What videogames are you playing in 2025?

[TwoSix]

Dragon Quest (1986) - Look, Final Fantasy VII was inducted in 2018 and absolutely deserves its spot as the first JRPG ever inducted in the video game Hall of Fame. But Dragon Quest (released as Dragon Warrior on the NES in the US in 1989) absolutely deserves to be the second. Release dates for new Dragon Quest games are still treated in Japan like they're national holidays. Final Fantasy wouldn't have ever even come into existence without Dragon Quest paving the way.

I think a sticking point for Dragon Quest is "which game do you induct?" There are a few games in the current hall that are placeholders for franchises, like Mario Kart, Madden, and Zelda. But there are other famous franchises where a game further into the series in honored over, or besides, the franchise originator (like FF7, or Zelda:OoT, or GTA3). All of the games inducted as part of a franchise are all, on their own, seminal games, even without the historical weight of "introducing a famous franchise".

For Dragon Quest, you could induct DQ1, but DQ1 honestly isn't very good! The franchise didn't really come into its own until DQ3.

 

[trappedslider]

I should have taken a pic in the day light

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Since nobody asked, here's my top ten list of games that haven't been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame that should've been, in no particular order

Wizardry (1981) - The original "Blobber" (I hate that name but apparently that's what they're calling it), Wizardry didn't have the kind of lasting power either Ultima or the later Blobber series Might & Magic had in the west. It probably doesn't help that Wizardry IV was the most spiteful video game of all time (at least until 1994 when From Software started making video games and things took a turn). However, it is impossible to overstate the popularity this series had and still maintains in Japan. Its influence on the development of the "JRPG" genre is just as significant as Ultima, inducted in 2024, and Wizardry deserves just as much credit for that.

Fire Emblem (1990) - The popularizer (if not progenitor) to the Strategy RPG genre, Fire Emblem not only spanned a massive franchise that is still going strong and successful to this day, but also made what had been a mostly niche genre more influenced by Ultima III than anything and gave it its own identity. The lack of an official US release (outside of a crappy timed exclusive Nintendo pulled on the Switch a while back) will probably prevent this from getting inducted, but it absolutely should be.

Dragon Quest (1986) - Look, Final Fantasy VII was inducted in 2018 and absolutely deserves its spot as the first JRPG ever inducted in the video game Hall of Fame. But Dragon Quest (released as Dragon Warrior on the NES in the US in 1989) absolutely deserves to be the second. Release dates for new Dragon Quest games are still treated in Japan like they're national holidays. Final Fantasy wouldn't have ever even come into existence without Dragon Quest paving the way.

Zork (1977) - Yes, Colossal Cave Adventure really did create the text-based adventure genre, and I would never argue it didn't earn its induction in 2019. But Zork really popularized the genre in a way few games have been able to. It's got to be the next example of the genre to be inducted.

Pokemon Go (2016) - Before you start, keep in mind that Bejeweled (inducted 2020) and Tamagotchi (inducted this year) are already on in the Hall of Fame, so this fits in just fine. It's hard to overstate just how ubiquitous in the popular culture Pokemon Go was at its height. Also, it would be the first game inducted to the Hall of Fame that was released after the Video Game Hall of Fame was created!

Breakout (1976) - A natural evolution from Pong and just an incredibly seminal arcade game.

Bioshock (2007) - It's easy to look back now and see a middling FPS with one singular spectacular twist, but this is the game that sparked the "are video games art?" debate. It was huge at the time and you can still trace a lot of the storytelling traditions in current video games to a lot of the stuff this game was doing.

Gran Turismo (1997) - Right now the only racing game inducted into the hall of fame is Super Mario Kart (inducted in 2019) and that seems like a shame. Gran Turismo made realistic racers extremely popular. It's still one of the most successful franchises of all the time and the original game holds the distinction of being the greatest selling game on the original Playstation of all time. And that was a stacked console!

Super Metroid (1994) - Look, when your game's name makes up over 50% of the name of an extremely popular and enduring genre of video games, you get to be called seminal. Going with Super instead of the OG because it was really this game that people think about when they say "Metroidvania".

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997) - And this is the game that lends the "Vania" to the genre, and probably deserves credit for turning a mostly moribund franchise into one that's so popular Netflix is making multiple series based on it. It also slaps, as the kids would say.

Honorable Mentions: Breakout (1976); Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!! (1987); Ninja Gaiden (1988); Mega Man 2 (1988); The Secret of Monkey Island (1990); Worms (1995); Thief: The Dark Project (1998)

I think these are all great suggestions except Bioshock. I disagree that's it's a case of "looking back". At the time, I said it was a mediocre-to-bad FPS with amazing visual design and a fancy-but-ultimately-kind-of-stupid plot, but which was a big downgrade gameplay-wise and conceptually from things like System Shock 2.

Also, it didn't really spark the "are videogames art" debate because it was like, artistically more impressive than previous games, as one might have hoped. It sparked it because Playstation (and to a lesser extent Xbox) consoles had brought games to an awful lot of people who weren't previously playing them very much, and for a lot of 20-something games journos, it was the first videogame that they'd played that obviously "had ideas", because they hadn't really played RPGs or intelligent JRPGs in the 1990s (this was very obvious with a lot of EDGE's writers, for example), let alone text adventures or point-and-click adventures, many of which were more obviously "art" than Bioshock, and with a lot more to say, to boot! The "ideas" in question were deeply sophomoric, and the game lacked the bravery to make choice have any real consequences, but the first-person and relatively cinematic presentation clearly worked in getting a lot of the audience to recognise that they were there.

It's demented that Wizardry isn't in there though. Like, would JRPGs even exist in the form they do without Wizardry? Doubt it.

 

[TheSword]

Quite enjoying Alan Wake 2. Thoroughly enjoyed the original and love how the sequel riffs off the original. Frankly the graphics, story and atmosphere is amazing. It has a great true crime vibe to it as well. Early days but really enjoying it.

Also really enjoying my go to guilty pleasure - 7 days to die!

 

[Scribe]

Im a little surprised its taken this long for them to be inducted.

Agreed, to the point I have to wonder whats been inducted before because any list without those games is a failure.

 

[Gradine]

I think these are all great suggestions except Bioshock. I disagree that's it's a case of "looking back". At the time, I said it was a mediocre-to-bad FPS with amazing visual design and a fancy-but-ultimately-kind-of-stupid plot, but which was a big downgrade gameplay-wise and conceptually from things like System Shock 2.

Also, it didn't really spark the "are videogames art" debate because it was like, artistically more impressive than previous games, as one might have hoped. It sparked it because Playstation (and to a lesser extent Xbox) consoles had brought games to an awful lot of people who weren't previously playing them very much, and for a lot of 20-something games journos, it was the first videogame that they'd played that obviously "had ideas", because they hadn't really played RPGs or intelligent JRPGs in the 1990s (this was very obvious with a lot of EDGE's writers, for example), let alone text adventures or point-and-click adventures, many of which were more obviously "art" than Bioshock, and with a lot more to say, to boot! The "ideas" in question were deeply sophomoric, and the game lacked the bravery to make choice have any real consequences, but the first-person and relatively cinematic presentation clearly worked in getting a lot of the audience to recognise that they were there.

The thing to note about the Hall of Fame is that cultural impact has a much larger influence on getting in than actual game quality. Whether that's deserving of being the game that sparked the "games are art" or not is less material here than whether it was or not. That said, it was definitely the one on the top ten list I was the shakiest about, because it retrospect you're right, it isn't a very good game, but at the time? It was an industry darling, and I don't think that was entirely undeserved. It was definitely the smartest FPS to wind up on consoles at the time, low of a bar as that was, and we were still living in the age when PC Gaming and Console Gaming were pretending the other was much worse. It certainly doesn't help that maybe fifteen people played System Shock 2 so they didn't have something else to compare it to. Ken Levine certainly didn't get more bold with his ideas as he aged.

But the "quality" of the game not being as important as the cultural impact is a big thing I noted when looking at the Hall of Fame list. Mortal Kombat is on the list, for instance, which makes a ton of sense until you remember that Mortal Kombat was a pretty terrible fighting game even at the time. John Madden Football is on the list, and Madden games took years before they were considered even acceptable NFL games. The original game was dire.

If I were basing strictly on quality though I would have filled Bioshock's spot with Silent Hill 2, and I could buy the argument of having it there instead.

It's demented that Wizardry isn't in there though. Like, would JRPGs even exist in the form they do without Wizardry? Doubt it.

This is the thing! It's why Wizardry had to top the list. It was wild to me that it didn't even make the shortlist for 2025.

 

[Gradine]

Agreed, to the point I have to wonder whats been inducted before because any list without those games is a failure.

You can find the full list of 49 here: Inducted Games - The Strong National Museum of Play

Given the criteria here, which, quote: "The Strong’s World Video Game Hall of Fame recognizes individual electronic games of all types—arcade, console, computer, handheld, and mobile—that have enjoyed popularity over a sustained period and have exerted influence on the video game industry or on popular culture and society in general," I'm hard pressed to find any that really raise the eyebrow. John Madden Football, as I mentioned above, is standing in for its franchise so it's hard to blame it, and even the ludicrous-at-first-glance inclusion of Barbie Fashion Designer makes more sense when you learn that it, a PC game marketed to directly to young girls, sold over 500,000 copies in its first two months on the shelves and outsold both Doom and Quake, in 1996.

Within just the FPS genre, Quake and Goldeneye are joining Doom, Halo, and nothing else (also, Call of Duty 4: Black Ops made the shortlist this year). I'm fine with them adding Doom before Quake; I guess you could argue that Halo wouldn't have been Halo without Goldeneye really popularizing the multiplayer deathmatch concept, but you could also argue that Halo had a bigger impact on the genre overall.

 

[Gradine]

I think a sticking point for Dragon Quest is "which game do you induct?" There are a few games in the current hall that are placeholders for franchises, like Mario Kart, Madden, and Zelda. But there are other famous franchises where a game further into the series in honored over, or besides, the franchise originator (like FF7, or Zelda:OoT, or GTA3). All of the games inducted as part of a franchise are all, on their own, seminal games, even without the historical weight of "introducing a famous franchise".

For Dragon Quest, you could induct DQ1, but DQ1 honestly isn't very good! The franchise didn't really come into its own until DQ3.

With the way the Hall of Fame seems to be selecting games, it'd be hard to argue any individual game in the series had a bigger singular influence on the genre. I mean, the one exception here is of course Dragon Quest V, and the original didn't even make it out of Japan until decades later, so I doubt you'll find an American Hall of Fame going that route. I'd be fine with DQ3, I guess, but I still think the originator would be the one to go with, since so much in the series (and honestly, the genre) were built upon it.

 

[payn]

Looking over the list it makes sense, until I get to Barbie Fashion designer. Ive never even heard of that. Was it really a big thing?

 

[trappedslider]

Looking over the list it makes sense, until I get to Barbie Fashion designer. Ive never even heard of that. Was it really a big thing?

yes, i'm guessing so

Why Barbie Fashion Designer is a GREAT Selection for the World Video Game Hall of Fame - The Strong National Museum of Play

Most years when we pick the finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame—and then when our International Selection Advisory Committee and fans help determine the inductees—there is controversy over one of the picks. Our very first year in 2015, for example, we named Angry Birds as a finalist...

www.museumofplay.org