A strange little side quest
Put The Zen Garden next to the history of simulation games and a few unexpected connections appear. 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. Nintendo's Donkey Kong arrived in 1981 and introduced the character first known as Jumpman, who later became Mario. It is a good reminder that simple game mechanics can carry a surprising amount of history.
