Tempting as it might be to imagine that history just plods along on a linear course, with great advancements magically popping into being at their appointed times, the reality is that it always takes a single, bright spark of an idea to get the wheels of progress moving – mainly by convincing others to steal said idea and improve it.

It’s the same with videogames; look at their history as a whole, and it looks like one long, unbroken chain of gradual evolution. Look closer, however, and you’ll see that every last one of the useful features we take for granted today had its origin in one single, (sometimes) brilliant trailblazer that pioneered a new idea and made it appealing for everyone else. These games all introduced something that would irrevocably change to landscape of gaming in the years that followed, and it’s high time the important evolutionary steps they brought about were recognized.