Digital Game Canon

Apparently a Digital Game Canon is not something that would be useful in a round of "Capture The Flag", but an actual list of games from around the world recognised to be the most important in digital game culture. The list, just ten games for now, is actually pretty solid containing, as it does, a collection of games that every film critic should play through before opining on video games' worth in comparison to movies:

• Spacewar! (MIT, 1962)


• Star Raiders (Atari, 1979)


• Zork I: The Great Underground Empire (Infocom, 1980; PDP-11 version)


• Tetris (Alexey Pajitnov, 1985)


• Sim City (Maxis, 1989)


• Super Mario Brothers 3 (Nintendo, 1990)


• Civilisation I/II (MicroProse, 1991-1996)


• DOOM (id, 1993)


• Sensible World of Soccer (Sensible, 1994)


• Warcraft I/II/III (Blizzard, 1994-2003)

I only found out about this Canon today because I belatedly discovered that Gamasutra is running a series charting the history of each and every one of them. So far they've covered Spacewar, Zork, Civilization and, most recently, Star Raiders. Great stuff.