A strange little side quest
Even a quick game like Rapid Cooking sits on top of decades — and sometimes centuries — of ideas. Cone-shaped wafers with cream were described in print before 1900, but the ice-cream cone became a major American fairground hit at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. And then there is this: SimCity grew out of Will Wright's enjoyment of the map editor he had built for an earlier game; the act of shaping a city became the game itself. It is a good reminder that simple game mechanics can carry a surprising amount of history.
