Museum Game

There's an increasing trend these days when it comes to longrunning series, or longlasting companies. At some point, a game will be made that is basically like an interactive musuem of the company's own past.

Sonic Generations, for example, contains levels themed entirely after locations from previous games in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. There's also a gallery of concept art, information on characters in the series, and the ability to earn music from the series.

Even standalone games can do this. Kinect Disneyland Adventures is an interactive game version of Disneyland, and in itself, is also filled with Disney characters and levels themed after different movies or rides.

In order to qualify as a Museum Game, a video game must be pretty much about paying tribute to or heavily referencing a franchise or company's past. A few throwaway jokes or references or a Nostalgia Level do not count. Also, this is not about games which contain Embedded Precursors.

Bonus points if the game has some sort of readable information gallery about the franchise as a whole. To put it another way, picture a tour through a musuem. Now picture a tour through a company's franchise. If the analogy fits, then it's a Museum Game. If it's just referencing the past, it isn't.

Not to be confused with Museum Madness.

Examples of Museum Game include:

Sonic Generations, as mentioned above, is basically traveling through the past of Sonic, with a lot of extras on the side.
The Super Smash Bros. series is all about referencing the past and present of Nintendo. The game has many locations, characters and music from different Nintendo franchises, as well as a trophy gallery of different characters with information that can be read about them.
Kinect Disneyland Adventures is based on Disneyland itself, so it makes sense that it's filled with Disney characters. The ability to visit locations from movies in the form of minigame challenges is what pushes it into this territory.
The Kingdom Hearts series, to varying degrees. For example, the first and second main games in the series not only have you visiting different Disney movies and interacting with the characters, but there's even an information gallery with details about the characters (albeit their role in Kingdom Hearts rather than their own movies specifically), including details of when the character was first created, and occasionally trivia (e.g. "Doorknob was the only character in Alice in Wonderland who wasn't in the original book").
The Game and Watch Gallery series is made up of ports of old Game and Watch games, along with modern remakes feature Mario characters instead of stick figures. True to its title, they also have Gallery and Museum sections about other Game and Watch titles.
The Namco Museum series on the Playstation took place in a literal museum, with exhibits showing facts and memorabilia for each game.
The Sega Genesis Collection is a museum highlighting some of the most famous games from the Genesis era complete with informational cards. This includes Ecco the Dolphin, Phantasy Star, and Sonic the Hedgehog. Some of the "rarer" games like Ristar must be unlocked by beating other, more commonly found games. The cards are literally museum-style information pages. This is done to give more information about the games as well as give a sense of the era they were made in, when they were made and what went into making them.
The newest Splatterhouse (2010) is a softer museum example as beating this Nintendo Hard game earns the right to play the original 3 games, while also viewing extra art and information on them. It's basically a playable tour through the Splatterhouse franchise plus art and information. This is done as both a nostalgic reward for fans of the original series (especially as many wanted to play the uncensored game but never could) and to educate new players about the cool stuff that came before.
Sonic Mega Collection is yet another Sonic example. The game contains both a collection of Sonic games and a museum mode in which one can view old game manuals, character concept art, and comic covers and watch a handful of videos, including one featuring a brief history of the Sonic series.
- Before this was Sonic Jam, a Sega Saturn compilation that had an actual museum for Sonic to explore.