Museum of Modern Art picks 14 pretty, ugly games for new exhibit
New York's Museum of Modern Art is hosting a video game exhibit beginning in March 2013 with installments of 14 initial games, featuring Pac-Man, Tetris, Myst, Katamari Damacy, Dwarf Fortress, Portal and Canabalt, among others.
MoMA eventually wants to incorporate 40 games into the show, with a wishlist including Asteroids, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Grim Fandango and Minecraft. Games are chosen based on a "tight filter" that covers behavior, aesthetics, space and time, meaning the "selection does not include some immensely popular video games that might have seemed like no-brainers to video game historians," Senior Curator Paola Antonelli writes.
"Are video games art?" Antonelli asks herself. "They sure are, but they are also design, and a design approach is what we chose for this new foray into this universe."
Check out the full list of 14 below, along with a few more from MoMA's wishlist.
• Pac-Man (1980)
• Tetris (1984)
• Another World (1991)
• Myst (1993)
• SimCity 2000 (1994)
• vib-ribbon (1999)
• The Sims (2000)
• Katamari Damacy (2004)
• EVE Online (2003)
• Dwarf Fortress (2006)
• Portal (2007)
• flOw (2006)
• Passage (2008)
• Canabalt (2009)
Antonelli writes: "Over the next few years, we would like to complete this initial selection with 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)."
