The World Video Game Hall of Fame has announced its latest inductees for 2025: Defender, GoldenEye 007, Quake, and Tamagotchi. These four iconic games were chosen from a group of finalists that also included Age of Empires, Angry Birds, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Frogger, Golden Tee, Harvest Moon, Mattel Football, and NBA 2K. The inductees were revealed during a special ceremony featuring speeches from members of the Defender development team, Quake co-creator John Romero, and Bandai Namco’s head of Tamagotchi, Tara Badie.
The games will be enshrined in the museum’s World Video Game Hall of Fame rotunda, which is part of the ESL Digital Worlds exhibit. Defender, released by Williams Electronics in 1981, proved that players would embrace more complex and challenging arcade games. It combined intense gameplay with a complicated control scheme and a horizontally scrolling space shooter.
Defender sold more than 55,000 units, making it a bestseller and helping to create a new market for more challenging games. GoldenEye 007, developed by Rare and Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 console in 1997, was a first-person shooter based on the iconic British superspy James Bond.
New Hall of Fame inductees
The game was praised for its in-depth story, immersive gameplay, and highly popular four-person multiplayer mode, which influenced many multiplayer games that followed. GoldenEye 007 was the third best-selling game for the Nintendo 64, behind only Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64. Tamagotchi, launched in 1996, bridged the gap between toys and video games.
The handheld electronic game allowed owners to nurture and raise a digital pet by pressing buttons, providing affection and attention from birth to adulthood. Tamagotchi spurred the popularity of the pet simulation genre, leading to popular games such as Neopets and Nintendogs. Quake, released by Id Software in 1996, shook up the gaming world with its 3-D engine, which became the new industry standard, and its multiplayer mode, which helped spawn the world of esports.
The revolutionary Quake game code has been linked to dozens of other games and continues to be used in some modern games nearly 30 years after its release. The World Video Game Hall of Fame at The Strong was established in 2015 to recognize individual electronic games of all types 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. Anyone may nominate a game to the World Video Game Hall of Fame, with final selections made on the advice of journalists, scholars, and other individuals familiar with the history of video games and their role in society.
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