For me, it has got to be tetris. It is still thriving, even today. Anyone can understand the base concept and play it : it’s simple and enjoyable, anywhen. Plus, it runs on remotely anything.
what video game deserves to be in a museum?
Submitted 4 days ago by Abraxas@feddit.uk to games@lemmy.world
https://feddit.uk/pictrs/image/39cbcabf-faf1-4993-8b01-c489c556daa7.webp
Comments
Ashiette@lemmy.world 4 days ago
P1k1e@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Black and White
Bosht@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Oh my god I forgot about this one!! I would love to see something similar in today’s market or even an HD remake of the original.
P1k1e@lemmy.world 3 days ago
If only, but I did find a way to play my old cd a while back. Can’t say it aged well. Game was actually quite wonky. Most of the “secret mechanics” are pretty hard to trigger
Thoath@leminal.space 4 days ago
E.T. for Atari
zod000@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
I still have my copy in my own little museum in my office with some of my favorite (or in this case most notorious) games. Does that count?
Thoath@leminal.space 4 days ago
Yes, however the Smithsonian also counts, which is also where a cart is…and the Henry Ford museum…and the museum of Failure:3
Outdated4134@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
RDR2
tamal3@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Ocarina
fartsparkles@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.
Also what’s the game in the screenshot?
Dunstabzugshaubitze@feddit.org 4 days ago
the game in the screenshot is Elden Ring.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 4 days ago
My then-girlfriend-now-wife and I went to a temporary video game exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image. A lot of the mainstays you’d expect were there, particularly from the arcade era, including ground-breaking titles like Dragon’s Lair (which is fascinatingly beautiful and a bad video game at the same time). At one point, one of the signs mentioned moving on from vector graphics, which my wife had no idea what that meant, so I immediately looked around for an Asteroids machine. You don’t really get how one of those games looks unless you’re playing on the genuine article. That’s the kind of thing that probably ought to be in a museum most.
I recently went to Galloping Ghost in Illinois, which is now the world’s largest arcade. It’s got nearly every arcade game you can think of, and they do a good job fixing them up. They have an F-Zero AX machine. I’ve always wanted to play one of those. I went to Galloping Ghost two years in a row, and it was broken both times. Turns out they’re having trouble sourcing the displays. As you go around the place, most machines are working, but even only a year later, more of them had display problems. I imagine even just getting regular old CRTs is going to make this kind of thing way harder as time goes on, and a good CRT does affect how these old games look, because they were designed for them. This is the kind of burden I’d expect a museum to take on.
hmmm@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Doom, Minecraft and Touhou
BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 4 days ago
Dwarf fortress
LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Terraria, a monument to indie games and the craft itself, gave tons of free content and still does, unlike the popular pay for expansion models on a half finished buggy game of their contemporaries
inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Pong, Pac-man, OXO, Mystery House, Super Mario, Battlezone, Wolfenstein, Doom.
The classic pioneers.
warmaster@lemmy.world 3 days ago
- Journey
- Shadow Of The Colossus
- Shenmue 1
- Half-Life 1 & 2
Taalnazi@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Spore, even if imperfect. Minecraft. Pong. Elden Ring. Rollercoaster Tycoon. Zoo Tycoon.
Newsteinleo@midwest.social 3 days ago
Spore should be in there bit not for a good reason.
BunScientist@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
for a more “traditional paint” like experience, Gris is just gorgeous to look at
Vupware@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
Elite dangerous. 1:1 replica of the Milky Way that is being actively colonized as we speak.
codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Alright, so here’s my case for Thief, the Looking Glass Studios game.
Thief, on its own, is a great game and basically shares the claim to originating a lot of ideas behind stealth in games along with MGS, which came out the same year.
What many don’t know is how incredibly innovative what they were doing with their engine tech was. In another timeline, id software were mildly successful action game makers while LGS became the industry defining mega success. The Dark Engine refines a lot of ideas present in Ultima Underworld and marries them to tech that was decades ahead of its time.
Check out the opening and closing of this long talk: youtu.be/wo84LFzx5nI
Thief had, probably, the first ECS in gaming. They also had their own rendering technique using “portals” that was a bit slower than id’s BSP trees but allowed for insane geometry. They also had an incredible system for events called stimulus-response that was doing things like Breath of the Wild’s “chemistry engine” again, decades before it would be rediscovered.
They weren’t just making games, these were really simulations of a limited world with complex interactions. If the rest of the industry had caught onto their good practices, who knows what the landscape would look like today!
tatann@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Anthem
(For history purpose, just like there are museums for the Holocaust or the WTC)
Bosht@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I still mourne over what that game could have been.
tatann@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Meh, I mean the gameplay is nice but Bioware hasn’t been able to write a good game for more than a decade, I don’t expect anything from them anymore
RedFrank24@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It depends on what your museum is trying to convey. If it’s moments of gaming history and games and consoles of significance, I’d go with:
For the earliest video games, I’d show the Tennis for Two on the DuMont Lab Ocilloscope, released in 1958.
You should also include the life of Warren Robinett, because he was the first ever game programmer to receive in-game credit for a game he made, because Atari never gave their programmers credit, but he snuck one in as an easter egg. He then went on to found the Learning Company which made all those Reader Rabbit games.
For the Crash of 1983, you have to include ET for the Atari 2600 as the posterboy, but “Pitfall!” should also be included. Pitfall was a good game, but it was the breakout hit of Activision and therefore proof that third-party video games were viable, leading to the glut of video games which, in combination with ET being such a colossal failure, caused the crash.
For the resurgence after the crash, the Nintendo Entertainment System, but specifically the one that came with the little robot to help you play games. It’s essential that you convey that Nintendo intended to sell it as a toy rather than a games console because the games market in the US had completely died in the crash, but the toy market was very much alive.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Resident Evil - the original.
utopiah@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Half-life: Alyx
nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 4 days ago
Redneck Rampage
FigMcLargeHuge@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
“Hey mother fucker!”
Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 days ago
Burger King: Sneak King
S_H_K@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
As in history, all of them
As in art?
Blasphemous.
La puta madre que belleza de juego.ivanafterall@lemmy.world 3 days ago
NFL 2K5. It would be a somber memorial, a pedestal bearing a single copy of the (Xbox version of) the game, with a single spotlight shining down on it from above as it rotated. An eternal flame, possibly several, burn nearby. The walls would be digital, montages of all the memories. There would be mournful orchestral music playing, heavy on the clarinets and oboes.
Jeffool@lemmy.world 2 days ago
And a screen where it plays YouTubers comparing it to every version of Madden for a decade-plus after. Eventually finding Madden to look better, but always finding Madden lacking in features.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 2 days ago
100% guarantee there are probably still YouTubers doing that in 2025. And you might be surprised how good it can look upscaled to 4K, if you haven’t tried it.
MimicJar@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Assuming a single game, Minecraft. It should be a kids museum style where you can build things. You can make each room a different biome or structure.
Bosht@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Half Life Dead Space Minecraft Terraria Stardew Valley
Pronell@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Karateka, along with everything else Jordan Meschner did following it, starting the Prince of Persia series.
It’s a nice evolution of personal style.
I’ve more or less dropped out of mainstream gaming so have no idea how the more recent Prince of Persia games play, nor if he has any involvement… but anyone who knew the original games should understand that these games did something foundational with movement and interface, helping the player to feel involved in the action.
Dunstabzugshaubitze@feddit.org 4 days ago
the last prince of persia Meschner directly worked on was Sands of Time, which is imho well worth playing.
the other 3d Prince of Persias by ubisoft upto two thrones are still good games, but they lost a bit of the 1001 nights feel. The darker parts where there in sands of time, but warrior within goes all in on dark and edgy and just loses a bit of that timeless flair and is very much a mid 2000s game.
can’t talk about ubisofts prince output after two thrones, they never found their way into my collection.
zanyllama52@infosec.pub 3 days ago
Do only get to pick one?
If so, Prince of Persia.
mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Prince of Persia.
but which? og? which release? I liked it on Atari ST then hated it on PC lol… but only had access to a really bad pc.
zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com 4 days ago
None, that’s not how you enjoy the medium. You don’t go to a museum to read books.
toiletobserver@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I beg to differ, sir. I’ve been to a pinball museum and all were playable. It was great.
Cobrachicken@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Elite
ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 2 days ago
Gris.