9 Dragons

A strange little side quest

Put 9 Dragons next to the history of action games and a few unexpected connections appear. Doom changed game design and distribution in 1993 by separating its engine from content and spreading widely through shareware. The surprising part is how quickly the next milestone followed. Nintendo's Donkey Kong arrived in 1981 and introduced the character first known as Jumpman, who later became Mario. Not bad for a few facts hiding behind a Play button.