A strange little side quest
Even a quick game like Slots Beach sits on top of decades — and sometimes centuries — of ideas. 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. That old idea kept changing rather than disappearing. Street Fighter II, released in 1991, turned head-to-head arcade fighting into a worldwide phenomenon and helped define the modern fighting-game genre. That history is one reason familiar mechanics can still feel new when they are recombined well.
