World Video Game Hall Of Fame 2025 Inductees: Quake, Defender, Tamagotchi, Goldeneye 007

The World Video Game Hall of Fame on Thursday announced four new inductees, including three classic video games alongside a more unusual pick — the Tamagotchi.

Among the 2025 inductees is Defender, the notoriously challenging 1981 arcade game that was one of the first to scroll beyond the opening game screen, and was later licensed for consoles including the Atari 2600, Apple II, Commodore 64, Mattel Intellivision, and ZX Spectrum.

Goldeneye 007, the 1994 Nintendo 64 game inspired by the soon-to-be-released James Bond film “GoldenEye” (1995), was also inducted. The first-person shooter incorporated stealth elements and offered players both a solo story mode and a multiplayer mode, ultimately selling more than 8 million copies worldwide.

Also inducted this year was Quake, another iconic first-person shooter developed for the PC. The game built on the success of its predecessor, Doom, with a leap forward in real-time 3D rendering. The game’s multiplayer component became massively popular as internet access became more widespread in the mid-1990s. The game is also credited with being the first played in an online national game competition, launching what would become the esports industry.

Quake was also the first shooter to support mods, making the game replayable well beyond its off-the-shelf single-player campaign. Modding became so widespread that some Quake mods later became games of their own, such as Team Fortress 2.

The final inductee isn’t a video game in the traditional sense, but a handheld digital “pet” that became one of the biggest fads of the 1990s — the Tamagotchi. The virtual pets were first released by Bandai in Japan in 1996 before spreading worldwide. The toys had just three buttons and a non-backlit LCD screen that allowed users to hatch an egg and care for the resulting cyberpet. Caretakers are prompted by a beeping alarm to feed, play, walk, medicate and put the pet to sleep as necessary until it reached adulthood — an approximately 12-day lifecycle. Failing to properly nurture the pet would result in sickness or even death.

Around 20 million Tamagotchis were sold in Japan in just its first year on the market, plus another 20 million worldwide. Countless copycats were created over the years, but Tamagotchi returned in 2017 and 2020 with updated versions offering new features, including the ability to marry pets to one another.

The inductees were chosen from a list of 12 finalists that included Age of Empires, Angry Birds, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Frogger, Golden Tee, Harvest Moon, Mattel Football, and NBA 2K.

The World Video Game Hall of Fame is housed at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, N.Y. Visitors can see all 27 inductees on permanent display in the ESL Digital Worlds: High Score exhibit located on the second floor in The Strongs new expansion.