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Happy 10th Birthday, Plants vs. Zombies! I had no idea when scribbling this on paper over 10 years ago just how much it'd change my life! 
It's only when I drew this zombie that the game truly became Plants vs. Zombies. Before this you were fighting the aliens from Insaniquarium
This is also the debut of the Sunflower and collecting sun. Prior to that, you were watering and plucking these radish-like plants I was calling "Tubers" out of the ground as your main resource. When I decided that was too tedious, I had the Tubers just hold up $ for you
This is also when the "5 lane" concept was introduced. Before this I was prototyping a more traditional tower defense, where there weren't lanes and you'd build a maze for your enemies to walk through. Notice that I initially drew 6 lanes, then scribbled one out!
Inspired by Magic, early prototypes had you building a deck of seed packets and the game would draw from that deck and send them down a conveyor belt for you. You can see remnants of this through the conveyor belt levels in the final game.
The short-lived predecessor to the Peashooter, sort of a tomato with a spout. I know when designing this I had the Snifit from SMB2 in my subconscious as something that obviously shoots at you. I've always appreciated Miyamoto's ability to communicate so much without using words
