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Roberta Williams is at the top of the list; her games were a huge part of my youth. Lesser known here would be Lori Cole, who made Hero's Quest. Loved those Quest games.

Rebecca Heineman comes next; again, the games she worked on were massively influential upon me.

I have much respect for Amy Hennig, who pushed narrative gaming to new levels.

Kim Swift is responsible for _hundreds_ of hours of time lost to multiplayer games with friends of mine.

There's good odds most gamers of my age have played, and enjoyed, something worked on by Sheri Graner Ray.

Honorable mention is Corrinne Yu; I started following her career with passive interest when she was hired at 3DRealms, I expected she had the potential to be the next John Carmack.

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> Lesser known here would be Lori Cole, who made Hero's Quest.

Also lesser known because due to a trademark dispute, all sequels and the VGA remakes of the series were renamed to Quest for Glory.

I deeply enjoyed that whole series in my childhood, even despite how weird the voxel-based art in the fifth game was. IIRC, I learned the "razzle dazzle root beer" cheat in Hero's Quest before I learned the Konami code, and, with the help of my dad, even learned how to hex edit my save games in Quest for Glory 2.

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