The Strong Museum of Play’s National Toy Hall of Fame has a new inductee as of today, and it’s an old friend of many of ours; the Game Boy.

The Strong Museum in Rochester, NY has been handing out HoF inductees for the last 11 years, honoring such luminaries as the Slinky and the Frisbee.  The Game Boy is actually the second gaming console to be inducted behind the Atari 2600, which entered the Hall in 2007.  What made them induct the Game Boy? 

"No video-game platform did more to put gamers "on the go" than Nintendo Game Boy. And go they did-bringing their gaming experience to school, to summer camp, and to the back seat of the family automobile. Over the past two decades, Game Boy has become synonymous with portable gaming fun.” 

Of course, the jaded gamer in me wants to say that it’s really to help promote Stong’s National Center for the History of Electronic Games, opened earlier this year, but just looking at that Game Boy and remembering the Halcyon days of Tetris and Metroid II makes me all nostalgic, and therefore unable to muster enough cynicism.

What other consoles/games/gaming tech should be in the toy HoF?  The NES is a pretty obvious pick, as is the Wii, but there are some other pieces of software and hardware that are worthy.  My dark-horse pick for next year is the Wonderswan Color, so you’ve probably already got me beat.