"including everything from Pac-Man to Heavy Rain, Donkey Kong to Shadow of the Colossus."

You spelled "Bulletstorm" wrong.

I wonder what Roger Ebert thinks of this.

The header image baffles me. How did they get Agro into the fight with the first colossus?

Interesting... I don't know how I feel about this. I suppose it's a step in a good direction, although I'm a little confused by the categories, and I disagree with some of the choices.

Like... Marble Madness??? I mean, I own that game and everything. But it kind of sucks.

Also, how are they going to display these games in the museum? Is there going to be someone playing them all day so that people can watch? Or are they just going to have still shots from the games? Or...?

World of Warcraft needs a level 85 character with a 310% speed flying mount to get an ideal of the art design of that game.

A few solid entrees on there, but the fact that Star Fox: Assault made it and neither Half-Life or MGS3 did kinda spoils it a little for me. Should be interesting either way.

Only thing that really itches me about this is that they chose Metal Gear Solid 2 over no.3 (almost unanimously known as the best in the series) and that Star Fox Assault was chosen over Ikaruga.

The Secret of Monkey Island is there? That makes this exhibition 150% cooler.

I get the impression that this turned out to be more of a popularity contest than finding out which games have the best art. How else would Psychonauts and Limbo lose out to Halo 2 and Mass Effect? Why was Muramasa: The Demon Blade not even nominated?

Oh well, they got some good picks for the most part, and first and foremost I'm happy that they even took the time to do all of this.

So many types not represented. Now I am a big mario and Zelda guy, but did they really need to put a mario game in for all but 1 nintendo console and a zelda game for every single one? I would have loved to see super metroid or chrono trigger on the SNES list (their are no old school JRPGs at all) and how about No More Heroes instead of Twilight Princess (although I'm not sure they would have been able to show much of that).

And the categories make no sense: why is metroid echoes an action game but windwaker is and adventure game when they both have similar amount of exploration, killing stuff, and finding secrets? Why is the first metal gear solid an action game while the second is for some reason a strategy game? Most of all, how is Diablo II a "target" game? Yeah I guess you have to aim your mouse, but if that is what you find challenging about it you are going to have some serious problems.

Metroid Prime 2 over 1 doesn't compute. Neither does the addition of Star Fox Assault.

Other than those two, not a terrible list. I'm excited for video games to get their chance to shine in a different light!

I want to meet the people that voted Minecraft, take them out to dinner

and spit in their drinks.

Heavy Rain is not art why the fuck did that piece of shit get included

Why does anyone expect museum curators to know how to handle something like this? Of course it's fucked up.

A quirky list to say the least...

wow is considered art and not a painfully expensive drug habit now? siiiiigh...

It's sad that EarthBound didn't win it's category, but it was up against some really tough competition. I guess the fact that it was nominated at all is worth something.

Also, a couple of other choices really bug me, such as Sonic Adventure over Jet Grind Radio, the original Star Fox over Gradius III, and Tomb Raider over NiGHTS Into Dreams. This was more of a popularity contest than anything.

pft... Where are the real art games like Narc, Samantha Fox strip poker, Thrill Kill or The Simpsons Wrestling?

This makes me fondant egg shell heart palpitate with tangible joy.

Destructoid MUST have coverage on this, and all the games that made it to the event. This is probably one of the most important moments for the gaming community as a whole, be you gamer, publisher, or developer. I just hope most gamers realize how important this is.

@NickCull

While I'm tempted to agree I have to ask if you took part in the large poll that got the games picked, picked?

I did and it was pretty clear that while the Smithsonian is making a great effort to showcase gaming, it has little idea on how to handle this based on some of the games that made the poll lists and the groupings some of them were placed in. There was fairly big discrepancies made with some games, one particular instance I can remember was MGS1 being placed in one category in one generation while the largely similar MGS2 was placed in a completely different category in the following generation and there was no reasons given as to why that was.

@Corey Buchillon

to be fair,the other two choices in combat/strategy weren't really 'artsy.'

this is why you don't let the gaming populace vote. video games are such time consuming experiences that it's extremely difficult if not impossible to play all the great games, so people will just vote for games they've played over games they haven't, which is completely unfair. zelda is awesome, but it shouldn't win every category it's in.

imo they should have asked a large pool of game journos to do this.

brutal legend made it but not LBP2? seriously, fuck this list