Well, Hacked games, Computer games and Arcade machines should defiantly go in. Pinball and mechanical games should be mentioned, and Board games should not go in. Sorry, those just aren't what you think of when you think about video games.

How did you get to be a Curator? Managing a Video game museum should be awesome! Although I'll never see one here in Israel though, what with our gaming situation... (Nintendo doesn't exist, MS has been giving us the finger for 8 years, Sony is waaay overpriced (but so are all other games) and piracy is through the roof).

My vision of a video game museum would start with arcades and include everything home based till now, including computer games. Because the early 80's was dominated with computer games. I like pinball machines, and would kill to own one, but I've never considered it a video game. Back in the day pinball were used as gambling devices and banned in a lot of places. And yes without pinball there wouldn't be video games, but I just never considered them to be video games.

I think that all of those suggestions should be in, even if you don't dedicate entire sections to some of them, I think that anything that influenced the games we play, and anything that is linked to gaming in a significant way should be at least mentioned.

The only thing I could add to that lot would be a section for strange games and machines that no one has ever heard of. Oh and maybe a section about video game controversy.

One more thing, and this a completely selfish request, a section dedicated to video game music would be brilliant.

I feel that it should definitely focus on the pinball and arcade era, with less focus on the modern era (lets say, post ps1) at least for now, as the world is a living museum for those things. The earlier stuff doesn't really have many places to be displayed these days, with the age of "public" gaming well over.

Museums should not only display and inform about culture, but also help preserve it as well.

You know, the first thing I, and I have a feeling everyone else here, would ever do once we make money and get a nice pad is get a nice collection of arcade games. For me, Galaga, Ninja Turtles, Street Fighter, Ms. Pac Man..

Anyways that's a whole different subject. Home computer and early consoles (nothing past the 16-bit generations, I think, although the rise and fall of Sega should be noted) should definitely go in. Those old home consoles were around even before arcades. Computers about the same. Arcade cabinets and pinball go hand-in-hand in my book. Every arcade had those and contributed greatly to the social aspect (as in gathering in one place with friends) of videogames that is sadly dead these days.

Board games should be separate. That's a whole genre of itself and far too different. Once the idea of controls and a screen come into play, we should start from that point on.

Speaking as a classic videogamer (I used to read Electronic Fun and Electronic Games and even Blip), I have a few suggestions.

For one thing, if you're going to include pinball, you might want to include something that shows the evolution of the machine itself, how it went from mechanical to electro-mechanical, from led to dot-matrix, from basic gameplay involving rollovers, bumpers, and knockdown targets to specific themes and weird gimmicks. That being said, I'd include a healthy sample of Williams and Data East machines.

Second, in regards to arcade machines, I'd at least include one cabaret cabinet and one tabletop, just to show variety. As for specifics, I'd at least have some vectors in there...and Gorf too (as a prime example of how American companies altered Japanese creations) and anything by Williams (as they were the videogame company that charted its own course for success back in the day).

Third, for board games, I'd include a sampling of videogame adaptations, like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong...since this is supposed to be a videogame museum.

Fourth, for consputers (C-64 fan here), I'd include a tape drive and some old floppies as well as cartridges.

Fifth, I'd also include videogame magazines from back in the day: Joystik, Blip, EG, EF, Vidiot, Family Computing.

Finally, I'd also have skeeball there. You can always use skeeball to make a place better.

Oh, one last thing: I'd also include Hard Hat Mack somewhere in there. It's one of the first videogames that the government tried to get pulled from the market!

I feel a video game museum should begin with pinball and its contribution to the notion of public gaming, followed up by arcade games. Consoles should cover the time period up to around the end of the "bit wars", anything past that is too modern to showcase at present. Board games and tabletop games don't really belong, save maybe as a footnote for how games like Dungeons and Dragons influenced the development of the fantasy RPG. Computer gaming should have its history run parallel with that of console gaming.

And, as Jimmy suggested, gaming magazines should have a place as well - back in the day, before the internet, they were the only source of information about a game's secrets besides word-of-mouth.