The massmarket videogames, puzzlers. Before there ever were videogames (well, as we would recognise them) there were the likes of [Connect 4]
? and
Rubiks Cube, today's puzzle game forefathers. The genre is a little bit hard to describe: the gameplay is usually abstract (but not always) often involving arranging geometric shapes to fulfil some goal or constraint. Often edge matching or colour matching plays an important role. Puzzle games usually strive to have a pick-up-and-play accessibility to them and are often hugely addictive and very annoying.
Puzzle games are relatively easy to develop and to take from dedicated arcade units, to home consoles, to PDAs and mobile phones.
Tetris is widely regarded as the pinnacle of its genre, despite not having any real advertising nor a cute character to lust after, unless of course the "T" shaped block (or whatever) does anything for you. Minesweeper? is worth a mention merely because of its huge installed user base (it comes bundled with the Microsoft Windows operating system).
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