A strange little side quest
If Merge Vs Machines sends you down a curiosity rabbit hole, start here. Games resembling checkers were being played thousands of years ago; evidence of related games reaches back to around 1600 BC. It also connects to a different milestone: 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. That long chain of experiments is part of why strategy games still feels fresh when a game finds the right twist.
