Video Game Hall of Fame nominees this year include Myst, Metroid, and Asteroids

[Shawn Knight]

In brief: The Strong National Museum of Play has announced 12 finalists for its World Video Game Hall of Fame. Nominees for the 10th annual class include titles from a variety of genres and date back to the 1970s. Ultimately, only a handful of games will make the cut. Who should get in this year? Let's have a look at the nominees.

Finalists for the 2024 class include:

• Asteroids
• Elite
• Guitar Hero
• Metroid
• Myst
• Neopets
• Resident Evil
• SimCity
• Tokimeki Memorial
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
• Ultima
• You Don't Know Jack

As has been the case in previous years, this isn't the first time that some of these games have made it to the finals. Myst, for example, was nominated in 2017 and again in 2019 but came up short both times. Resident Evil was a finalist in 2017 as well, and was one of 12 finalists again in 2022. Guitar Hero made it to the finals in 2020 and 2021.

Jon-Paul C. Dyson, director of The Strong's International Center for the History of Electronic Games, said that even 10 years in, there's no shortage of deserving contenders that have had enormous influence on pop culture and the game industry itself.

Four games typically make it into the Hall of Fame each year. If it were up to me, Myst and Resident Evil would get in with no questions asked. Myst was jaw-droppingly gorgeous when it arrived on the Macintosh in 1993 – truly unlike anything before. Resident Evil seemingly came out of nowhere and was scary good in all the right ways.

The other two spots would probably go to Guitar Hero and Metroid. I have fond memories of playing Guitar Hero (and Rock Band) with friends into the early hours of the morning. I didn't play the original Metroid much, but fell in love with Super Metroid for the SNES.

From now through March 21, you have the opportunity to cast your vote for your favorite through the Player's Choice Ballot. What game gets your vote?

Inductees will be announced on May 9.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/102267-strong-museum-video-game-hall-fame-nominees-include.html

 

[nnguy2]

I think SimCity should be a shoe-in.

 

[Aus spot]

Another vote for simcity. It was huge and very high replay-ability.

Followed by astroids, another classic basically because it existed before most games and everyone played it.

And possibly the skateboarding game. I never played it, but the fact I had no interest, but I still heard about it multiple times and gave me my first insight as to who tony was, certainly had impact.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Asteroid
Myst
SimCity
Ultima

Each of those games is almost foundational to an entire genre.

Asteroids is about as core as a shooter can get.

Myst is the iconic point and click puzzler (the heart of stuff like The Talos Principle and Portal).

SimCity is the great granddaddy of the entire Sim genre.

And Ultima has the whole RPG/Dungeon Crawler genre standing on its shoulders.

The other games are absolutely not slouches, Elite absolutely deserves a spot at some point, as does Guitar Hero and Metroid, but not above the four listed above.

 

[OortCloud]

Interesting reading other peoples comments. For me it has to be Elite. I was lucky enough to have a BBC Micro, the system it was initially written for, so bought it pretty much on release day. The gameplay was so much more complex than anything around at the time and there was so much more depth to it. It's difficult to fully convey how much of a leap this felt when compared to other games at the time.

Full genuine 3d with hidden line removal, different galaxies, space stations, loads of ships, escape capsules, asteroids, docking, then docking computers, police, reputation, trading, ship upgrades, fuel scoops, lasers, missiles, countermeasures etc etc.
Then just when you thought you had seen everything you got contacted and asked to hunt down an experimental ship. All in 25k... An amazing technical achievement and so immersive.

 

[amghwk]

Simcity is a no-brainer. In fact, it's shocking that it was left out all these years.

I'm not a fan of Myst, though. It brought with it a deluge of copycat games where you are left alone with nice pics, but feeling empty. And everything during that era was ...... boring. Even the venerable Zork Nemesis fell into that trap. It's a better game, though.

 

[Crunch]

Interesting reading other peoples comments. For me it has to be Elite. I was lucky enough to have a BBC Micro, the system it was initially written for, so bought it pretty much on release day. The gameplay was so much more complex than anything around at the time and there was so much more depth to it. It's difficult to fully convey how much of a leap this felt when compared to other games at the time.

Full genuine 3d with hidden line removal, different galaxies, space stations, loads of ships, escape capsules, asteroids, docking, then docking computers, police, reputation, trading, ship upgrades, fuel scoops, lasers, missiles, countermeasures etc etc.
Then just when you thought you had seen everything you got contacted and asked to hunt down an experimental ship. All in 25k... An amazing technical achievement and so immersive.

What he said. After Elite it would be SimCity.

 

[Endymio]

I'm not a fan of Myst, though. It brought with it a deluge of copycat games ...

The very definition of being an influential classic. Myst literally spawned an entire genre.

 

[stewi0001]

I'm surprised these aren't in there already:
Asteroids
Metroid
Myst
Resident Evil
SimCity

 

[amghwk]

The very definition of being an influential classic. Myst literally spawned an entire genre.

It's so boring, nonetheless.

When I go back to playing these games , so called "influenced" by Myst, I can't help the feeling of being so bored playing the pre-rendered screens.

You want "interactions". Not just clicking on pre-rendered, destined so-called puzzle game masquerading as "adventure" game.

 

[ZedRM]

It's a toss up between Metroid and Simcity. I love both equally so this would be a tough choice for me. Myst would be a close runner up because it was very ground-breaking.

The rest represent good or great moments in gaming history, but just don't qualify, IMPO.