“Ms. Pac-Man”

The history of video games is the story of ripoffs, knock-offs and sequels that surpass their sources, and that’s particularly true of this 1981 classic. An initially unauthorized variation on the original Pac-Man, it fixed the flaws of its model (by making the ghosts’ movement more unpredictable so that it required strategy rather than muscle memory to play, making the maze easier to see, and throwing in some visual variety to break up the singleminded monotony of the dots-and-monsters chase), and otherwise didn’t mess with the compulsively playable formula. And it’s arguably the most popular arcade game ever to feature a female protagonist.
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“Street Fighter II”

Chances are, if you saw a crowd huddled around an arcade cabinet in the early 1990s, they were watching Ken face off again E.Honda or another martial arts match-up in Street Fighter II. The complexity of the hit fighting game helped to spawn the competitive gaming culture that led to big tournaments and SF characters became icons in their own right. SFII changed the way people socialize around video games and reinvigorated a whole sub-genre of the medium, too.
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