what video game deserves to be in a museum?

Gestures broadly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Video_Game_Hall_of_Fame

MechCommander (1998)

This is a more complex question than just "what is your favorite video game," or "what games do you consider works of art?"

If I'm putting a game in a museum, it's because there's something about it that warrants preservation on a greater level than other games. To that end, my candidates are

Pong (1972)

The first commercially successful video game.

Tetris (1985)

Arguably the most influential game of all time

Rollercoaster Tycoon (1999)

Handcrafted in assembly, serves as a lesson both in optimization and harnessing the players' penchant for finding intrinsic value in simplistic game mechanics

Edit: I just realized this comment looks like an infernal machine wrote it. I want to make it clear that I'm a human, with skin and blood and stuff

These three plus Doom and Shadow of the Colossus are what was I thinking. Maybe Minecraft too.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York has some games in their permanent collection: Games in MoMA

Swap the () and []! 🩵

All of them.

Mario 3 Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time Minecraft Portal The original DOTA that was built on Warcraft 3 World of Warcraft

I choose these games not because they are good but because they had massive impacts on video games. Except for Mario 3, that ones just the GOAT.

Gris.

Pong, Pac-man, OXO, Mystery House, Super Mario, Battlezone, Wolfenstein, Doom.

The classic pioneers.

Journey
Shadow Of The Colossus
Shenmue 1
Half-Life 1 & 2

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.

Half-life: Alyx

As in history, all of them
As in art?
Blasphemous.
La puta madre que belleza de juego.

NFL 2K5. It would be a somber, warmly-lit memorial, a pedestal bearing a single copy of the (Xbox version of) the game, with a 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.

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 and presentation.
- 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.

Do I only get to pick one?

If so, Prince of Persia.

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.

None. Video games are brainrot

Every opinion is valid and people can disagree with it. But have you considered that there are museums of torture devices, or substance abuse. In that spirit what are the games that could should be remembered as a cautionary tale? For me it would be heroes3, minecraft, rimworld. These took most of my life (rotted most of my brain).
- I was actually just kidding. I don't do much gaming myself, but I don't actually believe games to be brainrot. As for games that should be forever remembered, Club Penguin gets my vote. Minecraft was kinda fun, until I suddenly started getting headaches from field of view or whatever it is (screen speen, no good for head).

Everything 1Upsmanship puts on their "Celestial Hard Drive".

Or, Minecraft.

Shadow of the Colossus is the first that comes to mind. I'd probably toss in Final Fantasy VII, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and DOTA 2 because I'm addicted to it

I think the better question is what about games deserves to be in a general history museum? The advent and changes of technology and the implementation is far more important than the examples of it in use. There are very few games on their own that would qualify as "culturally impactful" to the greater world by their sheer existence. (Mario, Pokemon, and Tetris immediately come to mind).

If we are talking about a "video game museum/exhibit" then the list broadens a lot, but it's less about the "what" and more the "why" that needs focused.

Street Fighter, Mortal Combat, Sega Rally, Unreal and also Unreal Tournament

If I had to be stuck in a timeloop, I might pick being in high-school, late night, losing untold hours to Unreal Tournament until the sun came up and/or I occasionally fell asleep at my computer. Or maybe the LAN parties from that same time.
- I loved getting that damned smiley-faced flak (secondary fire mode) in the face....made me LMFAO every time, and just brought a smile to my face now ☻. Domination was awesome!

Sexy Beach 3

tetris, because it is tetris
pong, and probaly other examples of early home console games
wolfenstein3d, doom, quake, quake3, doom3 because all of them were technical milestones, had lasting impact on the industry and they show the rapid advancement of pc gaming in the 90s and 2000s
the elder scrolls series, as a simmiliar showcase.
final fantasy 1, 6 and 7, as a showcase of jrpgs through various generations and the fmv of 7 and onwards were imho precursors of 3d rendered movies.
half-life, because of the impact of it's scripted set pieces and its level design
counter-strike and starcraft, as the games that probably gave us professional e-sport.
dota, because its for mobas what doom is for first person shooters.
deus ex and thief, pioneered the "immersive sim" and they are great showcases of the interactive nature of games
Pokémon, cultural impact can't be denied and the trading aspect is a great example of a non traditional multiplayer experience
various Mario Games, but definitely Mario Bros. Super Mario World and Mario 64 and probably Galaxy as a showcase of the evolution of plattformers in 2d and 3d, maybe throw a spyro or banjo kazooie in there.
Grim Fandango, Kings Quest, Monkey Island, point and click adventures are there very own beast and often feature actual memorable characters. I definitely think more often about Manny Calavera than i do about Gordon Freeman or any Morrowind NPC, even though i played half-life and Morrowind much more than Grim Fandango
Minecraft
super meat boy, fez, hollow knight... lots of interesting indie games and they show how much more accessible game development has become.
Prince of Persia and karateka, the way they were animated alone would be enough, but they also featured an actual story, they were interested in showing and featured music used simmiliar to a movies soundtrack.
probably much more
games that are a product of a very localized culture (gothic could not have been made anywhere else but the ruhrarea for example)
the whole military complex is missing (from Mil Sims like Operation Flashpoint to actual recruitment vehicles like Americas Army)
more modern games, which i just don't know or that have not been rattling around in my brain for long enough, but baldurs gate 3, the last of us, or alan wake would probably end up on my list in a couple of years.

Grim Fandango, Kings Quest, Monkey Island, point and click adventures are there very own beast
Maniac Mansion was the OG in the category, at least with graphics.
Myst deserves a place for is graphics too, even if it was mostly static renderings.
Missing Space Invaders it started a coin shortage in Japan.
Others I can think of off the top of my head:
Donkey Kong
pacman
zelda
Halo
Unreal Tournament
Sonic
GTA
Gran Turismo
Chrono Trigger
Earthbound
Castlevanna
- yes, arcade stuff is lacking on my list. The few i have played where mostly on an atari 2600 and simmiliar home consoles way after the fact and the only arcade i've ever seen was in a holiday resort thingy :D
  Zelda: yep, was surprised there was no mention of it after i looked over my "finished" list, original Zelda and ocarina of time should probably be there, maybe a link to the past. did not play breath of the wild, so don't have an opinion on it. But zelda -> altp -> ocarina of time is a nice showcase of 2d games transitioning to 3d, and the item based exploration and progression is found in a lot of games.
  halo: i am not a console shooter guy and on pc it felt like a very good game, but atleast to me not ground breaking. through the lense of console shooters it's probably a huge milestone.
  unreal tournament: if i'd be listing my favourite games it would be there. but it did not have the impact on e-sport cs or the quakes had so it would be another technical showcase. the unreal engines became very important however.
  sonic: yes, at the very least to show another take on plattformers.
  gta: yeah, 3 onwards as blockbuster movie equivalents. don't ask me why they are not on the list, no idea.
  gran turismo: if we include simulators, we should also list a bunch of microprose work, richard burns rally, the microsoft flight simulators and so on. Definitely an interesting section of gaming, but not one iam part of so hard to tell what to include for it.
  chrono trigger: yeah, my list lacks non western games and chrono trigger deserves to be there simply because of its ambitious scale and the fact that its one of the greatest games i've ever played, what was i thinking?
  earthbound: never played it :(
  castlevania: the early metroids and later castlevanias for what we know as "metroidvanias" today. I've played castlevania 1 and 2 and there is not much of what makes metroidvanias in them. fun games though.
Great list!
I would add KSP, Guitar Hero and/or DDR, Beat Saber, WoW, and Portal.
- Kerbal Space Program is awesome :)
  Videogames are still a young medium, very diverse and changing so rapidly, that i feel like there is no established canon of 'classics' or 'high impact' works. We'll probably end up with dozens of lists like this in such a topic, and might end up without a single game that made it onto all of them, besides tetris.
  if a simmiliar question was asked in a movies community i'd bet any list with more than 10 entries would include metropolis, nosferatu, citizen kane and star wars, just because those are widely agreed upon movies that had an impact.
I would add Rogue for sure.
- oh, absolutely, rogue and nethack, they are the foundation of crpgs and dungeon crawlers.
  i just fear we'd need increased security to break up the fight between groups with various definitions what 'roguelike' means.
Shadow of the Colossus should be in there too. It has pioneered orchestral music in video games and gad a huge impact on them as a whole.
- shadow of the colossus seems like a great game, but i've never heard its music referenced as pioneer work, what did it different in that department?
I would add the OG Mortal Combat gave us the MSRP rating system.
- Probably shouldadd Mike Tyson’s Punchout, Tekken 2, and Marvel vs Capcom.
  Double dragon, Street Fighter, the original Simpsons arcade game.
Amazing list. I personally would add couple games, that defined my "gaming hobby":
XCOM/UFO: Enemy Unknown - not sure how this fits in the list, but it was ground breaking for me: perfect blend of micro- and macro management, strategical decisions, tactical battles, what a great game and so much memories of it (and I'd put honorable mention of Jagged Alliance 1&2 here, 'cause they are very similar concept)
Civilization - genius idea, one of the 4X pioneers, easy to pick up, hard to master, and so much replay value; its overall depth is quite a feat, especially given it's from 1991, no wonder the franchise is still alive and well now
Fallout - esp. 1 & 2 might not be the best gameplay-wise, but their world building, characters and atmosphere are excellent... and everyone knows the legendary intro "War, war never changes..."
Planescape: Torment - similar to above, amazing world, unbelievable story, one of a kind game
Gothic - mainly 1&2 were simply awesome, there are no barriers (ahem), the world is your to explore, but it's deadly so you have to plan your progress, nothing is streamlined for you; I can't remember different game with such a vibe (other than piranha bytes later production)
VtM: Bloodlines - kind of similar to Deus Ex, but also taking from the table top; and in my book it has THE best atmosphere of all the games I've played
Witcher - this might be just European thing, but playing especially W1 felt kind of like folklore fairy tale from childhood turned into pretty grim adult game
Disco Elysium - this is probably the only "sort of new" game that I've played and which definitely deserves a place in the list, great characters, amazing story and writing
there are plenty of others too, but my brain farts
Good list.
Vampire the masquerade bloodlines also deserves a honourable mention
Awesome effort.

All of them. In the Museum of All Video Games

Exactly. There is no selection of which deserves it.
This. All of them needs to be preserved.
I came here to say this exact same thing. Videogames are an art form, and the history of that art should be preserved, both the successes and the failures. People should be able to look back on what was a hit and what was flop, on the ideas that worked and the ones that didn't, on the well made games and the badly made games. All of it matters, all of it is part of the same story.

Outer wilds

imho, this is the most correctest answer

Doom

I could write an essay significantly larger than the game itself and it wouldn't be as powerful of an argument as just saying the name with the weight of legacy it commands.

Also my first thought. Specifically the first one.
- Be sure to have a look at KeeperFX and !dungeonkeeper@lemmy.world

To get the obvious out of the way: Pacman, Doom 2, Starcraft, Simcity 2000, Civ 3. All genre-defining milestones.

Total Annihilation. They're still making sequels today (Supreme Commander, Beyond all Reason).

Warzone 2100 was the first 3D rotatable zoomable RTS which was pretty mind blowing at the time.

Fuck yes Total Annihilation. BAR is already amazing and last time I played it it was still in alpha.
Civ 3? Outside of introducing strategic resources, it is difficult to think of what innovation Civ3 brought to the franchise. Civ 2? Absolutely. Civ 4? I can totally see it. What makes Civ 3 stand out?
If anything, Civ1 should be the milestone for creating a genre.
- Civ 3 was the first one I played so it sticks in my mind the most, that's all. Any of the Civs would be fine.
  I do feel like Civ 3 was a big step up in visual effects, though.

Dwarf Fortress, obviously.

"It's the best game you're not playing."

All of them.

Rogue Warrior?
- I said all of them, so yes.

All of them.

Art is art is art.

Not every single piece of art goes into a museum
All glory to Hareraiser!
- I clicked your link not expecting to watch more than thirty seconds but watched the full thing, that was a great lecture.
- Bad art is still art

The ICO trilogy

EA games deserve to be in a museum.

Because everyone needs to remember how a company can exploit their customer base with money grab schemes like loot boxes, pay to win junk and empty unplayable shells which need loads of expensive dlc's to make it even a little playable.

There should also be an entire wing for never finished bug simulators.

The area with actual proper games would be tiny. But it should include the old age of empires 2, city skylines 1, Kerbal space program 1 and everything from Larian studios.

Age 2 is actually in a museum now. Larian's games are overhyped, and even KSP went bad the moment Squad sold out to Tencent.
- I've finished BG3 6 times now, had a lot of fun playing Divinity 2 and am now playing divinity 1 couch coop with a friend. Their games are actually properly built, with loads of well written storylines.
  The reason why it became so over hyped is because people got angry at all the other studios because Larian actually delivered properly built games worth their money. Same with Schedule 1. The game is fun but should be average compared to other games. But it isn't average, the rest is just complete money-grab bug simulator junk.

Another World/Out of This World. Short game, but also a 1991 game made by one dev and one composer in two years, and artistically it still holds up fairly well even today.

Came to put this one in. I was mindblown when I tried it on the Amiga.

Street Fighter II - Not the first fighting game, but the one that kicked off a massive cultural phenomenon, and defined so much of the format that every fighting game since has taken influence from.
Puyo Puyo Tsu - Although this game never got a chance to shine in the west, in Japan this game was just as influential to the puzzle game genre as Street Fighter II was to fighting games. I often describe Puyo 1 as the Street Fighter 1 of puzzle games, but I think you could make a case for whether 1 or Tsu really belongs in the museum, since 1 was plenty popular at release and did inspire other puzzlers even before Tsu hit the scene. However, Tsu is the game that really established puzzle games as a serious competitive genre, with large tournaments being held all the way back then.
Beatmania - The original vertical scrolling rhythm game. Could include either the original, one of the first editions of IIDX, or even a current cabinet.
Dance Dance Revolution - While Beatmania gets credit for being the first, and for being plenty popular in Japan, DDR is what popularized the genre in overseas markets. And for good reason, it's equally notable for not being played with typical inputs.
Rogue - The thing that a whole bunch of other games are like. Except now most of the games we say are like this, aren't really like this at all...
Like every major Nintendo game - fuck it not even gonna list them all

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.

Limbo.

I really like the atmosphere. They created so much with such an minimalistic graphic style.

Factorio.

I don't know where to start. Overall a great example that some people like to optimize and put way more effort into this game than their job. Zeitgeist?

One that comes to mind is The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

Bioshock

Halo: Combat Evolved

Fallout New Vegas

Also, cynical answer is also whatever current mobile game is making a bazillion dollars right now because ✨capitalism✨

Half-life, or any source game along with minecraft.

E.T. for Atari

Nah, just bury that shit into desert... /s
- https://www.si.edu/object/video-game-cartridge-et-extra-terrestrial%3Anmah_1519322
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?
- Yes, however the Smithsonian also counts, which is also where a cart is....and the Henry Ford museum...and the museum of Failure:3

Dwarf Fortress is, in fact, in a museum.

Along with a bunch of others.

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.

Well it's certainly not Elden Ring, and it doesn't matter how pretty the Thumbnail is. No DLSS or any of the other options is frankly just laughable.

You must have never went underground in elder ring. It is the most beautiful thing ive seen in a game.
Do you think "art" only means "pretty pictures"?
No DLSS
If I was reading a list of "games that should be in a museum," and the author mentioned fucking DLSS as being an important factor, I would have exited the page immediately.
What a bad take. Do you also think the Seven Samurai movie shouldn't be in a museum because it's not IMAX?
- And there's no CGI.
Ah yes, DLSS, the option to make your game look worse for better performance.
It's not a necessity for a good looking game.
you have the worst taste maybe imaginable in games that you're 'opinion' is futile lol

There is video game museums already:

https://www.computerspielemuseum.de/en/43-Homepage.htm

There is also the National Videogame Museum in the US
https://nvmusa.org/

Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.

Also what’s the game in the screenshot?

the game in the screenshot is Elden Ring.

Tomb Raider.

Isn't the Louve pyramid already a reference to Tomb Raider ?
Isn't there an open source port of this?

Ocarina

RDR2

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: https://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!

Doom, Minecraft and Touhou

Black and White

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.
- 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

Resident Evil - the original.

Elite dangerous. 1:1 replica of the Milky Way that is being actively colonized as we speak.

Jetset Willy

Had this on the spectrum. I spent so many hours trying to map this game, think I ultimately failed. Yeah it's a classic for sure.

So I did a class on the art of the video game and MoMA (museum of modern art) has a number of them in their collection. There is even a Wikipedia article on it. Wikipedia Article

Pretty solid collection IMO. I am surprised they haven't included any RPGs (say one CRPG like Ultima 6 and one jRPG like say Final Fantasy 7).
- They have, EVE Online and The Sims.

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.

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.

Spore, even if imperfect.
Minecraft.
Pong.
Elden Ring.
Rollercoaster Tycoon.
Zoo Tycoon.
Pokémon Green.

Spore should be in there bit not for a good reason.

for a more "traditional paint" like experience, Gris is just gorgeous to look at

Redneck Rampage

"Hey mother fucker!"

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

Also Journey and Flower for different reasons

Anthem

(For history purpose, just like there are museums for the Holocaust or the WTC)

I still mourne over what that game could have been.
- 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

Star Raiders for the Atari 400/800.

I had that game for the Atari 2600 and unlike E.T, it was a great game.
That was the first game that scared the shit out of me.
Granted, it was a jump scare, but it got me good....

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the Strong Museum of Play which contains the video game hall of fame

Half Life Dead Space Minecraft Terraria Stardew Valley Uhhh...how do you do line breaks in comments? This looks like trash.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

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.

The original Star Wars Battlefront games. The best offline multiplayer I’ve ever had in a video game.

I remember my little brother and I would be playing kashyyk and would wait for the wookies on the beach behind the barriers and he would always say "We have more customerrrss" shit was so damn hilarious

All y'all be honest with yourself. The answer is the prestigious league of legends.

The Binding of Issac. Hands down my favourite game and a work of pure dedication.

Probably One Must Fall 2097

I loved it and played against my little brother on one keyboard constantly, that was fun!
Too bad that the follow-up game went through developer hell, took ages and looked and played like shit :-(

Solitaire
Doom
Tetris

Red Dead 2. The story mode is amazing.

Splintercell.

How about ... All of them?!?