I remember when we fought the war over video games' status as art. We lost a lot of good women and men to the Battle of Citizen Kane of Video Games, and I still grimace on the anniversary of the Three Day Siege of Ludonarrative Dissonance. I vowed to never forget the sacrifices countless anonymous commenters made, only to be wiped from this earth by the cold, unsympathetic ire of rogue moderators. To think, while we champions of the video game medium poured blood, sweat, and tweets into the pell-mell of so many forums, an easy solution was laying in wait.

Video games are art if you just turn art into video games. The following creations come from a prompt at B3ta to "turn famous works of art into video games." A painting by Piet Mondrian becomes Pongdrian. The work of Francis Bacon is aching to be Quakeon. Mona Lisa is, um, Mona Croft: Art Raider. Humor me.

Here are a handful of my favorite mashups from B3ta.

(Via Andry_R)

(Via Ya What)

(Via Ninj)

(Via Zoroastermouse)

Now, obviously, there's another way to solve the question "Are video games art?" and that is with a poll on a website.