Tag Archives: call of duty

Nominees Announced for the World Video Game Hall of Fame!

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Rochester, New York is the home of The Strong National Museum of Play, and they have a very important mission: to chronicle the history and importance of play.

Child development, social interaction, imagination… all of these key features in a healthy individual are facilitated by play, and the staff at The Strong help us not only understand that process, but celebrates it by hosting both the National Toy Hall of Fame and the World Video Game Hall of Fame under its brightly-colored umbrella.

As you might have guessed, puzzles and games play a significant role in The Strong’s work, and they’re represented in both Halls of Fame. Clue, Chess, Scrabble, the Rubik’s Cube, and Dungeons & Dragons are all inductees in the National Toy Hall of Fame, while Myst, Tetris, The Oregon Trail, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? are among the puzzlier inductees on the video game side of things.

And The Strong have recently announced the nominees for this year’s class of video games to be inducted in the World Video Game Hall of Fame.

This year’s finalists for the 2025 class run the gamut from 8-bit classes, modern phenomenon, and games that took play to surprising new places, and they represent different genres, play styles, and aspects of gaming across decades.

The 2025 finalists are: Age of Empires, Angry Birds, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Defender, Frogger, Golden Eye, Golden Tee, Harvest Moon, Mattel Football, Quake, NBA 2K and Tamagotchi.

What a field! Everywhere from arcades (Frogger) to pocket games (Tamagotchi) are on display here, as well as social gaming both in person (Golden Eye) and online (Quake).

The nominees were chosen from thousands of nominations online. The field was then narrowed by staff members at The Strong based on “longevity, geographical reach, and influence on game design and pop culture.” Only a small handful of these finalists will be selected by an international committee of experts as this year’s inductees.

Everyone has an award show that they geek out over, and you’re probably not surprised to discover that these Halls of Fame are two of my favorite awards given out each year. I love seeing deserving games and puzzles get the spotlight they deserve for helping change how we play and interact with each other.

You can check out the full list of National Toy Hall of Fame inductees and World Video Game Hall of Fame inductees at these links. Do yourself a favor and take a stroll through not only your childhood, but the childhoods of generations past. It’s a real treat.

What toys and games would you like to see inducted in the future? Let us know in the comments below!

The Tetris Effect: Unleashed!

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When alarmists talk about the negative effects of video games on players, they’re usually referring to first-person shooters, like Call of Duty, or games that encourage immoral acts, like Grand Theft Auto.

They’re not usually talking about Tetris.

But as it turns out, playing Tetris can have curious side effects. Some folks who play for prolonged periods of time report seeing the iconic tetromino shapes falling as they drift off to sleep, or when they close their eyes. (This has also been reported by jigsaw puzzle solvers, who see curved lines, and Rubik’s Cube solvers, who continue to see the constantly shifting colors of the cube.)

There are additional anecdotal stories of people viewing the world in a Tetris-y way after solving, fixating on how shapes could fit together.

It’s common enough, in fact, that it has its own term: The Tetris Effect.

It has also inspired a Tetris game of the same name, which is releasing later this year for the Playstation 4. Tetris Effect enhances the Tetris experience by tying musical themes and imagery to the traditional gameplay.

One player describes the play experience in an article for Kotaku:

I played the game in VR, though that is optional. The first time I landed a Tetris, the screen exploded in a beautiful display of particle effects, sea life swam around me, the controller vibrated and the music swelled in a way that sent chills down my spine — I’ve done this a million times before but not like this.

[Image courtesy of Eurogamer.]

The game also boasts a new solving trick — the Zone mechanic — which allows you to stop time and place several blocks at one time, meaning you could line up multiple pieces to drop at once and clear more lines. The previous limit was four lines, but now, with the Zone mechanic, it’s possible to clear out up to sixteen lines at once! (Naturally, there’s a term for that as well. It’s a decahexatris.)

This is an excitingly immersive evolution of the classic puzzle game, and I can’t wait to check it out.

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