They left off "Pac-Man."

They left off "Grand Theft Auto."

They left off "Half-Life 2."

They almost went with "Call of Duty" !

What in the world were Henry Lowood, Matteo Bittanti, Chris Grant, Steve Meretzky, and Warren Spector possibly thinking when they got together at Game Developer's Conference to name the 10 games that should go in a museum?

They defended their selections to me at the show, and I've now got an article at MTVNews.com and a video at the site to show for it.

Want to know a little more on why they picked what they did and left out the rest? Check the links. For a taste, here's Chris Grant explaining his pick for  "Super Mario Bros. 3":

"We were looking for originators, so I didn't want to jump to Super Nintendo, and I didn't want to jump to the 3-D games," he said. "I wanted to stick to the original Mario series on NES. 'Mario 2' automatically kind of gets booted — sorry, 'Mario 2.' So it's between 'Mario' 1 and 3. When it gets down to games you want to play, 'Super Mario Brothers 3' added more levels, more creativity, more power-ups, better graphics." Plus "SMB3" was marketed more extravagantly — it was featured in a movie, for one thing — than many games of its time, making it a precursor for the blockbuster treatment many more recent games get. So he picked that game, the one with Mario sporting a raccoon tail.

Hey, if we're talking side-scroller perfection, we need "Yoshi's Island" in the museum. Added justification: museums like preserving dinosaur stuff.

Just don't read the article if you can't handle finding out that "Call of Duty" almost made the list.