Mike Builds a Shelter

First art videogame

This game was originally part of a 1983 art exhibition, "Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter Snack Bar," at New York's Castelli Graphics, where the gallery was staged as a fallout shelter in which patrons might be spending some time waiting for the all-clear. The playable game was part of this installation.

The game was exhibited in the New Museum in New York and subsequently toured over twenty art museums around the world, collecting quarters from art lovers.

Though it ran on a Commodore 64, the game was installed in a full arcade cabinet with marquees, coin-drop mechanism and industrial joystick (all functional) allowing frustrating play as a stand-up arcade game.

The New York Times art section's (1983) Year in Review referred to Mike Builds a Shelter as the "first videogame as fine art." It has since been the subject of scholarly analysis by art historians of videogames.

In 2021 "Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter Snack Bar" was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Media and Performance, and installed in the museum in 2023.