A strange little side quest
Put Hawaii Match next to the history of arcade history and a few unexpected connections appear. Pac-Man went on sale in 1980, and its creator Toru Iwatani famously linked the character's shape to a pizza with a slice missing. There is another connection worth keeping in the same mental pocket: Street Fighter II, released in 1991, turned head-to-head arcade fighting into a worldwide phenomenon and helped define the modern fighting-game genre. It is a good reminder that simple game mechanics can carry a surprising amount of history.
