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Video Game Legends To Be Inducted Into Hall of Fame

Posted by Soulskill on from the fierce-competition-between-tetrominoes dept.

killdashnine writes "Last year we discussed the creation of the International Video Game Hall of Fame and Museum in Ottumwa, Iowa, and a first event in 2009 which brought 3,500 people to witness it. Since then, there's been much progress toward creation of the museum, including the upcoming 'Big Bang 2010' exhibition. Their first event kicks off with formal induction ceremonies, tournaments, record-setting attempts, and an array of concerts from 8-bit music to modern rock. This serves as the first official fundraiser for this new non-profit. Iowa is positioning itself as the Video Game Capital of the World. While some sneer and scoff at this, pointing to LA or Seattle as gaming giants and rightful heirs to the title, the real goal is not to glorify software developers but rather to memorialize the 'heroes of video games,' from the iconic Pac Man to pioneers such as Ralph Baer." Here's a list of this year's inductees. Who gets your vote for next year?

1 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. You got the wrong continent by toutankh · · Score: -1, Troll

    "While some sneer and scoff at this, pointing to LA or Seattle as gaming giants and rightful heirs to the title"

    This reminds me of all these USA-centered Hollywood movies, where aliens always choose some place in the USA to contact the Earth, etc.
    The thing is, if such a place should be somewhere, then it should definitely be somewhere in Japan, where pac-man, space invaders, mario, sonic, final fantasy and many more come from.
    Of course a lot of great games were later developed in the USA (and in Europe), but well one should be fair to history.

    The fact that in the last 10-15 years video games became such a large-scale industry with production processes and budgets similar to movies changed a bit this landscape. There are of course a few already cited pioneers (S. Meier, J. Carmack, J. Mechner) but they are more like exceptions, and they still came much later than the Japanese pioneers.
    But mostly and originally, video games come from Japan!
    The whole thing sounds a bit like making a sushi hall of fame in LA - of course there exists such a thing as a California maki...

    It also sounds a bit like having a gangsta rap hall of fame in Osaka, and I do not doubt that there are Japanese gangsta rappers... Wait, this would actually be awesome, in a kitschy way.