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The World Video Game Hall of Fame 2017 Inductees (polygon.com)
Dave Knott writes: The 2017 World Video Game Hall of Fame inductees have been announced. The 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." The 2017 inductees are: Donkey Kong, Halo: Combat Evolved, Pokemon Red and Green, and Street Fighter II. These four titles join the inaugural 2015 class, which included Pong, Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, Doom and World of Warcraft, and the 2016 class which included Grand Theft Auto 3, The Legend of Zelda, The Oregon Trail, The Sims, Sonic the Hedgehog and Space Invaders.
I always preferred SF2: championship edition to the original. I was never a fan of the new-fangled turbo one nearly so much. That probably has mostly to do with the good arcade near me having a really spiffy championship edition machine.
I always sucked at Zangief, but I love the ending with him.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If that's in there, then Carmen Sandiego should be, too.
I was surprised to see it was not there either.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Whoever put this list together doesn't have a slightest idea of how games evolved, probably wasn't even there to see.
Ok I found the list but not via links, i had to guesstimate it in the browser url bar.
My thoughts on their list:
No Civilization. No Simcity. No Prince of Persia, No Monkey Island, No Super Mario Kart.
Doom should be Doom 2 or Wolfenstein. Wolfenstein was the first FPS to be popular with everyone. Doom was bigger than that but Doom 2 exploded on the scene. There was not one home computer back in Doom 2's time that didn't have Doom 2 on it. No other game can EVER beat that without bundling.
Halo was popular. It was a xbox system seller and something pc/mac fans were waiting for until microsoft did the dirty and turned it xbox only. But this game wasn't revolutionary in terms of gaming as a whole. When this game came out PC gamers had Unreal, Quake, Call Of Duty, Battlefield 1942, Thief, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Soldier of Fortune etc. This spot should be Half Life or System Shock or Deux Ex.
Street Fighter 2 should be Street Fighter 2 Turbo. SF2T was SF2 with bug fixes and more moves turning it into a way better game. Everything about SF2T was better. More characters, more stages and it sold more copies too.
Core War should have been in the first batch. It's still light years ahead of anything on the consoles.
I recently watched the Donkey Kong documentary 'King of Kong', I found new respect for the game, which I found extremely frustrating back in the day.
While I've played the 70s and 80s games in their list, I never got around to picking up Halo or Sonic.
I guess I've got some video game playing to look forward to.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Street Fighter 2 should be Street Fighter 2 Turbo. SF2T was SF2 with bug fixes and more moves turning it into a way better game.
SFT: Championship Edition was SF2 with bugfixes, some speedups for some characters (blanka?) and the pallette swap so you could have two of the same character fighting other than Ken versus Ruy.
SF2 Turbo, gave an overall speedup and added some new special moves.
Then again, bugs are not all bad: the whole combo move mechanic spawned by SF2 was in fact a bug.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I agree that Wolfenstein should be on there. It was the granddaddy of FPS's. It set the style of picking up supplies for reloads and healing, the visual of having the end of your gun always visible at the bottom of your screen, and just generally developing a hate for Nazis. I still occasionally fire it up for kicks - there's something jarring about not being able to lift your head to look around. Adds to the suspense.
Generally it look like this is a popularity list, without much deep thought. That none of the FF's are on it is surprising. Halo was popular but not original at all.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
I can't believe that "Hello Kitty: Island Adventure" isn't on the list. It's like they're not even trying.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
"It was with the release of Dune II from Westwood Studios (1992) that real-time strategy became recognized as a distinct genre of video games".
Yes, but the first successful RTS was command and conquer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Any "Hall of Fame" for video games that didn't include Elite in its founding is seriously misguided. Open world, sandbox, 3D, vector graphics. That it's missing Civilization is bad enough, but ignoring the imapct of Elite is practically a criminal act.
Dune 2 Reception
I suspect the list isn't complete, but even so Dune 2 was Amiga User International's Game of the Month and Computer Gaming World's Strategy Game of the Year when it came out in 1993, and has been included in numerous "best of" lists since then.
Command and Conquer undoubtedly sold more units than Dune 2, but if you want to go on pure sales then Starcraft beats both of them hands down.
It is normal for later (successful) games to sell more than earlier (successful) games, there's been more time to address gameplay issues, there's a bigger fanbase, and there's a bigger population of gamers in general. But Dune 2 was successful enough to win multiple awards and inspire Westwood to invest in Command & Conquer.
Even more importantly, Dune 2 was successful enough to inspire Blizzard to create the first Warcraft game, which actually beat Command & Conquer to market. In fact supposedly Westwood was so secretive about the devlopment of Command & Conquer that Blizzard initially thought they were the only ones continuing the legacy of/cashing in on the success of Dune 2.
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There are a lot of games you could argue they should have included instead of the ones that have been added so far, a lot of which have been suggested above. But how did they fail to cash in on the 30th anniversary of Final Fantasy?
Final Fantasy deserves to be on the list in its own right (one of the founding JRPGs, saved Square from bankruptcy, started a huge series with over 130 million sales total, etc) but they also could have used the opportunity to cross-promote with Squenix's own 30th anniversary promotions.
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for ATARI 8-bit computers, or GTFO!
And Bonnie Ross is on twitter taking credit for it. Mean while her sh!t bag company 343 has had two major flops in the franchise. MCC, which has never fully been fixed and the nightmare that was Halo 5.
Halo was popular. It was a xbox system seller and something pc/mac fans were waiting for until microsoft did the dirty and turned it xbox only. But this game wasn't revolutionary in terms of gaming as a whole. When this game came out PC gamers had Unreal, Quake, Call Of Duty, Battlefield 1942, Thief, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Soldier of Fortune etc
Yeah, Halo seems like the weakest of the inductees and looks like a reach to please younger and/or console gamers. There was nothing unique in Halo that PC games hadn't done years prior. Even on consoles there was Goldeneye long before Halo. Halo was good game, that just happened to hit the market at the right time to spawn a huge franchise.
I think the contribution of Halo was atmosphere and storytelling, not so much game mechanics. What FPS did a better job of world building at the time? Half life was good at this but I think Halo was better. But yeah HL should also definitely be on the list.
Does that include sales and revenues from arcade version? SF2CE and turbo were far more influential.
Seriously. I mean, if we're talking about games that have truly had an impact, you cannot deny it. I don't really get it, but my kids do, and I can certainly appreciate it for what it is and how popular it has become.
Personally... I have been gaming since gaming began really, although I don't do a lot of it. Some of the games that have made the Hall of Fame I have never played, but recognize them for being important in the world of gaming. I would have rather seen Quake or Half-Life on the list. I spent many many hours playing Quake Mega-TF before 2000, we had a server at the company I worked at. It never got old, and I even made some maps for us to play. It really is the basis for me when it come to multi player FPS. Half-Life is just such a juggernaut when it comes to raising the bar on not only gameplay, but visually.
I just can't get into console gaming anymore, for me the real platform is the PC, and am surprised that Halo made the list.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I think the contribution of Halo was atmosphere and storytelling, not so much game mechanics. What FPS did a better job of world building at the time? Half life was good at this but I think Halo was better. But yeah HL should also definitely be on the list.
There's no shortage of games with atmosphere and stories in PC gaming history if that's the main criteria for greatness. For story-driven FPS games specifically, you already mentioned Half-Life, but System Shock (1994) and System Shock 2 (1999) would also be contenders (and have been mentioned by others in this discussion). Halo was very good at porting existing game concepts and mechanics to consoles at a very fortuitous time.
Dune 2 Reception
True, however it is C&C that popularised the genre.
I like Dune 2, it was the first of what we'd call a modern RTS, but it's not as good as C&C. Dune 2 is more the Release Candidate of RTS, C&C was the SP1 with most of the bugs ironed out. I think the biggest contributing factor in Dune 2's success was the Dune backstory where most gamer's of the time were also avid Sci-Fi fans and readers. If it weren't for this, I suspect C&C may never had been made.
Even back in 1995, compared to C&C, Dune 2 was inferior. Not bad mind you, but it's like comparing Supreme Commander to Total Annihilation. You'll still go back and play TA because it's a good game in its own right, but it's flaws compared to SupCom are glaring.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.