STRONG: The Strong Museum in Rochester, N.Y., has announced its latest inductees into the World Video Game Hall of Fame.
Animal Crossing, Microsoft Flight Simulator, StarCraft, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? are the class of 2021.
They emerged from a field of finalists that also included: Call of Duty, FarmVille, FIFA International Soccer, Guitar Hero, Mattel Football, Pole Position, Portal, and Tron.
Animal Crossing was debuted in 2001 by Nintendo. Players were invited to start a new life by moving into a colorful town filled with villagers, each with their own distinct personality. The game gave players the freedom to complete activities and collect objects as they liked, with each day holding the potential for new surprises and discoveries. Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the latest installment for the Nintendo Switch system, has been played by people around the world.
For nearly four decades, Microsoft Flight Simulator has provided millions of players endless hours of game play by providing highly realistic but intuitive recreations of real-life airplanes. Its simple premise and accessible content disguises the advanced programming that has made it so successful. Since its launch in 1982, the game has been regularly updated and remains the most popular, longest lasting, and most influential flying sim of all time.
About StarCraft: California-based developer Blizzard Entertainment took the real-time strategy genre to new heights in 1998 with the debut of StarCraft. The single-player mode of the immersive, science-fiction game proved popular, but the multiplayer mode, which included a ladder ranking system, turned it into the largest esports title of its day.
Released by Brøderbund in 1985, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? spawned one of the best-selling “edutainment” franchises, combing education and entertainment. Designed for the first generation of graphic-enabled personal computers, the title made learning world geography fun for millions of students as they searched for the whereabouts of the mysterious Carmen Sandiego.
