Henry Lowood, the curator of the Stanford University History of Science and Technology Collections, announced this past week a list of the 10 Most Important Video Games of All Time. This game canon has been created to preserve to cultural and historical significance of gaming. The list is a result of a collaboration between Lowood, Warren Spector, Steve Meretzky, academic researcher Matteo Bittani and gaming journalist Christopher Grant from Joystiq, and represents the games we must protect at all costs...our cultural artifacts.

Spacewar! (1962)
Star Raiders (1979)
Zork (1980)
Tetris (1985)
SimCity (1989)
Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990)
Civilization I / II (1991)
Doom (1993)
Warcraft (Series) (1994)
Sensible World of Soccer (1994)

The games all represent firsts for lasting genres, such as adventure games, multiplayer, FPS, story-driven RTS, et cetera. Each gamer is required to save these titles to a microchip embedded in the base of their skull in order to preserve our gaming heritage. Michael Fahey

Is That Just Some Game? No, It's a Cultural Artifact [The New York Times, via Grand Text Auto]

Contact information for this author is not available.