The Tribune

This year’s finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame include trailblazers in esports, electronic pets and portable gaming, as well as the arcade favorite brought to life in a 1998 episode of “Seinfeld”.

The Hall of Fame revealed the 12 finalists up for induction on Thursday and opened a week of public voting. The winners will be enshrined May 8 at the hall’s new space inside The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester.

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.

“This year’s finalists span the decades and range from arcade classics to one of the most popular mobile games of all time,” Jon-Paul C Dyson, director of The Strong’s International Center for the History of Electronic Games, said in a news release. 

Released in 1977, Mattel Football was the first blockbuster handheld electronic game. Three decades later, cellphones put another nominee into the hands of countless players. Rovio’s 2009 Angry Birds was downloaded billions of times.

Notable for their influence on esports are nominees: Golden Tee: Fore! by Incredible Technologies, the 1989 arcade golf game whose sequels included a 1995 version that allowed for tournaments; Sega’s 1999 NBA 2K, which inspired a professional esports league, and Id Software’s Quake, one of the first esports whose first-person shooter’s 3D engine became an industry standard.

Tamagotchi, which created a digital pet for its owner to raise, earned a nomination for bridging toys and video games in 1996. 

The nominees also include two arcade games released in 1981: Defender, and Frogger. Frogger cemented a place in pop culture with a 1998 episode of “Seinfeld,” in which George navigates a Frogger-style arcade cabinet across a busy road, mimicking the game’s frogs.

Other games included Microsoft’s 1997 Age of Empires, farming game Harvest Moon, released in 1996, Goldeneye 007, from 1997; and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, from 2007.