A strange little side quest
Even a quick game like Tetris sits on top of decades — and sometimes centuries — of ideas. Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris in 1984 after drawing inspiration from pentomino puzzles, then simplified the idea around shapes made from four squares. And the history keeps stacking up: Midway's Gun Fight from 1975 was the first arcade video game to use a microprocessor. It is a good reminder that simple game mechanics can carry a surprising amount of history.