Barbie Fashion Designer – bigger than Quake (pic: Mattel)



The yearly additions to the World Video Game Hall of Fame include the first ever commercial video game and The Last Of Us .



We’re going to be honest, we’ve never heard of The Strong, but according to Wikipedia it’s ‘an interactive, collections-based educational institution in Rochester, New York.’



It’s also home to the World Video Game Hall of Fame, which seems a bit presumptive, in terms of the World designation, but we have to say their new inductees for this year do inarguably deserve to be there – yes, even the Barbie one.



Barbie Fashion Designer, Computer Space, Wii Sports, and The Last of Us all changed video games in important ways and absolutely deserve to be recognised for their impact.



Computer Space is the most obviously worthy of the quartet, as while not famous in itself, because there weren’t many coin-ops produced at the time, it was the first commercially released video game and the first ever arcade game.



It was released in 1971 and co-designed by Nolan Bushnell, who would later go on to found Atari. So, yeah, it’s a cast iron classic and absolutely deserving of its spot.



Wii Sports needs much less introduction, as it was single-handedly responsible for the success of the Wii, starting from 2006.



It not only made motion controls mainstream but opened up video games to a much wider range of people than ever before – while also helping Nintendo to recover from the failures of the N64 and GameCube.









1996’s Barbie Fashion Designer also had a surprisingly profound effect on gaming, as it proved that titles aimed primarily at girls could be successful.



Although most of the games that resulted were pretty patronising it ultimately helped to pave the wave for later, non-violent games such as Animal Crossing and much of the Nintendo DS catalogue.



By comparison, 2013’s The Last Of Us is arguably the least qualified to be on the list, although it still deserves its spot on the basis of not just its quality but the way it’s inspired other action-based narrative games and, especially through the TV show adaption, helped to legitimise video game storytelling in the eyes of the wider public.



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The hall of fame has been going since 2015 and you can view the full list here , but most of the other nominees for this year were also very deserving, including GoldenEye 007, Quake (which was actually outsold by Barbie Fashion Designer the year it was released), Age Of Empires, Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, FIFA, Angry Birds, NBA 2K, and Wizardry.



We’re sure many, if not all, of these will eventually enter the hall but for this year the line-up is very deserving and it’s interesting to think of the impact all four games have had.



96 year old Jeanine and 85 year old Gilbert won a Wii Bowling LAN in France this weekend We need more of this pic.twitter.com/NPtauo3xmz — Jake Lucky (@JakeSucky) April 11, 2023



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