Smithsonian announces games to be in new "The Art of Video Games" Exibit - Polidicks

[quote=kotaku]The Smithsonian American Art Museum revealed the winners of its public vote to decide what games will be featured in their exhibit, The Art of Video Games, today. The exhibit creates a visual history of the evolution of gaming from its humble beginnings through the present. The vote, which took place between February and April, helped to pick the majority of the exhibit, with only a few iconic selections guaranteed entry. The games are split into five eras, each focusing on a generation of gaming. The Smithsonian was egalitarian in its selection, leaving very few consoles unrepresented. (Sorry, Jaguar!) Each game was selected to represent the gameplay and artistic style of its generation. Their classification of games doesn't exactly match the classifications made by gamers. Fable and Shenmue are "adventure" games, Sim City represents strategy games, and so on. Both shumps and dungeon crawlers share the "Target" category, because they all revolve around players selecting a target and (generally) pressing a single button. Certain genres bounce around: Doom II is an action game, while Goldeneye is a "target" game. While these generalizations might seem abnormal to some, putting an emphasis on how much games have evolved in forty years shows many of these games in a different light. Want to see if your all-time favorite game made the cut? Here's an alphabetical list of all the games featured in the exhibit. 1943: The Battle of Midway Advanced Dungeons and Dragons After Burner Attack of the Mutant Camels Bioshock Boom Blox Brütal Legend ChuChu Rocket! Combat® Desert Commander Diablo II Donkey Kong™ DOOM II Dune II: Battle for Arrakis Earthworm Jim Einhander Fable Fallout Fallout 3 Final Fantasy Tactics Final Fantasy VII flOw Flower Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 Goldeneye 007 Gradius V Gunstar Heroes Halo 2 Heavy Rain Jumpman Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II Marble Madness Mass Effect 2 Metal Gear Solid Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty Metroid Prime 2: Echos Minecraft Myst Okami Pac-Man Panzer Dragoon II: Zwei Panzer Dragoon Orta Panzer Dragoon Saga Phantasy Star Phantasy Star IV Pikmin 2 Pitfall II: Lost Caverns Pitfall! Portal Rez Shadow of Colossus Shenmue Sid Meier's Pirates! SimCity SimCity 2000 Sonic Adventure Space Invaders Spy vs Spy Star Fox™ Star Fox™: Assault Star Strike Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator StarCraft Super Mario 64 Super Marios Brothers Super Mario Brothers 3 Super Mario Galaxy 2 Super Mario World The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate The Legend of Zelda The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Walker The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess The Secret of Monkey Island Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Tomb Raider TRON: Maze-Atron Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Utopia World of Warcraft Worms Armageddon Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure Zaxxon Looking at the list, some of the games chosen are obvious shoo-ins: Mario 3, Metal Gear Solid, and Bioshock, to name a few. Others—Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 and Metroid Prime 2—for instance, are more interesting. Certain series are very well represented: Zelda, Mario, Panzer Dragoon. Tim Schaffer isn't a game series, per se, but he is very well represented here too. Though the games of the exhibit have been unveiled, the instillation is far from complete. The Smithsonian plans to open "The Art of Video Games" on March 16th, 2012, with the exhibit running from March through September.[/quote] [url]http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/games/winninggames.pdf[/url] [url]http://kotaku.com/#!5799017/the-smithsonian-has-picked-the-games-of-its-art-of-video-games-exhibit[/url]

I heard about them considering this for a long time now, glad they actually went through with this. Video games have as much of an artistic meaning as a movie does.

Video games are Interactive Paintings in my book. So this is entirely warranted.

Disappointed that Metal Gear Solid 4 wasn't even a nominee for PS3 Action yet Black Ops was :colbert:

[QUOTE=Viper202;29633696]Disappointed that Metal Gear Solid 4 wasn't even a nominee for PS3 Action yet Black Ops was :colbert:[/QUOTE] Thank god Black Ops didnt win then [editline]5th May 2011[/editline] Live stream: [url]http://www.ustream.tv/channel/art-of-video-games[/url] pass: bosslevel

[QUOTE=Viper202;29633696]Disappointed that Metal Gear Solid 4 wasn't even a nominee for PS3 Action yet Black Ops was :colbert:[/QUOTE] That's pretty terrible actually.

Braid is a perfect example of games being art.

Nice video game line up. They actually picked good games to represent the categories.

lol what. Its a Video Games as Art concept but they vote Halo 2 over fucking Psychonauts? I think they came up with a good idea, nominated loads of random games, then bumped their head somewhere and forgot what they were doing with all of them.

No Castlevania?

[QUOTE=Exploits;29634079]lol what. Its a Video Games as Art concept but they vote [B]Halo 2[/B] over fucking Psychonauts? I think they came up with a good idea, nominated loads of random games, then bumped their head somewhere and forgot what they were doing with all of them.[/QUOTE] Would've been better if it was Halo: CE. But Mass Effect 2 and Fable definitely deserve to be on the list.

I'm kind of happy that there weren't any terrible video games on that list. I was expecting (fearing) Call of Duty.

[QUOTE=Canuhearme?;29634391]Would've been better if it was Halo: CE. But Mass Effect 2 and Fable definitely deserve to be on the list.[/QUOTE] Meh. Halo: CE was really only good for the PC. The Xbox one was great but Halo 2 added a lot more. That entire list is great.

I'm just happy Shadow of Colossus was there as well as Okami. Still excited for the Shadow of Colossus double pack for the PS3. HD and lag-free goodness.

[QUOTE=sHiBaN;29634561]I'm just happy Shadow of Colossus was there as well as Okami. Still excited for the Shadow of Colossus double pack for the PS3. HD and lag-free goodness.[/QUOTE] I like the HD part, but I'm actually not so sold on the no lag part to be honest. Thinking back and looking at PC emulations of the bosses with 0 lag, I kind of liked the drop in frame rate. It made the bosses feel more massive and important.

Uncharted :v:?

Whoa. List is definitely APPROVED.

Pretty neat that they added World of Warcraft to the playable games, hopefully will show people what it really is. I played WoW and got to level 24, liked it, but I decided to quit after it got a tad boring.

[QUOTE=archangel125;29634406]I'm kind of happy that there weren't any terrible video games on that list. I was expecting (fearing) Call of Duty.[/QUOTE] Call of Duty 2 was an amazing game.

i'm glad Flower made the list [editline]5th May 2011[/editline] i'm not really sure how Twilight Princess really made this list, doesn't seem like anything particularly special in the grand scheme of "games as art".

[QUOTE=EliteGuy;29635684]Call of Duty 2 was an amazing game.[/QUOTE] I know, but none of the Call of Duty games after 2 were any good.

Good thing I live 30 minutes from the Smithsonian, this is gonna be interesting to see when this opens.

Do you have to pay to enter the Smithsonian? The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto is like 20 bucks :C

i just hope that the exhibit examines games as art seriously (by their own merits, as their own medium) as opposed to simply comparing their similarities to other forms

woo doom was in there

i agree with most of the winners, but i kinda wish that okami, KHII and FFX could have all won in the ps2 adventure section, hell they should add all the nominees to the museum aswell

It's awesome that portal won.

[QUOTE=archangel125;29636719]Do you have to pay to enter the Smithsonian? The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto is like 20 bucks :C[/QUOTE] Admission Free admission: Smithsonian museums & the National Zoo (DC, VA) American Indian Museum Heye Center (NYC) Entry Fee Required: Cooper-Hewitt Museum (NYC) The one where the exhibit will be will be free.

Neat :)

The list of nominees was fucking stupid, 3 games per console per generation. And for some reason Black Ops was the only game nominated more than once.