Smithsonian game inclusions announced

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has announced the winners of its open vote for inclusions in the Art of Video Games Exhibit. Some standouts include several Mario games, Metal Gear Solid, and Minecraft.

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The Smithsonian American Art Museum has announced the inclusions in its upcoming Art of Video Games exhibit. The museum took the selections to an online vote, and winners include several Mario and Zelda games, Metal Gear Solid, Halo 2, BioShock, and Minecraft.

Additionally, the museum unveiled five games that will be playable on the exhibition floor, that weren't included for fan voting. The exhibit will go on display on March 16, 2012, and lasts until September 30, 2012, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C. Check below for a full list of included games.

    Era 1: Start!

    • Atari VCS

      • Pac-Man

      • Pitfall

      • Space Invaders

      • Combat

    • Colecovision

      • Donkey Kong

      • Pitfall II: Lost Caverns

      • Zaxxon

      • Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator

    • Mattel Intellivision

      • Tron: Maze-Atron

      • Advanced Dungons and Dragons

      • Star Strike

      • Utopia

    Era 2: 8-Bit

    • Commodore 64

      • Jumpman

      • The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate

      • Attack of the Mutant Camels

      • Sid Meier's Pirates!

    • Nintendo Entertainment System

      • Super Mario Brothers

      • The Legend of Zelda

      • 1943: The Battle of Midway

      • Desert Commander

    • Sega Master System

      • Marble Madness

      • Phantasy Star

      • After Burner

      • Spy vs Spy

    Era 3: Bitwars!

    • Sega Genesis

      • Earthworm Jim

      • Phantasy Star IV

      • Gunstar Heroes

      • Dune II: Battle for Arrakis

    • Super Nintendo Entertainment System

      • Super Mario World

      • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

      • Star Fox

      • SimCity

    Era 4: Transition

    • DOS/Windows

      • Doom II

      • Fallout

      • Diablo II

      • StarCraft

    • Nintendo 64

      • Super Mario 64

      • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

      • Goldeneye 007

      • Worms Armageddon

    • Sega Dreamcast

      • Sonic Adventure

      • Shenmue

      • Rez

      • Chu Chu Rocket!

    • Sega Saturn

      • Tomb Raider

      • Panzer Dragoon Saga

      • Panzer Dragoon II: Zwei

      • Sim City 2000

    • Sony PlayStation

      • Metal Gear Solid

      • Final Fantasy VII

      • Einhander

      • Final Fantasy Tactics

    Era 5: Next Generation

    • Microsoft Xbox

      • Halo 2

      • Fable

      • Panzer Dragoon Orta

      • Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell

    • Microsoft Xbox 360

      • BioShock

      • Mass Effect 2

      • Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved

      • Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II

    • Modern Windows

      • Portal

      • Fallout 3

      • flOw

      • Minecraft

    • Nintendo GameCube

      • Metroid Prime 2: Echos

      • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

      • Star Fox: Assault

      • Pikmin 2

    • Nintendo Wii

      • Super Mario Galaxy 2

      • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

      • Boom Blox

      • Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure

    • Sony PlayStation 2

      • Shadow of the Colossus

      • Okami

      • Gradius V

      • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

    • Sony PlayStation 3

      • Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

      • Heavy Rain

      • Flower

      • Brutal Legend

    Additional Games (available for short play in exhibit, not included in vote)

    • Pac-Man (Arcade)

    • Super Mario Brothers

    • The Secret of Monkey Island

    • Myst

    • World of Warcraft

Editor-In-Chief
From The Chatty
  • reply
    May 5, 2011 11:00 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Smithsonian game inclusions announced.

    The Smithsonian American Art Museum has announced the winners of its open vote for inclusions in the Art of Video Games Exhibit. Some standouts include several Mario games, Metal Gear Solid, and Minecraft.

    • reply
      May 5, 2011 11:14 AM

      heh no sonic for genesis and flow for modern PC? simcity for SNES?

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        May 5, 2011 11:27 AM

        flOw was first released as a free title on PC, and if you're questioning Simcity representing on the SNES, I'll question Dune II representing on the Genesis. Still, Fallout 3 should have been replaced with Deus Ex.

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          May 5, 2011 11:42 AM

          it's for this generation though

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            May 5, 2011 12:51 PM

            I guess. The generations are pretty uneven, some lasting over a decade, while others just 3 years but different on different platforms. PC only gets 8 games and they cram 1989-2002 into a single generation. Fuck that.

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      May 5, 2011 11:21 AM

      Desert Commander for the NES? Seems like a very odd choice.

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      May 5, 2011 11:26 AM

      No Quake? Wow?

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      May 5, 2011 11:43 AM

      Ok...they have no
      quake
      Half Life
      Half Life 2
      Bauldors Gate
      Freespace 2
      Descent
      Wolfenstein 3D
      Unreal/Unreal Tournament
      Battlezone
      Anything by Sid Meyers aside from Pirates!
      System Shock II
      You can tell the people who made this list had a hard on for Blizzard, considering they included nearly every game they've made to date with the exception of any Warcraft rts title
      etc. etc. "insert groundbreaking game here that they missed but gave to Blizzard instead."

      • reply
        May 5, 2011 12:32 PM

        What did you expect? It was done through an online vote.
        All the people who played those good old games are either dead or too old to care now.

        • reply
          May 5, 2011 12:57 PM

          I'm not that old, let alone dead. All of those games are no older than ~15 years. Unless the average human lifespan is about 30 years, your argument makes no sense.

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        May 5, 2011 12:43 PM

        [deleted]

        • reply
          May 5, 2011 12:56 PM

          If you're going to troll, at least put in some effort.

        • reply
          May 6, 2011 3:53 AM

          The exhibit is about art, not gameplay. Although I find some of the choices on the five playable games odd, most of the games won't be playable. The pdf file they sent to people who voted does show the games that were on the ballot but lost out.

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        May 6, 2011 12:28 AM

        Half life and Half Life 2....No list means anything without those on it as least.

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        May 6, 2011 4:36 AM

        oh my gosh.

        Dude step back and take a breath. You're nerding out.

        Descent? Like you're just slapping names up there to exercise your fingers at this point

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        May 6, 2011 5:02 AM

        Bauldor? Really?

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      May 5, 2011 11:49 AM

      With a limit of 4 representative titles per system per era there are going to be a ton of worthy games excluded. Get over it.

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        May 5, 2011 12:53 PM

        PC in "Transition" covers about 13 years. Yeah. That's representative.

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      May 5, 2011 11:58 AM

      Only one missing that I can see is Diablo. Spooky, random dungeons, so much variety in loot. Was a magical experience.

      As for the people crying over no Quake or Wolfenstein, they have Doom II up there which kind of their grandaddy.

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        May 5, 2011 1:13 PM

        It's not a matter of "crying", it's a matter of determining which games were groundbreaking for their time. Wolfenstein 3D came first, and was the first "pseudo 3D" FPS. Doom was obviously the more fun game, but technologically speaking, Wolf came first. I mentioned Descent in my post since it was the first 3D game where you could move along all six axis, essentially a precursor to all modern flight simulation games. I'd like to see Mechwarrior 2 simply because it was awesome and also got me into the Battletech genre of games. They did a good job of picking Simcity and Simcity 2000 since those essentially defined building simulators and were integral precursors to all modern economic simulation games. The problem unfortunately is that because of what was voted upon, and how people cast their votes, it was not determined on whether a game was groundbreaking or not, but upon popular vote by what appears to be casual players as opposed to hardcore gamers who are better at analyzing what defines a good and/or groundbreaking game since we have more experience playing games.

        What the votes essentially state is that these games define the entire history of PC gaming:
        Doom II (FPS)
        Fallout (RPG)
        Diablo II (Action RPG)
        StarCraft (RTS)
        Myst (Puzzle)
        World of Warcraft (MMORPG)

        They're missing quite a few genres, and they shouldn't be basing things just upon what's popular TODAY. They should be taking at least one game from each genre for each year or two, but not 4 games to represent 13 years.

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      May 5, 2011 12:18 PM

      "Attack Of The Mutant Camels" for the C-64 (1983) is pretty LOL

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      May 5, 2011 12:20 PM

      Fable 2 is listed under the original Xbox, this is incorrect.

      • reply
        May 5, 2011 12:30 PM

        You're right, that should read "Fable" in the original Xbox category. Corrected.

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      May 5, 2011 12:30 PM

      And again the Dreamcast shows us why it's still boss.

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      May 5, 2011 1:49 PM

      No way in hell is MGS2 a top 4 representative PS2 game.

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        May 5, 2011 2:04 PM

        [deleted]

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          May 5, 2011 2:10 PM

          You could blindfolded throw a dart at the wall of PS2 titles and come up with a better representative than MGS2. Granted PS2 had a ton of shovelware, but give me a break here.

          I also enjoyed Shadow of the Colossus, but if we're talking "representing the PS2 all time" here, my money's on ICO over SotC.

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      May 5, 2011 2:14 PM

      Qbert!, Super Breakout, Haunted Mansion, any of the Fatal Frame series and God of War.

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      May 5, 2011 2:23 PM

      Their choice of 'chronology' for PC is simply non-sensical... Skipping 8 years? wth?

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      May 6, 2011 4:39 AM

      Hmm. Would definitely of had Gran Turismo instead of Final Fantasy Tactics on there on the PS1 selection

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      January 17, 2012 8:36 PM

      Where's the Apple][e!? Where's ULTIMA?!
      Pac Man and Space Invaders were two examples of AWFUL examples of arcade -> 2600 ports. At least Donkey Kong and Zaxxon were decent looking ports. But seriously, Yars' Revenge and maybe Adventure would be better as 2600 examples.

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