dsheinem wrote:C) see comparisons of original concept art (perhaps supplied by studios) to finished designs while listening to audio/video of artists discussing their work
E) occasional live performances of video game music or game-related musicians (e.g. a show by The Protomen or a quartet performance of an OST, etc.)
I want to second these. What I'm most interested in from a video game perspective is 1) why they were significant for their time, 2) what the stories are behind the way they were made and the people who made them, and 3) the music.
In regards to the first, for example, I love hearing about how hardware limitations had a direct hand in the trajectory of a game, especially if the result is something that was considered a killer feature or a really clever bend of the available resources. The Shadow Man in the original Prince of Persia comes to mind -- Jordan Mechner thought he had run out of room to program a new enemy with new behaviors, and he didn't want to recycle the Prince's movements into a different sprite because he thought of them as being too unique in personality -- and bam, he applied a palette swap and gained the narrative's compelling twist.
For the second, I love hearing about the relations the people working on it had with each other -- who was responsible for what department, who came up with some amazing idea, the fact that they all played D&D in the main boardroom on the weekend, and so on. Understanding how the group effort came together, and what people went through to succeed, is fascinating and important.
And for the third, you can apply it to paragraphs one and two and make it its own focus. I would be over the moon if an exhibit were created to demonstrate each console, its available channels and waveforms (maybe even in a hands-on mixer situation you could work with yourself?), its limitations (how tempo used to be tied to refresh rate, for example), samples of chiptunes that made use of certain techniques (I've heard the composer Matt Furniss explain how he was able to "simulate chords" in one channel on the Genesis, and if this could be broken out for me in a display, that would be so awesome), and/or actual profiles on the composers behind the works.