This week in video game history is astoundingly important. From the birth of influential RPG developers to Atari's immortal blunder, you'll find more than enough packed into the last seven days to make up for the lack of history updates recently.

July 25

1978 -- Ko Shibusawa Eiji Fukuzawa founded Koei. Originally the company focused on personal computers and made-to-order software. It isn't until 1983 that they enter the gaming scene with Nobunaga's Ambition.

July 26

1967 -- Until this date, everyone lived in a pre-Tim Schafer world. No Day of the Tentacle, no Secret of Monkey Island, no adventure games as we know them.... Happy Birthday, Tim Schafer!

July 27

1982 -- Atari commits one of their greatest blunders when they assign Howard Scott Warshaw to create E.T.:  the Extra-Terrestrial game for the 2600 in only five weeks. This mistake eventually costs Atari dearly when the company hits the rocks two years later after the finished game tanks.

1990 -- Dr. Mario signs off on his prescription for fun when the game launched in arcades. Most know it best as the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy versions that came out later that year.

July 28

1997 -- EA acquires Maxis and, soon after, a ridiculously successful sim empire. I've never thought of Maxis without EA's logo slapped on their games. Strange how this occurred just 13 years ago.

July 29

1994 --  The war over a unified ratings system for games ended as a group of publishers presented the final form of what we know as the ESRB scale to Congress. This war started two years earlier with Mortal Kombat's rise in popularity.

July 30

1998 -- Soul Calibur makes its arcade debut.  That same year, my eyes glisten with the manic joy of crushing opponents in arcades.

July 31

1967 -- Tehkan Ltd. sets up shop as a cleaning-product supplier. Later in life, they started producing and publishing video games and changed that strange-looking name to Tecmo.

1989 -- Nintendo releases the original Gameboy. It stands its ground against Sega's color Game Gear by lasting longer than an hour off batteries...sometimes.

1998 -- Child Sega fans across the country weep as the Sega Channel shuts down forever. If you never experienced the joy of cable-access video games, you can hardly say you've lived.

2009 -- Matrix Online flip off the server switches, but not before Giant Bomb painstakingly documents the insane world you'd expect to find in a Matrix MMO.