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We've all heard of some of the videogames that had a dramatic impact on everything that followed after. Tetris launched a puzzle-game craze that never slowed down; Super Mario 64 laid down the ground rules for 3-D action games.
But there are games that had just as significant an influence that aren't remembered at all. Maybe they weren't commercially successful outside of a certain region of the world – or at all. Maybe a rip-off version became more successful. Or maybe their ideas weren't quite ready for prime time.
What all of these games have in common, however, is that one can draw a bright line connecting the relatively unknown original and the successful game or genre that it inspired. These are cause-effect relationships that, for one reason or another, often go unnoticed.
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