Last year, New York museum The Strong started the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Among the first inductees were Pong, Tetris, Super Mario Bros. and the locally-developed Doom.
Today, the museum has announced six new inductees for 2016: Grand Theft Auto III, The Legend of Zelda, The Oregon Trail, The Sims, Sonic the Hedgehog and Space Invaders.
Those six games were culled from a list of 15 finalists that included Final Fantasy, John Madden Football and Minecraft.
Many of today's adults will recognize The Oregon Trail as a game often introduced to them when they were students in school. The game was an early example of an "edutainment" product that attempted to teach children about different concepts or historical events (in this case, the real Oregon Trail) through an enjoyable interactive game.
On the opposite side of the spectrum you have Grand Theft Auto III, a game most commonly recognized by mainstream audiences for the controversy it stirred. According to Jeremy Saucier, the assistant director of The Strong's International Center for the History of Electronic Games, that's sort of the point.
"By providing players with a license to do virtually anything they wanted to do on foot or behind the wheel, Grand Theft Auto III renewed debates about the role of games and violence in society while it signaled video games aren't just for kids," he said. "And the game's unlimited play possibilities became a model for many other open-world games that followed."
If you're curious, Grand Theft Auto III sold 14.5 million copies by 2008.
Another game on the list that was a huge commercial success (not just a critical one) is The Sims. That franchise (including four main games, several spin-offs and an astonishing number of expansion packs) has earned nearly 200 million sales worldwide.
You can find more about each game inducted into the Hall of Fame over at The Strong.