Need I remind you that without maintenance, Flash memory, hard disks, VHS tapes, CDs (basically every dynamic digital storage medium we use) will have erased its data within 20 years.

Nintendo's cartridges used ROM and will last significantly longer, but probably still won't withstand 1000 years.

I probably should have specified that I didn't actually mean the hardware that the games are on, but just the media on those devices since they can be shared and reproduced infinitely.

Id have to agree that the only games that survive are the very simplest ones.

This is because they are so simple that if you do modifications, most would classify it as the same game.

I'd say tic-tac-toe because new programmers will still be trying to figure it out

This is the consensus that I expect from everyone now. I suppose most games could just be considered a couple of dozen basic game ideas thrown into one to create something new. Kind of depressing that unless we create another fundamental game people will likely never enjoy our creations past their small lifespans.

Strip Chess anyone?

There may be a record of some games from our time. But nobody will be playing them or know of them outside a few history geeks. Seriously, we view games from 20 years ago as being ancient retro classics. New gamers won't know what Doom is or Quake or SimCity and those are as near to genre-defining as anything recent-ish.

Same for music and literature - barely ANYONE reads literature more than 2-300 years old let alone 500 years or older, and there are loads of excellent books from those periods. Very little music from 400+ years ago is known outside a small number of niche enthusiasts, and things are speeding up - things are changing ever faster and dropping from fashion sooner and sooner. I bet even the Beatles will drop from general knowledge in the next few decades and they are by far the best known modern group - look at Bieber and Gaga and ask yourself if they will be widely known in 10 years.

Well, here I am going forward with the Mario It's been there for more than a decades and still people just love to play Mario. So, Mario is going to keep on standing for more decades.

Can you name the first games Mario was in, with out using the internets ?

Mario as a character may survive, however Mario the game will not.

They are basically disposable; its like asking which issue of a magazine will survive 1000s years.

Well...things like "Great Expectations" were originally published as part of a weekly magazine, and that one has endured at least 150+ years, and going strong :)

You never know, but in principle yes, I agree it's really unlikely that in 1000 years people will know who "super mario" is.

>>>barely ANYONE reads literature more than 2-300 years old let alone 500 years or older,

...What?!

I'd think saying "barely anyone" reads things like Illiad or Odyssey or Plato or Shakespeare or Dante's works or the Bible or the Quaran or the Torah or Confucius etc etc is...a bit of an exaggeration, don't you think?