Smithsonian To Feature Video Game History 74
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.
Cabinet art (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
How about Pinball Coverage... (Score:4, Interesting)
My choices for hall of fame games. (Score:2, Interesting)
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.