The Smithsonian American Art Museum has released details on their upcoming Art of Video Games exhibit. They have been soliciting gamers' opinions since February on the most creative and influential games of all time, and they recently announced the results of that polling process which has selected 80 games from five different eras spanning the past 40 years to be a part of the exhibit.
Starting from the earliest era, the Smithsonian exhibit will feature the likes of Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, and Utopia. Games from this initial era were pulled from the Atari 2600, Colecovision, and Intellivision.
The second era will spotlight the NES, Sega Master System, and Commodore 64, with games including Sid Meier's Pirates, Super Mario Bros., and Marble Madness.
Marble Madness will be one of more than 80 games to be part of the Smithsonian's exhibit.
The third era concerns itself with Nintendo's SNES and Sega's Genesis systems. Games from this era were drawn Nintendo staple of classics such as Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, while the Sega's titles included Phantasy Star IV.
Sony enters the picture with the PlayStation in era four, while Sega bows out with the Dreamcast.
The fifth era concerns itself with the most recent generations in gaming, including Nintendo's GameCube and Wii, Microsoft's Xbox and Xbox 360, and Sony's PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3. The era also includes a variety of popular PC games, such as Portal and Minecraft.
All of the details of the exhibit can be found here, including the full list of games that will be on display in the exhibit.
The Art of Video Games exhibit will open in Washington, DC, on March 16, 2012, and will run through September 30, 2012.