Why is this focus all on graphics, anyway? It's supposed to be games as an ART FORM, not games that happen to contain artwork. BIG difference there. For a game to truly be a work of art, even the non-media aspects must be artworthy.
One game that pops to mind (which IS listed) is
Shadow of the Colossus: when it came out in late 2005, its graphics, limited to what the PS2 could do, were distinctly dated compared to the then-hot
Half-Life², let alone
F.E.A.R., which was the
Crysis of its time. But the way it used them, and told a story and gave an EXPERIENCE to match. So it wasn't what graphics it had, it was how it used them. For me, the most impressive part might've been the battle with Phalanx, the 13th Colussus. The thing was a good fraction of a mile in size, and you could see it all, no tricks. The sheer sense of scale the game managed to convey is something that no flashy FPS today has managed to match.
Overall, some of my picks worth commenting on:
*
VCS, a.k.a Atari 2600 - What in the hell were they THINKING? Both
Pac-Man and
E.T. are on there. Wouldn't be surprised if the latter gets voted to #1 in its category through "troll votes." Both games were terrible, and best symbolized the problems that caused the
video game crash of 1983. Most of their choices were good, but these two... tsk, tsk. (note to Pac-fans:
Pac-Man was a legend in the arcades: the problem was that the Atari port of it was about as horrible as could be, cutting and butchering everything that made it good.
Ms. Pac-Man is the Atari game that brought a much better adaptation, featuring vastly improved graphics and gameplay)
*
C64 - tough choice between
Wasteland and
Bard's Tale III; the former won out for me.
Pirates! was an easy choice;
Raid on Bungeling Bay, while not quite as much a great, was also an easy choice.
*
NES - Wow, they made good picks, especially for Action. Very tough, as they basically picked the NES's three most defining later-life games. Eventually, keeping an eye on how the game itself was a piece of art, I went with
Metroid, noted for being perhaps the first game to truly bring a sense of desolation without necessitating description text.
*
"Bit wars" (aka 16-bit/4th generation) - Where are the old late-80s/early-90s DOS games? And where are the Amiga & Atari ST? Plenty of artful games forgotten here. A major shame. A personal favorite pair for the Amiga & ST would be
Millenium: Return to Earth and its sequel,
Deuteros.
*
Sega Genesis - Easy choices here.
Earthworm Jim and
Gunstar Heroes; the former was a clear example of a true take of "make a game into a piece of art." (even if very
avant-garde art) Similarly, in the end I took
Herzog Zwei over
Dune II, as the former invented the RTS, and the latter owes a LOT to it.
*
SNES - CT vs. Zelda vs. EB... One of the best match-ups too, though CT was the most artistic. In reality, an unmentioned game,
Terranigma, would give it a run for its money, but this is the Smithsonian, (aka the national American museum for those who don't know) and the game was only released in Japan and Europe somehow. Also,
Sim City wasn't unique to the SNES, so I favored
ActRaiser, especially for its blend of strategy and action.
90s PC -
Deus Ex vs.
Unreal... Another tough call. As was BG2 vs.
Fallout. However, due to their unique emphasis on the game as a storytelling medium,
TIE Fighter and
StarCraft were easier picks.
*
N64 - So many problems. The platformers were a poor choice: Rare got better with age, so the cynical feel of
Banjo-Tooie and
Conker's Bad Fur Day really contributed much better. And where the heck is
Perfect Dark? It took everything
GoldenEye 007 did, and made it better.
*
Dreamcast - Why is this thrown in here? It's a 6th-gen (so-called "128-bit") like the Game Cube and PS2. Sure, it's far weaker, but still...
*
Modern Windows - Poor genre selections:
Portal's a puzzle game, and placing it separately from the action games would've saved us all a lot of trouble in choosing!
*
Missing Games - Aside from the above-mentioned
Perfect Dark, there are some other worthy games left off... Though possibly, in some cases, for lack of an American release. One major glaring exception is
Super Metroid for the SNES: widely considered on the console's very-short-list for "best game," most consider it better than
Super Mario World. Also, where was
Guauntlet? Sure, it was an Arcade-first game, but that didn't stop OTHERS from appearing. And then let's also not forget the ORIGINAL
Half-Life. Oh, and
Myst; why the heck isn't the world's first successful CD-based game there? Lastly, I noticed
Ikaruga &
Espgaluda give a nod to attempts to use modern-day computing firepower to turn old-school scrolling shooters into art, though the Japanese-only
Touhou Project games are likewise known for their extreme artistic (as well as memetic) value. Of course, there's still also the slew of titles for the Amiga, Atari ST, and older DOS titles that were COMPLETELY forgotten... Like all
Ultima titles save one.
■
Wrong Platforms A lot of games were shown under a platform other than what they were originally made for, a few examples, (not counting arcade-first scrolling shooters) with the shown/original platforms:
Rampart (Arcade/Master System),
Flashback (Amiga/Genesis),
Nobunaga's Ambition (MSX/Genesis),
Sim City (Amiga/SNES),
Syndicate (Amiga/SNES),
Worms Armageddon (Windows/N64),
Rainbow Six (Windows/N64),
SimCity 2000 (Mac/Saturn),
Command & Conquer (PC/Saturn),
Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (Saturn/PS1),
Grandia (Saturn/PS1),
Command & Conquer: Red Alert (PC/PS1),
Shenmue II (Dreamcast/Xbox),
Pirates! (PC/Xbox),
Ikaruga (Dreamcast/X360),
Knights of the Old Republic (Xbox/PC),
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, (Xbox/GameCube)
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 (PC/PS3). That's a lot of mis-placed games!
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