The Strong Museum, located in Rochester, New York, is known for its vast collection of games, toys and collectibles according to Visitrochester. Their collection is said to be the largest in the world, which provides foundation for one of their newer acknowledgments of video game history, in the form of The Video Game Hall of Fame. The Strong Museum created the Video Game Hall of Fame in 2015 in order to recognize video games that have made a significant impact on popular culture, society, or the video game industry as a whole according to a statement quoted in Nintendolife. Recently, the finalists have been announced for this year’s Hall of Fame, the winners of which will be announced on May 4th.
The Strong Museum usually admits six games a year into the Hall of Fame. Three of those games come from the National Selection Advisory Committee, the other three come from a public vote based on twelve nominees.
This year, the selected nominees are Wii Sports, Goldeneye 007, Quake, Age of Empires, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the FIFA series, the 2K NBA series, Angry Birds, The Last of Us, Barbie Fashion Designer, Wizardry and Computer Space. Each of these games/franchises have arguably had a significant impact on the gaming world. Wii Sports being the fourth highest-selling game of all time at over 82 million units sold according to IGN, Computer Space was the first commercial video game back in 1971 and Wizardry was a pioneer of fantasy role-playing video games back in the early 1980’s, just as a few examples.
These nominees join a strong list of past winners, some of which include Tetris, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Super Mario Bros., World Of Warcraft, and many others.
Out of the twelve nominees, it is up to the public to decide which ones are worthy of being put in the Hall of Fame based on their own criteria. They get full control of the three voted-on nominations, so the public will see the group consensus on May 4th when the results are revealed and the three highest-voted games are inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame.