VGC Updates – Video Game Canon

Angry Birds, Dragon Quest, FIFA Soccer, and Silent Hill are the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026

Sometimes it’s a mystery why the World Video Game Hall of Fame‘s International Selection Advisory Committee votes the way they do. But in other years, such as this year, you can definitely see the thought process behind the ballots.

For example, just look at FIFA International Soccer. The soccer sim from EA Sports has made multiple appearances as a finalist for induction to the Hall of Fame. But with an actual World Cup looming in the not-too-distant future (and in North America, no less), it easily made the cut as part of the Class of 2026.

“EA Sports FIFA was an instant success,” said Jeremy Saucier, the Vice President for Interpretation and Electronic Games at the Strong Museum of Play. “Despite launching in December of 1993, it was the best-selling game in Europe for that year. Given soccer’s worldwide popularity, it had a larger global imprint than other popular sports titles.”

The Strong Museum of Play announced a total of four inductees this year, and you can also clearly see the seams behind the selections of Enix’s Dragon Quest and Konami’s Silent Hill. Both franchises benefited from the release of at least one critically-acclaimed remake over the last two years, and several promising new adventures are in the works. The best time to honor both games was definitely now.

“It would be difficult to imagine the modern roleplaying games without Dragon Quest,” said Lindsey Kurano, the Strong’s Electronic Games Curator “While Dragon Quest’s popularity has always been greater in Japan than abroad, it’s influence on the gaming industry and other iconic RPG games is undeniable.”

“More than its clear commercial success, Silent Hill’s significance lay in the ways that it pushed the horror genre in new, psychological directions that engaged players’ emotions as much as their reflexes,” said Andrew Borman, the Director of Digital Preservation at the Strong.

Finally this year, Rovio’s Angry Birds was picked as part of the Class of 2026. Unless I missed it, there wasn’t any kind of catalyzing force that helped push Angry Birds over the top. But its bird-smashing gameplay was novel on mobile devices in 2009 and is just as fun today.

“Angry Birds helped launch not only billions of birds but the entire mobile gaming revolution,” Kristy Hisert, the Strong’s Director of Collections Management. “It shattered records and helped transform people’s relationships with the palm-sized communication and gaming devices they carry in pockets and purses.”

A total of 53 games have now been inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame since its opening in 2015. All of the games will be included as part of the next update to the Video Game Canon, which is currently scheduled for later this year. And don’t forget, you can get a jump on nominating a game for consideration for next year’s group of finalists at MuseumOfPlay.org

Dexerto Updates “These Are the 100 Best Games of All Time” for 2025

Dexerto updated their Best Games list, “These Are the 100 Best Games of All Time”, for 2025 earlier this month.

From Software’s Elden Ring retained the top spot, and led a top ten that looks mostly the same, though Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 moved up (to #3) and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (#11) was displaced by The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (#8).

The most interesting part of Dexerto’s list was the huge number of 2025 releases that made the cut. This year’s leading Game of the Year contender, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, was ranked the highest (at #20). But the site’s editors also found space for Split Fiction (#41), Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (#47), Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (#75), and Blue Prince (#83).

The games from the 2025 edition of Dexerto’s “These Are the 100 Best Games of All Time” will be added to the Video Game Canon as part of the next update.

Meet the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2025: Quake, GoldenEye 007, Defender, and Tamagotchi

The James Bond films famously open with 007 dispatching another would-be assassin and a wisp of white smoke escaping from the barrel of a Walther PPK. This cinematic bit of tradition was also used to open Rare’s GoldenEye 007, and it helped set the stage for one of the greatest video game adaptations of all time.

Today, as wisps of white smoke also floated over the Vatican after the conclusion of the papal conclave, the Strong Museum’s World Video Game Hall of Fame announced that GoldenEye 007 had been selected as part of the institution’s Class of 2025.

The classic Nintendo 64 game was honored alongside three other title, including the other dominant shooter from the late 90s, id Software’s Quake. Williams’s Defender and Bandai’s Tamagotchi digital pet also got the nod as part of the Class of 2025. This year’s induction ceremony included appearances from Eugene Jarvis, the team on Defender; John Romero, the co-creator of Quake; and Tara Badie, the head of Tamagotchi for Bandai Namco.

After the ceremony, curators and historians from the Strong Museum attempted to place these games in their proper context within the history of video games.

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Zelda: Ocarina of Time Takes the Top Spot in Indy100’s “The Best 100 Video Games of All Time”

We’re just three months into 2025 and we have yet another new Best Games list to dissect and debate.

This time it comes from Indy100, a Digg-like viral news portal from British newspaper The Independent. “The Best 100 Video Games of All Time” sounds a little backwards to my American ears, but it’s business as usual at the top of the list as our old friend The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time took the #1 spot.

The list actually feels pretty traditional as you move through the rest of the Top 25. There’s Super Mario World at #3 and Half-Life 2 at #4 and The Last of Us at #9. Mainstays like Mass Effect 2 (#12), The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (#15), and Elden Ring (#17) can also be found in this stretch of the list.

But after that, more than 10% of the list is devoted to games that have never appeared on a Best Games list before. 2025’s Monster Hunter Wilds (#73) is the newest game on the list, but Indy100 also made room for 2024’s Astro Bot (#68), and 2023’s Alan Wake II (#77) and Spider-Man 2 (#72).

This batch of never-before-seen games also includes old favorites like 2000’s Spyro: Year of the Dragon (#81) and the incredibly-underrated Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil (#69) from 2001. Other new additions include God of War: Ragnarok (#16), Horizon: Forbidden West (#44), Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (#95), Devil May Cry 5 (#87), and Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (#88).

While a lot of new additions and old favorites dot the Indy100 list, the most unique part of “The Best 100 Video Games of All Time” might be the one game that didn’t make the cut… there’s no version of Tetris anywhere on the list. It’s a bit surprising, but it does happen.

The games from Indy100’s “The Best 100 Video Games of All Time” will be added to the Video Game Canon as part of the 2026 update.

World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Finalists for Class of 2025 Include Angry Birds, GoldenEye 007, Quake, and More

I can’t say that I blame them, but it sure looks the World Video Game Hall of Fame would like it to be 2023 again. The finalists for the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2025 were announced earlier this week, and six games that failed to make the cut from 2023 are getting another try this year. That crop of titles includes Ensemble’s Age of Empires, Rovio’s Angry Birds, Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Rare’s GoldenEye 007, Visual Concepts’s NBA 2K, and id Software’s Quake.

They’ll be competing against two other returning finalists, Konami’s Frogger (which was last up as a finalist in 2020) and the Mattel Football handheld .

Unorthodox handhelds are something of the theme this year, as Bandai’s Tamagotchi digital pet is a finalist (for the first time) as well. It’s joined by a trio of other first-timers including Midway’s Defender, Incredible Technologies’s Golden Tee Golf, and Natsume’s Harvest Moon.

“This year’s finalists span the decades and range from arcade classics to one of the most popular mobile games of all time,” said Jon-Paul Dyson, the Director of The Strong’s International Center for the History of Electronic Games. “All of these games have enormously influenced pop culture or the game industry itself. Frogger was popular in the arcades of the 1980s, but an iconic Seinfeld scene in 1998 made it unforgettable. The brilliant coding of the first-person shooter Quake enabled unforgettable multiplayer matches that have mesmerized players and influenced many games that followed. Then there’s Tamagotchi, which bridges the gap between video games and digital toys, changing the way we think about games.”

The Hall of Fame’s International Selection Advisory Committee, a body made up of journalists and scholars from around the world, is currently debating which of these games to induct as part of the Class of 2025, and you can help. A Player’s Choice Ballot will be available until March 13th and the three games that receive the most votes will be submitted alongside the other ballots from the committee members.

The World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2025 will be announced during a ceremony at The Strong on Thursday, May 8, at 10:30 AM. If you’d like to study up on this classic games, the curators at the Strong Museum have put together a cheat sheet describing each of games. You can find it after the break.

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Hades Debuts in the Top 10 in the 2025 Update to the Video Game Canon’s Top 1000

It took a little extra time, but the Version 8.0 update to the Video Game Canon is finally here.

With the addition of a handful of new lists since the last update, the Video Game Canon’s critical consensus is now aggregated using data from 80 Best Video Games of All Time lists published across the last four decades. That includes one list published just a few weeks ago (Rolling Stone’s “The 50 Greatest Video Games of All Time“) and one from 2024 Dexerto’s “These Are the 100 Best Games of All Time“).

Data from two older lists (The Sydney Morning Herald’s “Top 50 Video Games of All Time” from 2002 and Gamereactor’s “Best Ever: Games” from 2022) were also added to the dataset, as was the annual update to the “Shacknews Hall of Fame“.

If you’re new to the Video Game Canon, here’s a quick primer on how it all works.

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“These Are the 100 Best Games of All Time” According to the Editors of Dexerto and Elden Ring is #1

With Rolling Stone’s new Best Games list in the books, I was able to look back at a list I missed from 2024… Dexerto’s “These Are the 100 Best Games of All Time”.

Published in August, it’s a very list as it skews very modern, including the selection of From Software’s Elden Ring at #1. In fact, the remainder of the Top 5 (including Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 at #2, Atlus’s Persona 5 at #3, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us at #4, and Valve’s Portal 2 at #5) is comprised of games from the last 15 years.

This pattern continues the further down the list you go, including with all the games that Dexerto picked that have yet to appear on any Best Games lists. These first-time selections include Baldur’s Gate 3 (#8), Cyberpunk 2077 (#33), Sea of Thieves (#70), Doom Eternal (#81), 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (#84), Diablo IV (#86), and WWE Smackdown! Here Comes the Pain (#100).

The rest of Dexerto’s “These Are the 100 Best Games of All Time” is certainly worth a look and the list will be added to the Video Game Canon as part of the next update.

Rolling Stone Picks Zelda: Breath of the Wild as #1 in “The 50 Greatest Video Games of All Time”

Rolling Stone has been in the listmaking game for a very long time, first publishing “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” all the way back in 2003. But as we move into 2025, they’ve finally turned their editors loose on video games and published a new list of “The 50 Greatest Video Games of All Time“.

In creating their list, Rolling Stone decided to shy away from including dozens of sequels from the same franchise, and to ask how well the classics of yesteryear still hold up today:

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The Shacknews Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024 Finds Room for Super Smash Bros., Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and 40 Other Games

The whole world is getting ready to close the book on 2024, which means that it’s also time to meet the newest inductees to the Shacknews Hall of Fame.

A total of 42 new games were added to the Hall of Fame this year, most coming from the great gaming year of 1999. The Shacknews Hall of Fame runs on a 25-year eligibility window and only games released on or before December 31, 1999 can be inducted.

So which games made the cut? The list includes multiple titles from Valve (Counter-Strike, Half-Life: Opposing Force, and Team Fortress Classic), Sega (Crazy Taxi, Samba de Amigo, Shining Force, and Sonic Adventure), and Nintendo (Mario Golf, Pokemon Gold and Silver, Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Stadium, and Super Smash Bros.). But Shacknews didn’t stop there, as they also enshrined Sqauresoft’s Final Fantasy VIII, Crystal Dynamics’s Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Black Isle’s Planescape: Torment, Namco’s Soul Calibur, and Neversoft’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.

All told, excluding duplicates, alternate editions, and expansion packs, the Shacknews Hall of Fame now includes 233 unique titles. And they haven’t even reached the first year of the new millennium yet!

All of the titles included in the Shacknews Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024 will be added to the Video Game Canon as part of next year’s update.

World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024 Includes Asteroids, Myst, Resident Evil, SimCity, and Ultima

Once you see this year’s crop of inductees to the Strong Museum’s World Video Game Hall of Fame, you might be surprised that they didn’t get the call as part of an earlier vote. But less than four dozen titles have been selected to join this inner circle, so it’s also easy to see how some groundbreaking games could slip through the cracks.

And that’s where we are with the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024, which welcomed Atari’s Asteroids, Cyan’s Myst, Capcom’s Resident Evil, Maxis’s SimCity, and Richard Garriott’s Ultima into the fold during a ceremony earlier today. It’s true… but I can hear the questioning tone in your voice.

Wasn’t Asteroids the game that solidified the space shooter as the dominant style of arcade game in 1979? Yup. Didn’t Richard Garriott practically invent the RPG with Ultima? He did. Wasn’t the CD-ROM-powered Myst more popular than any other PC game in the 1990s? You got that right. And aren’t Resident Evil and SimCity beloved classics that people continue to replay every year? That’s a big yes.

The curators and researchers at the Strong Museum also filled in some gaps and had a few nice things to say about each inductee.

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