There are analogous instances in music and film. Citizen Kane is an ambitious film and pioneered a lot of storytelling devices, but these days it doesn't have the same impact. It is more recognized for having broken ground for these sorts of devices, as a lot of movie lists will concede these days. The Great Train Robbery broke the 4th wall for the first time (the criminal shot the audience, vaguely) and paved the way for cinema and TV to become reflexive. These are movies that people watch mostly for historical import.

Music is littered with all sorts of movements that are more notable for their impact than people still listening to them (lo-fi is a perfect example, to me at least).

My point is that a canon of groundbreaking, amazing, but outmoded games isn't unprecedented in modern forms of art (you're right; I can't think of a literary equivalent off the top of my head, but that may be an exception). The console barrier is a new wrinkle, but even that seems to be falling--and will fall even more so in the future.

One example that I think of is SMB2 and how it used surreal dream qualities outright, and how it might have been the first game to allow you to turn your enemies' against themselves as a primary mechanic.

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That said, I also really wanted to like Echocrome but it just turned out to be frustratingly broken. Most of the time when I beat a level I wasn't even sure why, I was just shifting the camera around randomly.

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The title line was "If Jackson Pollock Were A Gamer". Braid doesn't quite come into that scope.

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That said, they could have also put up Linger in Shadows. That was at least worth a mention.

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I'm not complaining that the game was "pretentious", I think games should strive to achieve a lot with their stories (Planescape, Fallout, Arcanum). The game just wallowed in self-pity about a relationship ending. I mean it's a better story that Gears.

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