20 Incredibly Important Video Games That Shaped The Industry

11. Tetris

Why It Is Important: Tetris became the first handheld killer app and defined an era of portable gaming. It€™s hard to believe that there was a time when having a dedicated handheld console simply wasn€™t a thing. Sure, there were basic handhelds like Nintendo€™s Game & Watch series, but they were far too limited to unleash the full potential of portable gaming. Nintendo finally got it right with the Game Boy €“ a bulky little cartridge-based box with a monochrome display that almost every child of the 80s and 90s owned at some point. It quickly became a cultural phenomenon thanks largely to one game: an addictive little puzzler called Tetris. The objective of Tetris was to simply make lines out of various blocks as they fall down the screen and prevent the blocks from reaching the top for as long as possible. As the player progressed, the speed at which the blocks fell would increase, which of course got to a point where it would scroll too fast even for a Ninja fresh out of Ninja school. Tetris had released on other systems previously, but it was on the Game Boy that it cemented its place in gaming history. Nintendo smartly bundled the Game Boy with Tetris and the hardware went on to sell 118 million units in its lifetime, creating the handheld industry that Nintendo still rules with an iron fist today.