World of Warcraft - a list that spans arcade cabinets, home consoles, personal computers, and online worlds. The hall exists to ask a question that sounds simple but proves surprisingly contentious: which video games have genuinely shaped culture, not just sales charts?

  The institution sits within The Strong's International Center for the History of Electronic Games, which the museum launched in 2009. Before the hall of fame was announced in February 2015, The Strong had already been running the National Toy Hall of Fame since 2002 - so the curatorial instinct was well-established. What makes the video game hall distinctive is the breadth of its mandate. Games qualify not just by popularity but by international reach, staying power across decades, and measurable influence on everything from game design to broader entertainment.

• 2. The Selection Criteria

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  Influence is the most important of the four criteria used to evaluate games for induction. A staff committee at The Strong makes the initial nominations each year, weighing icon status, longevity, geographical reach, and that pivotal influence factor. Members of the public can submit games for the committee's consideration as well.

  From those nominations, a panel of around 30 scholars and journalists from around the world casts votes, with each member ranking their top three choices. A public poll counts as the equivalent of one panel member's vote. Starting with the 2026 nominees, a poll of attendees of the Game Developers Conference was added to the mix. The staff committee reviews all the votes and makes the final call. When several games cluster near the cutoff with similar vote totals, the committee breaks the tie by emphasizing variety across game types and platforms in any given induction year.

  Finalists are typically announced each March, with inductees named in May. In the hall's first two years, six games were named from fifteen finalists. Since then, four or five inductees per year have been selected from a field of twelve nominees.

• 3. Who Gets In and Who Waits

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  Frogger has been nominated three times without being inducted - the same number of failed attempts as Guitar Hero and NBA 2K. Those three games hold the record for most nominations without a successful induction. On the other end of the spectrum, Minecraft, FIFA International Soccer, and Angry Birds share the record for most total nominations at four, and all three eventually made it in.

  Games that are not inducted can be nominated again in future years, which explains how some titles accumulate multiple bids. The hall may also designate the first game in a franchise as a proxy for an entire series; The Oregon Trail series and the FIFA line are treated this way. By 2026-53 games had been inducted out of 92 nominated across the hall's twelve years of operation, with many of those 92 representing repeated nominations of the same titles.

  The earliest game inducted is Spacewar! from 1962, developed by Steve Russell and others. The latest by release date is The Last of Us from 2013, made by Naughty Dog. That span of five decades illustrates just how wide the hall casts its net when measuring lasting influence.

• 4. Nintendo's Dominance

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  Nintendo accounts for seven of the 53 inducted games - more than any other developer. The company received eleven nominations across eight distinct games, meaning several titles were nominated multiple times before getting in. That tally includes Super Mario Bros. from 1985, the Legend of Zelda from 1986, Donkey Kong from 1981, Super Mario Kart from 1992, Animal Crossing from 2001, Pokemon Red and Green from 1996 (which took until 2017 to be inducted after first appearing as a finalist in 2015), and the Wii Sports package from 2006.

  Atari lands second in inducted titles with three games from six nominations of those three games - Pong, Asteroids, and Centipede all eventually made the cut. Blizzard Entertainment, Capcom, Konami, id Software, and Maxis each have two inducted games. Seven other developers have had more than one title nominated, reflecting how broadly the hall reaches across the industry's history.

• 5. The Hall's Physical Home

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  The hall occupies a dedicated section within the ESL Digital Worlds: High Score exhibit at The Strong National Museum of Play. Before 2023, it was housed in the museum's eGameRevolution exhibit; a museum expansion that year prompted the relocation to its current space.

  The Strong sits in Rochester, New York, and its International Center for the History of Electronic Games provides the administrative backbone for the hall's operations. The museum's long engagement with popular play culture - its National Toy Hall of Fame has been running since 2002 - gives the video game hall an institutional home with deep curatorial experience. The pairing of toys and video games under one roof reflects how thoroughly digital play has become continuous with the broader history of childhood and leisure in the United States.

• 6. Patterns Across Induction Years

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  The 2015 class leaned heavily on games with unambiguous mainstream recognition: Doom, Pac-Man, Pong, Tetris, Super Mario Bros., and World of Warcraft covered the major eras from 1972 through 2004. The 2016 class brought in Grand Theft Auto III, The Oregon Trail, The Sims, Sonic the Hedgehog, Space Invaders, and the Legend of Zelda - adding open-world crime, educational gaming, life simulation, and a platformer icon that had waited a year as a finalist.

  By the 2020s the nominations began reaching into mobile gaming, social gaming, and survival horror. Candy Crush Saga appeared as a finalist in 2019 and 2022 without being inducted. Angry Birds by Rovio Entertainment was nominated in 2015, 2023, and 2025 before finally being inducted in 2026 alongside Dragon Quest, FIFA International Soccer, and Silent Hill. That 2026 class - with Konami's Silent Hill from 1999 and Chunsoft's Dragon Quest from 1986 - signals the hall's growing attention to the Japanese role-playing and horror genres that shaped an entire generation of players worldwide.