We’ve all heard of Pac-Man, Pokémon, Super Mario Bros, Gears Of War and SimCity, and most of us could probably recall the famous names who made them, too. But like pop singers, painters, filmmakers and any other kind of artist you could mention, some videogame designers will always be associated with their biggest hit. It’s inevitable, then, that the famous names on this list have also been responsible for some games you may never have heard of – and in some cases, their lesser-known pieces of work are well worth tracking down.

So to begin, let’s head back to 1980, and the creator of one of the most lucrative arcade machines of all time…

Toru Iwatani

Famous for: Pac-Man

Perhaps the most celebrated coin-op from gaming’s golden age, the colour, design and sounds of Pac-Man are probably still familiar even to a generation far too young to have played it when it first came out. Toru Iwatani was still in his mid-20s when he created Pac-Man (original title: Puck-Man, as gaming nerds everywhere know), and his maze-chase concept was quite different from the legion Space Invaders clones at the time. Although its fame built up slowly at first, the trickle of players soon became a flood; within its first year, Pac-Man had cleared the $1bn revenue mark, and is now widely considered to be the most profitable arcade machine of all time.