AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, has announced some new inductees to its World Video Game Hall of Fame. Jon-Paul Dyson is the museum's vice president for exhibits. And no, he wasn't named after a Pope.
JON-PAUL DYSON: I joke that the popes were named after me.
RASCOE: One of the newly enshrined games was released only a few years into John Paul II's papacy. It's the side-scrolling space shooter called "Defender" from 1981.
DYSON: You are operating a spaceship in which you are both trying to repel the attacks of these alien invaders while saving these humans that are walking around and being kidnapped by the aliens.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELECTRONIC BEEPING)
DYSON: And that inherent complexity showed that the medium had reached a point where players were ready to tackle multiple things going on all at once and to operate so quickly.
RASCOE: In the 1990s, players loved Tamagotchi, little handheld digital pets, living, if everything went well, on a little LCD screen.
DYSON: The gameplay itself lends itself to complexity and this emotional element in caring for this electronic pet and trying to keep it alive.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEEPING)
RASCOE: You can never get over the loss of your first Tamagotchi. Also inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame, "Quake," a 3D, first-person shooter game.
DYSON: You're fighting these monsters who are coming at you.
(SOUNDBITE OF GROWLING)
DYSON: But some of the significance of "Quake" is it's one of the first really online games that allow multiplayer matches and so led to the development of what's known as E-sports today, for instance, where people are competing in video games against each other.
RASCOE: And the last inductee, another first-person shooter, "Goldeneye," based on the James Bond movie.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DYSON: It took the James Bond character and brought it into the video game universe in a way that a lot of video games haven't done as well.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELECTRONIC GUNFIRE)
DYSON: When we hooked it up in one of our labs here, all the players who grew up with us - it was like going back to their childhood.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELECTRONIC GUNFIRE)
RASCOE: Those four classic games now join "Pac-Man," "Super Mario" and others in the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Hope you enjoyed this digital trip down random access memory lane.
(SOUNDBITE OF VG COVER JUNKIES' "GOLDENEYE 007") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
