Smithsonian To Feature Video Game History

RedEaredSlider writes "The Smithsonian American Art Museum has featured everything pop culture from Dorothy's ruby red slippers to Seinfeld's puffy shirt. Now it will exhibit a history of video games. An exhibit called 'The Art of Video Games,' will open to the public in Washington, DC on March 16, 2012. The exhibit will explore the 40-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies." They're currently holding a vote to determine which video games should represent their respective eras.

Comments

Cabinet art

[PCM2]

If this exhibition is really going to be about "the art of videogames," I hope the curators don't give short shrift to the art on the outside of the game cabinets. It seems to have suffered a lot in recent years, but in the 80s, cabinet art was one of my favorite things about visiting arcades. And of course, pinball cabinet art can be simply amazing.

Re:Cabinet art

[VortexCortex]

If this exhibition is really going to be about "the art of videogames," I hope the curators don't give short shrift to the art on the outside of the game cabinets.

I would also like them to take notice of the retail box art and the catchy music as well. To this end, I nominate MegaMan.

1. 0. The game was very popular and spawned many sequels, cartoons, and tons of merchandise.
2. 1. The simplistic art has withstood the test of time (and palette swapping).
3. 2. The in game music was great, as well as the tribute songs it spawned.
4. 3. The box art is on a totally different level of "art" that can only be described as "special"

--
Dear Slashdot: Ordered lists (<ol> tag) now have no numbers. Why?

Re:Cabinet art

[gmhowell]

It's the Smithsonian. They're usually pretty good about such things. It'll probably get short shrift compared to the games themselves, but we should see a bit of good stuff.

Re:Cabinet art

[gmhowell]

No such luck. Just looked at the choices. If they are any indication, the exhibit will be solely for home based games featuring changeable media (cartridges or discs). No arcade games.

And while I don't generally care for them, they ignored the 'sports game' genre. Don't recall seeing any racing titles.

Re:Cabinet art

[QuantumLeaper]

Arcade games are not represented, only console and computer games.

Re:Cabinet art

[Fnkmaster]

The vast majority were console titles. Only a few of the classic PC games represented, and most of those in the form of shitty console ports.

Re:Cabinet art

[stewbacca]

They ignored the sports game genre by featuring a prominent screen shot of FIFA World Cup.

Re:Cabinet art

[gmhowell]

I saw that, however I didn't see sports games in the area where you could vote on which games to include. That was at 3:15 this morning, so I fully admit that I may have missed them.

Re:Cabinet art

[stewbacca]

You are probably right. I just thought it was funny they used an obscure sports game for the graphic and then didn't even bother to include sports games.

Re:Cabinet art

[asjk]

They gave short shrift to the whole concept. I just tried voting and gave up. They have a confusing interface and show static pictures for what is definitely a dynamic media. I don't know how someone, who might consider themselves an artist but unfamiliar with the medium, might vote. I have played a lot and consider myself, at age 60, an active gamer but I haven't played all of these games. How do I determine my votes? In an analogous situation it's if the Oscars were decided by people who haven't participated in movie making were asked to vote but had only one still frame with which to judge the picture. Total crap.

It should at least have...

[Anonymous Coward]

...counter-strike :(

Re:Ok, solution ahead:

[monkyyy]

ummmmm keyboard mouser? thats a one ive never heard before, and who cant aim w/ a "anaog" stick that can a mouse

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I love video games, and view some of them as artistic, but I look at the majority of these games and don't immediately think "this is great art".
I think there are seldom few of these games that I can call "art".
Still will be checking out this exhibit when it is installed.

Re:Hmmm

[NoZart]

I am pretty sure this will be about the same uneducated fail as the Guinnes "20 most influental Games of all times".

Re:Hmmm

[nethenson]

I love video games, and view some of them as artistic, but I look at the majority of these games and don't immediately think "this is great art".

I feel the same when I look at the majority of pictures, books, etc... And yet many of they are considered art and are in museums.
The story of 'Deus Ex', the soundtrack of 'Final Fantasy VII', or the cinematics of 'StarCraft: Brood War' are art by themselves and deserve to be in a museum.

Where is Half Life?

[tanveer1979]

Seriously.
Its the game which changed it all. Which actually brought physics and reality into the genre with a super story line. Sounds like a glaring omission.

Re:Where is Half Life?

[RogueyWon]

Actually, I'm not really sure it did. Unreal did the whole "story" thing first. In fact, you could argue that Quake 2 had already done it. Sure, Half Life did it better - but then Deus Ex went on to do it better still. Half-Life was an excellent game which, primarily through its mods, was influential in PC gaming for the better part of a decade, but I'm not really sure it was either genre-defining or a monumental leap forwards on what had come before.

Re:Where is Half Life?

[NoSleepDemon]

Half-life was the first first-person-shooter on PC to include a story and scripted scenes where the camera never left the character's eyes. Quake 2 and Unreal didn't even come close. If you recall, neither of those games had allies with whom you could fight, or allies you had to escort through an area to complete an objective. HL had both of these, as it also featured the most advanced AI in an fps game released on any platform at the time.

Re:Where is Half Life?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is still influential in gaming... counter-strike is still played for money, I would argue it's the biggest game after star craft though that's only because a couple countries are star craft obsessed

Re:Where is Half Life?

[RogueyWon]

Actually, I'd argue that neither Half-Life nor Starcraft has been particularly influential. Successful - yes. They've both obviously been successful to a degree that must surely be far beyond what their creators could have envisaged? But influential - as in having a real impact upon the direction of the industry? Not so much.

Half-Life was a great game, but it is hard to see it as much more than "Quake 2 done well, with a gimmick where you can run around jumping like a loon during cutscenes if you want". That gimmick hasn't really been all that widely adopted, either. It's still very much a Half-Life thing and by the time of HL2 it was starting to look a little silly in places. Quake was influential because it marked the jump to proper 3d gaming (as opposed to the 2.5d of Doom and DN3D) and because of its impacts upon the online gaming scene. Deus Ex was influential because it was so successful in marrying the fps and RPG genres together (in a much more accessible way than the earlier System Shock games). You could even argue that a Half-Life mod - Counter-Strike was fairly influential, in solidifying a shift in online gaming away from deathmatch and towards team-play and in pushing online gaming in a more realism-themed (though not realistic) direction. But Half-Life? It was just a very good game within established genre parameters. Nothng more, nothing less.

And Starcraft? Not influential in the slightest, really. For the most part, Blizzard are polishers, rather than innovators. They take concepts that other people have come up with and then polish them to the nth degree. Command & Conquer was influential - it invented the drag-click interface that made RTSes actually feel playable on the PC and which has been copied by every other RTS since. Starcraft didn't really do anything that the other Command & Conquer immitators of the day weren't also doing (eg. Krush Kill 'n Destroy, Dark Reign etc), but it did it well enough that the game went on to be very successful. It didn't inspire a legion of imitators, though; C&C did that (you can point to the odd Starcraft-inspired game, like Universe at War, but they're the exceptions rather than the norm). In fact, one thing that became clear when Starcraft 2 (again a very good game) was released was that if anything, Starcraft was a bit of an evolutionary cul-de-sac for the RTS, and that inspirations for the genre since Starcraft's release had often gone off in very different directions.

If Blizzard have had a genuinely influential game, it's World of Warcraft. With WoW, while Blizzard did largely lift concepts others had created wholesale, they did bring one key innovation to the table; they cut out 90% of the grind that had previously been associated with the genre. This innovation has been adoped by almost every MMO since then, so I guess that WoW passes the "influential" test.

Re:Where is Half Life?

[drinkypoo]

You will be qualified to comment when you have played Marathon, which predates Half-Life and Unreal by four years. Well, if you only count years.

Re:Where is Half Life?

[stewbacca]

Starcraft is not one bit influential. It took the RTS method of gathering resources faster than your opponent to no new levels. The rock-paper-scissors race design is indeed not new. I can't think of ANYTHING Starcraft did that hadn't already been done in WarcraftII or Age of Empires.

Re:Where is Half Life?

[squidflakes]

I would disagree with you about WoW being influential. Much like you suggested with Starcraft (and Warcraft by proxy) WoW polished an already existing game mode and added nothing ground breaking to the game play discussion. Nor, in my opinion, did it eliminate any of the grind. The grind was pushed out to the end-game phase rather than the newbie phase.

If you want an MMO that actually had some ground breaking innovations, check out EVE. While it does have a learning curve that some people have described as a cliff, it is one of the few MMOs that has a persistent world on a single shard, a mostly player based economy, skill training that isn't based on grind, and an absolutely brutal punishment for failure.

Re:Where is Half Life?

[Anonymous Coward]

Half Life was a pretty lame System Shock clone.

where to start

[monkyyy]

every day is the same dream,
one chance,
psychoauts,
super meat boy,
minecraft,
hmmmmm this could be quite a long list(even w/o the movie games, the camp-tastic fps`s, etc.)

Half-Life 2 vs. Portal

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like having to choose which of your children you like most :(

So much for Roger Ebert's opinion

[theillien]

Granted, he retracted his statement that video games aren't art after getting a thorough tongue lashing from gamers, but this definitely takes some wind out of his sails.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/07/okay_kids_play_on_my_lawn.html

Karate Champ

[HockeyPuck]

It was the first 2d fighting game... spawned the whole street fighter franchise...

Kicking the charging bull in the bonus round was still impossible...

So much for Roger Ebert's opinion

[theillien]

Granted, he retracted his opinion after getting a thorough tongue lashing from gamers, but he still basically maintains that games cannot be art. With an art museum now planning an exhibit, his argument is kinda dead.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/07/okay_kids_play_on_my_lawn.html

Re:Ok, solution ahead:

[iSzabo]

Regardless of the platform I game on I feel that Portal might fall in there somewhere.

Login Required?

[scdeimos]

Apparently you need to login to even see the list of 240 proposed games. I hope they've got Dragon's Lair in there somewhere, but I won't be finding out.

Re:Login Required?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about something more conceptually artistic? It's not all about the graphics, right? It doesn't get more Tron-esque than Core Wars. Players write programs and let them battle it out until only one contestant remains in memory.

Re:Login Required?

[warGod3]

Just needs an e-mail address and it assigns you a password to vote... broken down by era (5) and by type (i.e. DOS, SNES, Sega, etc.)

Re:Login Required?

[stewbacca]

I wasted a lot of (my mom's) quarters on Dragon's Lair.

John Carmack

[doubleplusungodly]

I feel like a fair portion of the museum should be dedicated to his innovations in 3D Graphics. He wasn't a video game artist, but I feel as if a lot of the technology he pioneered really helped create the modern 3D shooter.

wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

1920 - Kick Can
1942-9 - some chinese electronic game developed at MIT (haha take that, 'gaming historians'!)
1950 - table tennis (for two goddamn spoiled professors)
1972 - thong i mean pong
1980 - Pac Man
1981 - Zork. Grues unite!
1982 - Galaga the first shump ever
1984 - King's Quest. It's so real, you can die a lot!
1985 - Super Mario Bros
1986 - Metroid. as soon as you did the ball thing, things started rolling.
1987 - Metal Gear. for the msx which no one really played then and those that claim they did are in hoohaa land.
1988 - Contra
1989 - The sudden explosion of combat flight simulators that had amazing detail in instruments and things that all got away on integer CPUs. Think Falcon series
1990 - Red Baron you can now shoot a virtual baron von ritchofen.with no snoopy stuff involved.
1991 - Sid 'Bald is Sexy' Meier's Civilfrickinization. Another World comes close (definitely an art game there)
1992 - Wolfenstein 3D. Productivity dies this day.
1993 - Myst. Click around a cgi world figure what the hell is going on while you cant hear a thing due to your loud 1x CD-ROM drive
1994 - Doom (1993 was its release year, but we know Doom fever hit this year at it's earliest)
1995 - Command & Conquer. Warcraft II was a bit late...
1996 - Duke Nukem 3D. FPS games are no longer brainless humorless ventures at this point. Build editor skyrocketed the popularity.
1997 - Diablo. FRIGGIN DIABLO. Quakeworld comes close, but... FRIGGIN' DIABLO. also FRIGGIN FFVII.
1998 - StarCraft. FRIGGIN STARCRAFT. Starsiege Tribes comes close.
1999 - Counter-Strike. This is the only reason why Half-Life had stellar sales. Don't lie.
2000 - Clusterba - i mean Bejewe- damit i mean Desu Ex. DESU FRIGGIN EX. There is no game better than Desu Ex. If there is, i'd like to see it because it's not existing anytime in my lifetime. The Sims comes close because they give women their dominatrix dream.
2001 - Halo, and not in a good way - it represents the bar that has been lowered. It's okay to make a linear narrative shooter and still get accolades out the wazoo and wallets lined up with nothing but benjamins.
2002 - Warcraft III. FRIGGIN' WARCRAFT III. Unreal Dissapointment 2003 comes close, so does Battlefield 1942.
2003 - Beyond Good and Evil. Shows that original underivative IPs aren't worth the gamble.
2004 - Unreal Tournament 2004 (ECE!!), it's by the most far overcomplete package of awesome put out that year. HL2 would be close if it weren't super buggy hype backlashful pieces of trash overrated for whatever be it a dx9 games or a leak sympathy.
2005 - Battlefield 2. This is the most definitive extensive online multiplayer game ever and it still is. Anything after under the BF name is watered down. Can't wait for BF3.
2006 - Oblivion, and not in a good way. It shows Derek Smart still has a chance for winning as long as there's press bribery to cover up. Looking at you too, Eidos i mean SQUARE ENIX WOW YOU ENGLISHMEN SO JAPAN NOW
2007 - Bioshock, and not in a good way. It shows how clever PR can be by doing a Force Mind Trick on everyone that it's good just for being a vaguely related spiritual sequel to System Shock 2 because it has 'hacking' and respawn checkpoints.
2008 - Left 4 Dead. It revived the stupid waterend down zombie mainstream shooter genre. Not good.
2009 - MODERN WARF i mean, Borderlands.
2010 - Minecraft.
2011 - Duke Nukem Forever.

Re:wrong

[Clandestine_Blaze]

1981 - Zork. Grues unite!
1982 - Custer's Revenge (The most accurate historical interpretation of the Battle of the "Little Bighorn")
1984 - King's Quest. It's so real, you can die a lot!

FTFY.

What?! No MechWarrior 2?

[He Who Has No Name]

The game that solidified true 3D realtime graphics as the gold standard for PC games? The game that did it BEFORE Quake? The game that was so widely sold and successful and distributed and had so many specialized SKUs created to work with early 3D accelerator APIs that the original MechWarrior2: 31st Century Combat has at least THIRTY-TWO different documented commercially released versions with multiple others suspected?

For shame.

Strange selection of choices

[bhaak1]

The usability is a bit strange.

You get presented 3 games of a specific genre and you may vote one for one of those. In total you may vote for up to 80 games.

But who did categorize those games? This is really strange.

I'm currently looking at the combat/strategy genre in the "8-bit-Era" (ERA 2).

The choices: "M.U.L.E.", "Little Computer People" and "Sid Meier's Pirates!"

WTF? Each of these games were fantastic and ground-breaking. I really don't know which one to choose.

For other categories it's much easier but this one really bummed me.

Re:Strange selection of choices

[Onuma]

Oddly enough, 2/3 of those choices were not displayed on my screen. So it is possible that there is a larger pool of games in each era/genre, but for some reason we are only seeing 3 at a time from said pool.

What moron put this exhibit together?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they really going to exclude mmo's i mean i see D2 but that game is hardly comparable to UO or EQ, both of which helped define an entire genre including D2. They have left out a major representation of different consoles and failed projects what about Jaguar, Neo-Geo, Gameboy, Sega CD, that crappy portable sega unit (that only stayed charged long enough to get to the end of the first lvl of sonic) all of which short lived successes and ultimate failures helped paved the way for the current standards with their strides to one up the competition.... i was excited when i heard about this exhibit now that i see what they are planing on showing i could give a flyin....clown....my storage unit has more video game history and evolution then this crap.

and SERIOUSLY!?!?!? No Zero Wing???? wtf

Strange categorizing

[bhaak1]

You have to choose 1 from 3 different games for one genre from one gaming system and from one era.

But having to choose between "M.U.L.E.", "Little Computer People" and "Sid Meier's Pirates!" is impossible!

How about Pinball Coverage...

[Super Dave Osbourne]

The need to cover Pinball history from Bagatelle in the mid/late 1800s to the integration of the bat/flipper into the modern game of pinball, along with the prohibition and gambling bans it experienced (targeted by so many politicians and mobs) to today's modern but almost extinct game is as important to the history of gaming in the world. At one point Pinball as an industry had gross revenue beyond Hollywood, world wide. Its that important, so coverage of video gaming today historically should include Pinball if for no other reason that Pinball Parlors (arcades) were the just-add-water locations needed for the huge video gaming destination during their debut in the early 80s.

Re:How about Pinball Coverage...

[Ted Stoner]

There already is a National Pinball Museum in DC, recently opened.

Re:How about Pinball Coverage...

[Super Dave Osbourne]

There is the Pinball Hall of Fame conceived and made possible by many donations and the mind/effort of Tim Arnold in Vegas. There is the Neptune Pinball effort in the Pacific Coast region near the Bay in California as well as others like the club in Seattle and Lyons CO. What I'm talking about is coverage as per the original article, not clubs or operations or museums (albeit they bring press, they don't bring the kind of press that goes along with slashdot).

Re:Ok, solution ahead:

[Anonymous Coward]

The only valuable contribution from your list is pac man (note the spelling). Though, if we had pac man computing power in 1920, we'd have Star Wars' 3d internet/conferencing services in 1960. And we would experience Avatar on a holodeck...accounting for the exponential growth your silly post implies.

Anyway, to contribute to this question:
Pac man
Doom (can any such video game list exist without it?)
Myst
Half-Life
Star Craft
Counter-Strike
WoW (sadly or not, but truly)
L4D on the same shelf as CS - for their respective contribution to multi-player gaming.

My list is more FPS and a little real-time RPG. Someone else can figure out the games for the other genres.
I really hope they have a 'modern art'-type exhibit for Indie games - World of Goo, I'm looking at you. The Path as well, though much less popular.

Less popular or Less "ground breaking" games to consider:
Dungeon Keeper
Descent (series)
Final Fantasy
Crysis
Halo (not ground breaking, deal with it)
Bioshock
Mass Effect
Elder Scrolls

My choices for hall of fame games.

[serviscope_minor]

My choices are (not going back far enough, and in no particular order)

Street Fighter 2: Champion Edition. First fighting game that really got it right.

Monkey Island 1 & 2. Took adventure games to a whole new level of awesomeness.

Doom. Groundbreaking, though personally I prefer the scale of the levels in doom 2.

Quake. First full 3D shooter.

Grand Thet Auto. Never seen anything like it before. The more recent ones are more, more and much more of the same, which in kind of the point and works very well in this style of game, but GTA 1 was reallt the mould breaking one.

Tempest.

Robotron 2084 introduced a whole level of franticness into arcade games which I've never seen before or since. And the cotrols are too cool.

C&C: Red Altert. First RTS game I found really compelling. So much better then the predecessors, even C&C, since they finally figured out probably the most difficult thing which is how to make the game really balanced.

Thrust. How the hell did they get that thing to run on an 8 bitter?

Tetris.

Lemmings.

Nothing older, since I'm not that old. Nothing newer since I don't own appropriate hardware. And I'm sure I missed a few that I did play, and I'ev definitely missed ones that I haven't played.

Re:My choices for hall of fame games.

[stewbacca]

I agree with GTA. I actually find GTA2 and Vice City to be more fun than the GTA3 and 4. GTA has become MOTS (more of the same) to me.

Wot No Speccy?

[Spottywot]

I thought I would be commenting on the lack of classic games such as Tetris or Elite (although I am), I am more annoyed by the lack of platforms, no spectrum 48, 128, 16( I had a 16k at one point, I had bought the 48k but the shop 'accidentally' gave me the wrong one), or otherwise in the '8 bit era'. C64 is in there, is it more colouful and therefore more arty than the speccy perhaps? Then of course 'Bit Wars' no Atari ST or Amiga, It seems to me that whoever is making these arbitary decisions is not only console-centric but has chosen most of his/her platforms and games by consulting a narrow spectrum ( no pun intended ) of sources.

At least they have included a text adventure at some point 'Bards Tale III', they truly were an art form! Anyone remember 'Behind Closed Doors'. For those that don't it was a single room text adventure in which you were superglued to the toilet seat and had to escape. Hours of fun!.

Can't wait for the Smithsonian to let us all vote for our 'favorite war of the Middle Ages', mine's the Crusades. What do you mean that one's not in the poll?

Re:Wot No Speccy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently it's based on sales of the various platforms. Which is a shame because the Amiga was artistically far ahead of its time.

Where's the stalker?

[Canazza]

NO BRAID! PHILISTINES!

They missed the most artistic game ever :P

Wot No Speccy?

[Spottywot]

I thought I would be commenting on the lack of classic games such as Tetris or Elite (although I am), I am more annoyed by the lack of platforms, no spectrum 48, 128, 16( I had a 16k at one point, I had bought the 48k but the shop 'accidentally' gave me the wrong one), or otherwise in the '8 bit era'. C64 is in there, is it more colouful and therefore more arty than the speccy perhaps? Then of course 'Bit Wars' no Atari ST or Amiga, It seems to me that whoever is making these arbitary decisions is not only console-centric but has chosen most of his/her platforms and games by consulting a narrow spectrum ( no pun intended ) of sources.

At least they have included a text adventure at some point 'Bards Tale III', they truly were an art form! Anyone remember 'Behind Closed Doors'. For those that don't it was a single room text adventure in which you were superglued to the toilet seat and had to escape. Hours of fun!.

Can't wait for the Smithsonian to let us all vote for our 'favorite war of the Middle Ages', mine's the Crusades. What do you mean that one's not in the poll?

http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/02/22/0325243/Smithsonian-To-Feature-Video-Game-History#

Super Excited!

[hinesbrad]

Gosh - there are so many amazing things to choose from. So many different gaming concepts and so much interesting art that really moved the entire industry forward... I'd suggest: - Duck Hunt (NES) - Blaster Master - The Legend of Zelda (NES) - Metroid (NES) - Sim City (SNES Version) - Mortal Kombat - Chrono Trigger - Donkey Kong Country - 'D' - Killer instinct (The original, ahem, 'ultra' 64 arcade version) - Final Fantasy 3, 7

Visual effects?

[marcello_dl]

If they look at visual effects then Dragon's Lair should be a must. Gameplay was crap, and it lasted like two years in the arcades, while lady pacman lasted 7x as much. So... are you sure effects are a good metric?
The art in videogames lies in the interaction between man and machine abilities. Playability, creativity in the rules.
Let's forget for a moment about atari sega or namco: producers like Williams and Gottlieb came up with more original stuff between '80 and '83 than the entire videogame industry in the past two decades.

A secondary but equally important aspect is indeed visual effects, but in the contest of the tech advancements at the time.
Asteroids black and white running on a 1mhz processor is an achievement, a 2d neo geo game with huge sprites or a 3d one is most probably irrelevant.
Same thing for simulation accuracy: one must try the original Atari's Hard drivin' cabinet before opening mouth about how good are racing games made decades later.

Arcade games in general have suffered a lot

[Viol8]

Are they any new ones even being produced anymore? I live in the UK and while fruit machines are thriving , old style video games have all but vanished apart from in a few central london arcades. You no longer find them in motorway service stations or small take away shops like you used to.

Even the ones you do see tend to be quite old and have PS2 level graphics. In fact I know of one arcade thats still running Daytona Racing from 1994.

I get the feeling that the arcade specific part of the videogame industry is pretty much on its last legs. In the west anyway, don't know about the far east.

Re:Arcade games in general have suffered a lot

[tlhIngan]

Are they any new ones even being produced anymore? I live in the UK and while fruit machines are thriving , old style video games have all but vanished apart from in a few central london arcades. You no longer find them in motorway service stations or small take away shops like you used to.

Even the ones you do see tend to be quite old and have PS2 level graphics. In fact I know of one arcade thats still running Daytona Racing from 1994.

I get the feeling that the arcade specific part of the videogame industry is pretty much on its last legs. In the west anyway, don't know about the far east.

I think arcades are suffering for the same reason theatres are suffering - it's hard to compete with home entertainment. That's why the movie industry is catering to the lowest common denominator in their bid to get asses in seats (the only metric that counts).

It's hard to compete with home - do you go out for a movie, paying $$$, or stay at home with netflix and a dvd? Ditto arcades - do you go out to play games or sit in front of your TV with your Xbox360 or PS3? Given most people are lazy, the answer's pretty obvious.

The only real reason to go out is for experiences you can't get at home - pinball machines, for example, can be duplicated in a computer easily enough, but lack the feel a real ball bouncing off real objects. Or ditto social competition games like DDR and the like where online gaming is lacking somewhat - sure you can chat but it lacks the certain something of physically gathering as a group.

And arcade machines are expensive - when a new machine is anywhere from $5-10K each, it takes a lot of quarters to make that up so the machines have to last, leading to dated machines running dated software.

Gamers comments

[Martin S.]

The comments section is littered with pretty scathing opinions about the choices.

No Apple II? Mac? or Magnavox Odessy? Handhelds?

[oneiros27]

Some of the games I might've voted for if they were in an Apple II category, eg. Sim City. (for the SNES? hell no) ... and Oregon Trail didn't even make the list!

And the Mac wasn't represented, either (eg, Dark Castle)

And text based games (there's more art than just graphics)

And where's KC Munchkin? (Odyssey 2)

DOS doesn't even make a showing 'til the N64 era, which means stuff like Commander Keen doesn't get credit.

Hell, they didn't even have cabinets ... so no vectorex games, either. And I didn't see the Atari Lynx, Gameboy, or any hand helds in there.

Clueless curators

[Anonymous Coward]

The curators for this exhibit are obviously clueless.

  (1) Everybody knows that Pac-Man was the most famous videogame in history, but their only representative of Pac-Man is the Atari 2600 port, which is widely considered to be WORST port of all videogame history.

  (2) Where are the arcade cabinet games? The only games I see are home console/computer games?

  (3) Where is Pong?

  (3) Where is the ORIGINAL 1989 Prince of Persia? It was a VERY ground-breaking game.

  (4) Where is the ORIGINAL Super Mario Bros (not Super Mario Bros 3)?

  (5) And you cannot have Super Mario Bros without showing Donkey Kong--but it needs to be the arcade cabinet verion, not the Colecocovision version! In fact, the exhibit shouldn't contain any ports at all. Each videogame should be featured on the system it was designed for. DUH!

  (6) Where is Myst?

Electroplankton

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Electroplankton for the DS? If that's not art, I don't know what video game is.

Re:Ok, solution ahead:

[stewbacca]

I'm a gammer therefore speling is hard.

Wrong poll system

[Paolo DF]

They should have asked *first* everybody in the gaming arenas (the various forums dedicated to videogames) for suggestions, and *then* opening a 'general public' poll. Differently, you get what we see: an incredible mess of random videogames selected by a 'curator'...

Illusion of choice

[Anonymous Coward]

The voting is a farce, as you can only pick 1 of 3 options in each set; you're not free to distribute votes as you please. The voting website is there to generate attention and controversy, nothing more.

No Quake?

[Tuan121]

Quake put the modding community into full throttle. No longer was it just level design (Doom) or pure hacks (I remember in Doom there was an overlay hack to put a red dot where you were gun was pointed). Quake allowed you to completely customize the way everything worked. Not to mention it is the first true 3D game.

Also very disappointed to see World of Warcraft as the first (and only?) MMO on that list. Ultima Online or Everquest not on there? Come on.

To clarify the bad summary...

[Call Me Black Cloud]

The American Art museum has hosted neither the ruby slippers nor the puffy shirt. The American History museum houses those. The linked article got it right...submitter must have been in a rush to present this breaking news to Slashdot.

That list is so utterly incomplete, its crap

[Jailbrekr]

First off, there is ZERO mention of arcade games, which is what spawned the video game industry. Computer Space? Breakout? Gunfight? Where are the bronze or silver age arcade games? Second, the games they are featuring do not even mention other consoles of the era such as the superior (albeit poorly marketed) Bally Arcade. And third, a VAST majority of the REAL game changers are not even mentioned. Doom? Quake? Castle Wolfenstein? Karateka? Third, even if you narrow the list to popular consoles, where is pong? That was the FIRST DAMN CONSOLE.

What an awful list. They should be ashamed.

Re:That list is so utterly incomplete, its crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Also did it mention DNF? You can not have a 'history of games' and not at least mention it. Even though it hasnt come out. It is part of the video game culture.

This seems more like they bought or had donated one of those 'must get rid of all my games' ebay things.

National Media Museum

[stebbo]

The National Media Museum in Bradford has a "display" of old video games. I say display, it's better than that 'cause you can play on some of them too. Handy when the train arrives too early for the film.

Re:No Apple II? Mac? or Magnavox Odessy? Handhelds

[Anonymous Coward]

+1, Apple II was an important early game platform, and even the Mac had some great work. And how can any game exhibit ignore text-based games? Even ignoring Infocom, Adventure / Colossal Caves goes back to the beginning of time. It doesn't get much more influential than that.

This is just sad

[Indigo]

Wizardry? Ultima II? Original Adventure? Hello???

Summary wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary is wrong. The Smithsonian American Art Museum does not display Dorothy's ruby red slippers or Seinfeld's puffy shirt. Those are instead at the Smithsonian American History Museum.

Street Fighter

[Alvare]

Any "history" of anything related to video games should include Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior. You can't not include it, only a few franchises accomplished the amount of "hype" SF has. There more than one "reasonable budget" movie about it, and one even has a known actor, in 1994!

Countless spin-offs, countless tournaments, countless hours spent playing it. Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo is a tournament standard, 20 years after it's release! Not any other game has had such a long real lifespan, they don't play it for nostalgia, they play it because even TWENTY YEARS after it's release people keep finding new traps, new ways to negative-edge that special so it's safe on whiff, new ways to predict your opponent, new ways to combo things together ... well i guess they don't really know about games after all, I saw Halo 3 and Halo 2, so ...