Pong and Doom enter game Hall of Fame

Pong and Doom have been inducted into the first Video Game Hall of Fame.

The project to find influential games that deserved to be in the Hall of Fame was begun in February by The Strong – a US museum of play.

Tetris, Super Mario Bros, Pac-Man, and World of Warcraft were also chosen to feature in an exhibit of iconic games.

Angry Birds and Minecraft were nominated but did not make the final list.

The museum invited people to nominate games played on PCs, consoles, hand-held gadgets, phones or in arcades.

Game changers

The winners span three decades of gaming from Pong, first released in 1972, to World of Warcraft which debuted in late 2004.

Pong was chosen because it launched the entire games industry, said the museum in a statement, revealing the six entrants in its Hall of Fame. It acknowledged that it was not the first electronic game but was the first to get “wide-scale public attention”.

Other games were chosen for becoming cultural icons (Tetris), making games a mass-market phenomenon (Pac-Man) and changing the way games were made (Doom).

World of Warcraft was chosen, said the museum, because of its longevity and the way it has brought millions of players together into one game world.

The winners were whittled down from a long list of 15 that was picked by an internal panel of academics, journalists and game experts recruited by The Strong. Their decisions were based on a game’s longevity, influence, geographical reach and iconic status.

The museum now plans to feature the winning games, the other nominees and many others in a permanent exhibition.

The other nine nominees included Legend of Zelda, Space Invaders, the Oregon Trail and Pokemon. Nominees for the 2016 inductees to the hall of fame are now being accepted.

Based in Rochester, New York, The Strong was founded in 1968 by Margaret Woodbury Strong a collector of toys, dolls and other play paraphernalia.