The World Video Game Hall of Fame inductees for 2020 are in with games newer and older now ranked among many others as some of the most impactful and influential games of all time. This year’s inductees are Bejeweled, Centipede, King’s Quest, and Minecraft, each of those games spread throughout a variety of platforms and catering to different interests throughout the years. These games were chosen from a number of finalists presented to the public earlier in the year that included many more big names that were eventually narrowed down to just these four 2020 inclusions.
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Each of these four games needs little introduction since they’re popular enough that pretty much everyone who’s played games over the years will have heard of them at least in passing, but if you haven’t the official announcement about this year’s inductees from the World Video Game Hall of Fame shares more insights into each of the titles and how their influences were felt around their release and to-date.
Minecraft, for example, is the most recent of the games inducted into the hall of fame this year. Andrew Borman, the digital games curator for the National Museum of Play, cited the game’s simplicity and initial indie status as reasons for why it belonged in the annals.
There you have it. This year’s inductees to the World Video Game Hall of Fame are Bejeweled, Centipede, King’s Quest, and Minecraft!
— The Strong Museum (@museumofplay) June 18, 2020
“The success of Minecraft speaks to the maturing of video games as a cultural touchstone,” Borman said. “No longer do game creators need to be obsessed about having the most realistic looking graphics. Minecraft features a retro simplicity that hearkens back to fondly remembered days of 8-bit computers. Minecraft came of age at a time when indie gaming had emerged to give individual developers a greater say in the games they developed, and no game is a better representative of this movement than this bestselling hit creation.”
The full list of finalists for this year’s inductees included Bejeweled, Centipede, Frogger, GoldenEye 007, Guitar Hero, King’s Quest, Minecraft, NBA Jame, Nokia Snake, Super Smash Brothers Melee, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Last year’s inductees were Mortal Kombat, Super Mario Kart, Microsoft Solitaire, and Colossal Cave Adventure with all of these games now listed among many others of similar importance.
