At the very least, there were one- and two-button runners in Flash for some time before Canabalt. I think Canabalt is like Doom or Super Mario Brothers--it was

At the very least, there were one- and two-button runners in Flash for some time before Canabalt. I think Canabalt is like Doom or Super Mario Brothers--it was the first really polished implemention of its genre that showed its full potential and led to an explosion of other games, but it didn't invent the core concept.