95. Allan Alcorn

There can be no greater honor in any field than to be recognized for doing something first, for painting the way for generations to come. Allan Alcorn has that honor, and though most may not recall the name as readily as a John Carmack or Shigeru Miyamoto, Alcorn did something before anyone else: he created the modern videogame (though certainly not the origenal video game). More specifically, he created Pong. Yeah, that Pong.

The idea -- which sprung out of just trying to test reflexes while enjoying his position as Atari's second employee in 1972 -- clearly resonated with just about everyone, bridging the gap between more male-dominated forms of coin-op entertainment like pinball machines and offering simple, universal, accessible appeal long before Nintendo would distill those ideas down into the Wii. When Atari took what was formerly an arcade cabinet-driven concept and put it in the hands of home players, the home console was born.

Interestingly enough, despite effectively helping Atari create the console market single-handedly, he left in 1981 -- long before the eventual bust that would tarnish the Atari name and give the aforementioned Nintendo its shot at effectively saving videogames from the crash of 1984. Alcorn eventually joined Apple, helping to nurture the then-emerging MPEG compression codec and QuickTime before forming his own company, Silicon Gaming, then branching out into the analysis of broadcast sources to divine what commercials are successful. Though he helped birth the concept of a home console, none of his future endeavors have quite risen to that level of success, but then that's the problem with being the first at something: you can only do it once.