If you haven't heard, the Smithsonian will doing an exibit of video games as an art form in 2012. Pretty cool. You can see the full list of games that will be displayed here: http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/games/winninggames.pdf

Overall it's a pretty good list. 80 games from consoles to PCs. It goes from the early days with games like Pac-Man to current day with games like Flower and Heavy Rain.  Though there's some seriously glaring ommissions though.  For instance Tetris isn't there. Even stranger are games that were included like Chu Chu Rocket, Pitfall II, and Einhander. Anyway take a look at it, and share your thoughts. What should have been there? What should have been tossed out?  

National Endownment of the Arts is now giving gratns too, so I guess it's official, the US government thinks that games are art.

Since it's art, I don't think you can include or exclude any game. Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter deserves a spot just as much as Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Well Vader to be fair MGS 2 is known as the definitive game in the series.  But yeah on the other choices kind of weird. I think its cool though, as ever choices are just one persons opinion of what should be there so not everyone is going to be happy. Was Okami in there ? That has to be art.

Duck hunt.

So what exactly willl be on display?  Game boxes?

I may be able to see this if our fifth grade takes another trip to DC next year.

I just watched the video announcement for it and they go more into depth. Aside from all of that there will be interviews with designers, composers, etc. who worked on the games. The main point of the exhibit to show the amalgm of different artwork that goes into creating a game - music, paintings, sculpture, drawings, etc.

_Bear said:

Well Vader to be fair MGS 2 is known as the definitive game in the series.  But yeah on the other choices kind of weird. I think its cool though, as ever choices are just one persons opinion of what should be there so not everyone is going to be happy. Was Okami in there ? That has to be art.

Huh, by who? MGS2 is widely known as the worst one. Its always MGS1 or MGS3 as the favorites, MGS4 is split down the middle.

I went to a gaming museum exhibition once in central london at the Embankment. It was crap, they wouldn't even let you play the games. I spent the day staring at old Atari boxes and old, old, mega old computers.

The only good thing is that they were promoting the new Star Wars movie at the time and they had huge lifesize Star Wars vehicles like pod racers there.

I honestly can't think of a single person who prefers MGS2.

Dvader said:

What the hell is "Target"? What are up with some of these choices, Metroid Prime 2 over MP1? No Genesis Sonic games? MGS2 over MGS3? Flow? At least almost every Zelda game is represented, that is nice.

I have Target for the Atari 2600 -- it's probably that.