Following in the footsteps of
The Smithsonian's 'Art of Games' exhibition, the Museum of Modern Art has selected 40 video games that will be displayed at its New York installation.
Games chosen run the gamut of our history, going as far back as 1962's
Spacewar! to 2011's
Minecraft.
The museum says that its criteria "emphasize not only the visual quality and aesthetic experience of each game, but also the many other aspects—from the elegance of the code to the design of the player’s behavior—that pertain to interaction design."
Fourteen titles have already been acquired, and will be on display this March. They are as follows:
Pac-Man
Tetris
Another World
Myst
SimCity 2000
vib-ribbon
The Sims
Katamari Damacy
EVE Online
Dwarf Fortress
Portal
flOw
Passage
Canabalt
The remaining games the museum hopes to acquire in the coming years are, according to
a blog post, "Spacewar! (1962), an assortment of games for the Magnavox Odyssey console (1972), Pong (1972), Snake (originally designed in the 1970s; Nokia phone version dates from 1997), Space Invaders (1978), Asteroids (1979), Zork (1979), Tempest (1981), Donkey Kong (1981), Yars’ Revenge (1982), M.U.L.E. (1983), Core War (1984), Marble Madness (1984), Super Mario Bros. (1985), The Legend of Zelda (1986), NetHack (1987), Street Fighter II (1991), Chrono Trigger (1995), Super Mario 64 (1996), Grim Fandango (1998), Animal Crossing (2001), and Minecraft (2011)."
More on the
MoMA Inside/Out blog.
