For those who feel that video games are, in fact, art, the last two months have been important ones. In February, no less an institution than the Smithsonian declared they’d be mounting a crowd-sourced curation experiment for their upcoming “The Art of Video Games.” A dedicated website let people from all over the world choose from 240 of gaming’s greatest titles ever.
Voting ended last week and the Smithsonian released the final list today. Such things usually amount to popularity contests, and you can see predictable results among the winners. Lots of Super Mario and Zelda, Halo 2, Uncharted 2, Mass Effect 2… all in evidence. But some genuine sleepers–like Capcom’s under-appreciated early Wii game Zack and Wiki: The Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure–made the list, along with modern-day classics Rez, Portal and Minecraft. A PDF of the full list is here: The Art of Video Games.