Arcade Trivia
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149 free Arcade trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This arcade trivia quiz covers the coin-op machines that filled malls, pizza parlours and boardwalks from the 1970s onward. You will get questions on the golden-age classics (Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Asteroids, Galaga, Frogger, Defender, Q*bert), the fighting-game boom of the 1990s (Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat), light-gun and racing cabinets, and the older amusements that came before video: pinball, Skee-Ball and Whac-A-Mole. There are also questions on the businesses built around them, from Chuck E. Cheese to Dave & Buster's. It is written for anyone who ever lined up quarters on a cabinet, and it works as a solo test or as a round for a retro game night. Difficulty runs from easy (who chases you in Pac-Man?) to expert (which processor powered the first solid-state pinball games?), so casual players and collectors both have something to chase. Every answer was checked against a reference page before publishing, so the dates, designers, sales figures and hardware details hold up.
30 of 149 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1971 game by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney was the first commercial arcade video game?
Computer Space
Computer Space, a coin-op take on the mainframe game Spacewar!, came in a futuristic fiberglass cabinet, but its complex controls frustrated many bar patrons and sales fell short of hopes.
Q 02Atari's Pong was built by engineer Allan Alcorn as what kind of assignment from Nolan Bushnell?
A training exercise
Bushnell gave Alcorn Pong as a training exercise, telling him it was a General Electric contract; the table-tennis concept came from the Magnavox Odyssey, and Magnavox later sued Atari for patent infringement.
Q 03Why did the first Pong machine at Andy Capp's Tavern break down in 1972?
It was jammed full of quarters
It was jammed full of quarters: engineer Al Alcorn opened the Pong prototype to find its coin box overflowing, proof for Atari that the game was a hit worth building itself.
Q 04Which retailer sold Atari's Home Pong console exclusively during the 1975 Christmas season?
Sears
Sears sold Home Pong under its Tele-Games label for Christmas 1975 after toy retailers turned Atari down; Bushnell approached Sears after spotting a Magnavox Odyssey ad in its sporting goods catalogue.
Q 05Space Invaders designer Tomohiro Nishikado modelled his aliens on the octopus-like creatures from which novel?
The War of the Worlds
Nishikado based the aliens on the octopus-like Martians of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, and borrowed the space theme after seeing Space Battleship Yamato and Star Wars coverage.
Q 06Why do Space Invaders' aliens speed up as more of them are shot?
The processor has fewer to move
The processor has fewer to move with every alien shot, so the survivors march faster; Tomohiro Nishikado let the hardware's limits set the game's rising tension.
Q 07How did the first black-and-white Space Invaders cabinets add colour to the screen?
Strips of coloured cellophane
Strips of coloured cellophane, orange and green, were stuck over parts of the black-and-white screen; later cabinets dropped the trick for a true colour monitor.
Q 08By quadrupling Atari 2600 sales in 1980, its Space Invaders port became home consoles' first what?
A killer app
A killer app sells the hardware it runs on: people bought the Atari 2600 just to play Space Invaders at home, and Atari pulled far ahead of its console rivals.
Q 09Under what title was Pac-Man originally released in Japan in May 1980?
Puck Man
Puck Man, from the Japanese paku paku taberu (gobbling), was renamed Pac-Man for North America over fears vandals would turn the P into an F.
Q 10Which Street Fighter II newcomer was the first playable female fighter in the Street Fighter games?
Chun-Li
Chun-Li, an Interpol officer, enters the tournament to avenge her father, killed by the crime boss M. Bison; no woman was playable in the first Street Fighter.
Q 11Pac-Man's perfect score of 3,333,360 ends at a glitched split-screen level bearing which number?
256
256 breaks the game: the level counter overflows its single byte, so the right half of the maze fills with garbled symbols and the board cannot be cleared.
Q 12Which novelty duo took the song "Pac-Man Fever" to No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100?
Buckner & Garcia
Buckner & Garcia followed the 1982 hit with a whole album of arcade-game songs, including the single 'Do the Donkey Kong'.
Q 13Crazy Otto, an unauthorised Pac-Man enhancement kit, was bought by Midway and released in 1982 as which game?
Ms. Pac-Man
Ms. Pac-Man began as Crazy Otto, built without permission by General Computer Corporation, which pitched the kit to Midway instead of selling it itself.
Q 21Which 1981 Atari game co-designed by Dona Bailey was an early arcade hit with women?
Centipede
Centipede, co-designed by Dona Bailey and Ed Logg, was aimed squarely at women, Logg later said, as Atari tried to draw more female players into arcades.
Q 22Defender was the first video game project of which Williams pinball programmer?
Eugene Jarvis
Eugene Jarvis had programmed Williams pinball tables before leading Defender (1981); its joystick plus five buttons for thrust, reverse, fire, smart bomb and hyperspace made it notoriously hard.
Q 23Which sitcom built a 1998 episode around a character's bid to save his Frogger high score?
Seinfeld
Seinfeld's 'The Frogger' has George try to move the machine across a busy street without cutting its power, since unplugging it would wipe his record.
Q 14Donkey Kong was created to salvage thousands of unsold cabinets of which flop Nintendo game?
Radar Scope
Nintendo of America was stuck with about 2,000 unsold Radar Scope machines, so Hiroshi Yamauchi ordered a conversion, which gave Shigeru Miyamoto his first game design job: Donkey Kong.
Q 15Donkey Kong's hero Jumpman was renamed Mario after whom?
Nintendo of America's landlord
Nintendo of America's landlord, Mario Segale, owned the warehouse the company rented in Washington state; Jumpman had been named for its echo of Walkman and Pac-Man.
Q 16Which company unsuccessfully sued Nintendo, claiming Donkey Kong infringed its King Kong trademark?
Universal City Studios
Universal City Studios lost because the court found it had no rights to King Kong, and Nintendo thanked its lawyer John Kirby with a $30,000 sailboat named Donkey Kong.
Q 17What do Donkey Kong players call level 22, where a timer bug ends every game within seconds?
The kill screen
The kill screen comes when level 22's bonus timer overflows a single byte, leaving Mario only a few seconds before he dies, so no game can go further.
Q 18The King of Kong (2007) follows Billy Mitchell's Donkey Kong rivalry with which challenger?
Steve Wiebe
Steve Wiebe, a schoolteacher from Washington state, is a two-time Donkey Kong world champion; his last reign began in September 2010, three years after the film.
Q 19Galaga was the 1981 sequel to which earlier Namco shooter?
Galaxian
Galaga (1981) was the sequel to Namco's 1979 Galaxian; its Boss Galaga can capture your fighter with a tractor beam, and rescuing it gives you a dual fighter with double firepower.
Q 20Asteroids, Atari's best-selling arcade game, was drawn on what kind of monitor?
A vector display
Asteroids ran on a vector display, using the Digital Vector Generator hardware built for Lunar Lander to draw crisp lines; players soon found a 'lurking' exploit by hiding at the screen edge.
Q 24Q*bert (1982), the hopper who curses in symbols, was the biggest video game hit for which pinball maker?
Gottlieb
Gottlieb, renamed Mylstar Electronics in 1983, was owned by Columbia Pictures, so the Q*bert rights stayed with Columbia after the pinball company was sold off in 1984.
Q 25What must Q*bert do to every cube of the pyramid to clear a level?
Change its colour
Change its colour: Q*bert hops across a pyramid of 28 cubes and each flips to the target colour when he lands, though in later rounds a cube may need two hops.
Q 26Dragon's Lair (1983) stood out for film-quality animation by which former Disney animator?
Don Bluth
Don Bluth, who had quit Disney in 1979, drew Dragon's Lair as a cartoon played from a LaserDisc; to save money, his animators voiced the characters themselves.
Q 27In Dragon's Lair the player controls Dirk the Daring on a quest to save whom?
Princess Daphne
Dirk the Daring rescues Princess Daphne from the dragon Singe; the game was such a sensation that the LaserDisc players inside many cabinets broke down from overuse.
Q 28Which fruit is the first bonus item to appear in Pac-Man?
Cherry
Cherry is the first bonus prize, worth 100 points; a bonus appears below the ghost pen twice per level, and each one vanishes within ten seconds if Pac-Man is slow to reach it.
Q 29Which 1982 Sega game introduced isometric graphics and shadows to arcades?
Zaxxon
Zaxxon (1982) was the first arcade game drawn in isometric projection, casting a shadow beneath the player's ship; the same year Sega's SubRoc-3D used a special eyepiece for stereoscopic 3D.
Q 30Capcom's Street Fighter II was the fourteenth game released on which arcade board?
CP System
CP System was Capcom's own arcade board; Street Fighter II's combos began on it as a bug the team spotted and left in, and combos went on to become a fighting-game standard.