The Art of Video Games

[thedude3445]

www.artofvideogames.org/

A Smithsonian Exhibit on Video Games, coming from March-September 2012. and you get to vote on the 80 games that appear! Vote for Earthbound, Pikmin 2, and Paper Mario 1 and 2!!!

[Le Mario Bro]

Vote for Zim LBP2 or I'll destroy you.

[SMBBQ]

Question: Are Mother 3 and Majora's Mask on that list?

[Le Mario Bro]

Not too sure about Mother 3, but I think Majora's Mask is on there.

[cheat-master30]

Meh, this contest is completely worthless, and it's not a good judgement of if games are art as much as if they're popular and the organisers putting them on the list.

I actually tore it to shreds here:

nintendo3dsfans.com/ArtofVideogamesExhibitFlawedJunkSmithsonian

[thedude3445]

Actually the major flaw in your argument is that games like Sonic 1 and SMB will not appear. Actually, The absolute Codifiers such as these will be there automatically, in playable form and everything, according to the Smithsonian Page.

"Five games will be available for visitors to play for a few minutes, to gain some feel for the interactivity—Pac-Man, Super Mario Brothers, The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst, and World of Warcraft. In addition, the galleries will include video interviews with developers and artists, large prints of in-game screen shots, and historic game consoles. "

So that's basically 5 confirmed games right there, and there will probably be more, including Street Fighter 2 and Wii Sports, as they are both revolutionary.

Plus, /b/ wouldn't try to spam this up. I know that there are many trolls but creating an entire email account and then going and voting takes too long for it to be worthwhile, and there aren't many bad games to begin with. Here are the titles that I felt were most questionable back during voting:

-The Strategy Section on NES: Neither Fanicom Wars nor Fire Emblem are there. But the problem with that is that they were never localized into English.

-Black Ops: See the reason that this is here is to showcase the development of the art of the Modern Shooter from Doom to now. Not for any actual artistic value, IMO.

-Tony Hawk's Underground 2: My main concern. A bad game nominated over Ratchet & Clank or even Killzone?! But actually it is artisitc, moreso than many games; its massive amounts of pop culture insertion could showcase the entirety of the 2000s!

-ET for 2600: Your article states (tastelessly, I might add), that E.T. and Pac-Man for 2600 are some of the worst games of all time and that the Exhibit Curators are idiots for including them. Well, the point of their inclusion was BECAUSE of their low quality. They are two of the most historically relevant games of all time, since they caused the Video Game Crash of 1983, and because of that they would be perfect for this exhibit that shows the evolution of gaming.

So the games are NOT supposed to be a "Best Games Ever" list, but a list of games for artisitc merit. Batallion Wars 1 AND 2 being on there is questionable for me when it seems that there are normally no sequels on the ballot, but the Modern Category is, in my opinion, nearly perfect.

Handheld and Arcade games do not appear because this exhibit is showcasing the evolution of CONSOLE gaming, and that is why PC games do not even appear until the 4th Era (PC gaming was COMPLETELY seperate from Console gaming up until the very late 90s). Both of them have taken alternate paths in development in the past 15 years, and would need their own exhibits. For example, by including handheld games like Game Boy and Game Gear, it would need cell phone games like Snake, and then for nowadays it would need the millions of Iphone and Android games out there.

As for the 4-genre limit: There can only be 80 games, so they condensed it into 4 per console. There's no way that an exhibit featuring 150 games or something could ever fit, even in the Smithsonian, as one could see if they ever go to one of the museums.

There are pretty valid concerns as to the validity of this, but don't worry; it's going to be a perfectly amazing exhibit!

[thedude3445]

Now I really do agree that some of the choices were annoying because they were repeats, especially Batallion Wars/Batallion Wars 2. They are barely different at all!

[Sarisa]

Mother 3 is not included as it is not a console game.

I just wanted to hit my head on a wall when I had to choose between Chrono Trigger and Earthbound. Much worse than SMW vs. DKC to me.
Also, no Dragon Quest games. What's up with that?

[Vent]

From the beginning I've maintain that everything about this exhibit is stupid, from the limited number of genres to the bizarre selection of titles.

[thedude3445]

IMO none of the Dragon Quest games were very artistic except for the ones that weren't released in America. And VIII.... which should have defintiely been on there.

[Sarisa]

VIII was pretty, but other than that, I didn't find much artistic about it.
One of III, IV, and V was art. Which one depends on your taste.

(I'm an IV fan, but I'd have voted for V in the contest because it pioneered the "adopt monsters into your party" game concept (it predates Pokemon) and, while not the first RPG to do so, handles the life cycle of a hero well. IV's chapter concept was a good idea and well executed, and it covered the "sympathetic villain" angle first, but the script was too thin to carry out the purpose of character development. I didn't get much out of III.)

Edit: Then again, the contest didn't seem to acknowledge games not released in the US. In that case, I'd vote for Dragon Warrior IV; it should have been its genre's NES entry instead of Final Fantasy.

[thedude3445]

I do feel that 3 choices was too little though. It should have been 5.

Anyway, the voting is over I think.

[thedude3445]

So this exhibit's been out for a while. I'm going up to DC in June so I will tell you guys how it is!