Artix Entertainment, creator of Adventure Quest Worlds, claims in a press release that its in-game celebrity promotions were the precursor to Zynga's immense Lady Gaga tie-in, GagaVille.

Its developer Artix Entertainment has still been making games for the past 21 years (deep breaths, Harvey), to mixed success: DragonFable, Adventure Quest 3D—and, apparently, a game for the NES.

It's great to talk about console games from the 2000s, and the era was defined by the triple-A titles of the time, but it would be obscuring a massive part of video game history if we did not ...