Videogame
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
100 free Videogame trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
15 free Videogame trivia questions with answers. Videogame trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is Video Games trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was the first commercially successful arcade video game?
Pong
Pong was Atari's 1972 debut; the prototype in a Sunnyvale bar soon stopped working because its coin box had jammed full of quarters, which convinced Atari to build the machines itself.
Q 02Which console first popularized rumble feedback with an add-on controller accessory?
Nintendo 64
The Nintendo 64's Rumble Pak arrived in 1997 bundled with Star Fox 64 and plugged into the back of the controller; by November Sony's DualShock had the motors built into the pad itself.
Q 03The original Diablo, developed by Blizzard North, was first released for which platform?
Windows PC
Windows PC players got Diablo at the very end of 1996; Blizzard North had designed it as a turn-based game until its publisher pushed for real-time play, and a PlayStation port followed in 1998.
Q 04Which Microsoft veteran co-founded Valve, the company behind Steam, in 1996?
Gabe Newell
Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington quit Microsoft to start Valve, following a colleague who had already left to make games at id Software, the studio the other three co-founded in 1991.
Q 05What genre is Minecraft primarily categorized as?
Sandbox
Sandbox games set no fixed goal and let players make their own fun; Minecraft's creator took its dig-and-build blocks from Infiniminer, an indie mining game released only weeks earlier.
Q 06Which Mario character hunts ghosts with a vacuum cleaner in his own spin-off series?
Luigi
Luigi began in 1983's Mario Bros. as a green recolour of Mario; Luigi's Mansion (2001) finally gave the sidekick his own series, armed with a ghost-catching vacuum called the Poltergust 3000.
Q 07Which game came bundled with the Game Boy at its 1989 North American launch?
Tetris
Tetris got the slot after its licence-holder told Nintendo's US chief that a Mario game would sell the handheld to young boys, but the falling-block puzzle would sell it to everyone.
Q 08Who composed the score for Final Fantasy VII?
Nobuo Uematsu
Nobuo Uematsu wrote the whole Final Fantasy VII score in under a year; for the final battle's 'One-Winged Angel' he set Latin verses from the Carmina Burana to a blend of Stravinsky and Jimi Hendrix.
Q 09The Xbox, launched in 2001, takes its name from which Microsoft software technology?
DirectX
DirectX gave the console its working title, 'DirectX Box'; marketing disliked the shortened 'Xbox' and put it in focus tests expecting it to lose, only for it to beat every alternative.
Q 10Many early buyers used the PlayStation 2 as a cheap player for which disc format?
DVD
DVD players often cost more than the console itself in 2000, so many households bought a PlayStation 2 to watch films; at its Japanese launch the best-selling disc was The Matrix on DVD.
Q 11Which Zelda game launched alongside the Nintendo Switch?
Breath of the Wild
Breath of the Wild was announced in 2013 for the Wii U, then slipped so far that it became both that console's last Nintendo-published game and the Switch's launch showpiece.
Q 12Sega's 16-bit Genesis console was sold in Japan and Europe under which name?
Mega Drive
Mega Drive was the name in Japan, Europe and most other markets; North America got Genesis, reportedly over a trademark clash, and Sega's US ads boasted 'Genesis does what Nintendon't'.
Q 13Which independent developer is solely credited with creating Stardew Valley?
Eric Barone
Q 21Which mad scientist is the arch-enemy of Sonic the Hedgehog?
Doctor Eggman
Doctor Eggman, known as Dr. Robotnik in early Western releases, has chased Sonic since Sega launched the hedgehog in 1991 as its answer to Nintendo's Mario.
Q 22Grand Theft Auto V is set in a fictional city based on which real one?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles is the model for the game's Los Santos; Rockstar's team spent more than 100 days there on research trips and used Google Maps projections of the real streets to lay out its roads.
Q 23The 1993 shooter Doom begins on the moons of which planet before ending in hell?
Mars
Mars's moons Phobos and Deimos host the first two episodes before the third descends into Hell; Doom spread so widely that Microsoft filmed Bill Gates inside the game to promote Windows 95.
Eric Barone began Stardew Valley after failing to land a programming job on graduating in 2011, then spent years making every part alone, from code to art and music, as ConcernedApe.
Q 14The Elder Scrolls V, which casts the player as the Dragonborn, has what subtitle?
Skyrim
Skyrim has been re-released on so many machines that Bethesda sent itself up in 2018 with a 'Very Special Edition' for Amazon's Alexa, a spoof that was also a real, playable voice game.
Q 15Which enemy does Mario meet first in World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros.?
Goomba
The Goomba was the last enemy added, after testers found the Koopa Troopa too tricky to face first; memory was nearly gone, so its walk is one tiny image flipped back and forth.
Q 16Which Soviet software engineer created Tetris in the mid-1980s?
Alexey Pajitnov
Alexey Pajitnov wrote Tetris at a Moscow computing centre of the Soviet Academy of Sciences; because the state owned his work, he earned no royalties from it until 1996.
Q 17Under what title was Pac-Man originally released in Japan in 1980?
Puck Man
Pac-Man was released in Japan by Namco in 1980 as Puck Man, from the Japanese 'paku-paku' eating sound; it was renamed for the US to deter vandals altering the P to an F.
Q 18In The Legend of Zelda series, Link and Zelda fight to save which land from Ganon?
Hyrule
Hyrule grew out of Shigeru Miyamoto's boyhood near Kyoto, where he roamed fields and woods and crept into caves with no map; he wanted players to feel the same thrill of stumbling on secrets.
Q 19Which Japanese company developed and published Space Invaders in 1978?
Taito
Taito's Space Invaders speeds up by accident: its designer found the hardware drew the aliens faster as fewer remained on screen, and kept the quirk as a feature that raised the tension.
Q 20In the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong, who does Mario climb the construction site to rescue?
Pauline
Pauline was simply 'Lady' in the first arcade release, and Mario was 'Jumpman'; Nintendo built the game to reuse unsold cabinets from its failed shooter Radar Scope.
Q 24In Valve's Portal, which AI taunts the player through the Aperture Science test chambers?
GLaDOS
GLaDOS, short for Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System, lures the player on with a promise of cake; graffiti warning that 'the cake is a lie' became a widely shared internet meme.
Q 25Which studio developed Halo: Combat Evolved, the 2001 Xbox launch title?
Bungie
Bungie began Halo in 1997 as a real-time strategy game, reworked it into a shooter, and saw it become the Xbox's launch title after Microsoft bought the studio in 2000.
Q 26The original Pokémon Red and Blue take place in which fictional region?
Kanto
In Japan the 1996 pair was Red and Green; Blue came later as a special edition. All of them roam Kanto, the series' first region, and the games reached the West in 1998.
Q 27What was the development codename of the Wii console?
Revolution
Nintendo called the console 'Revolution' from its 2004 announcement until renaming it Wii in April 2006; Satoru Iwata bet on motion controls over raw power.
Q 28Swappable ROM cartridges, popularized by the Atari 2600, were first used by which 1976 console?
Fairchild Channel F
The Fairchild Channel F, whose F stood for 'Fun', put each game on a plug-in 'Videocart' in 1976; Atari's VCS took up the idea a year later and left its 350,000 sales far behind.
Q 29Which company developed Street Fighter II: The World Warrior for arcades in 1991?
Capcom
Capcom's Street Fighter II let players choose among eight fighters; its combos came about by accident, as the designers never planned for certain moves to chain together, and they became a staple of the genre.
Q 30Controversy over the violence in Mortal Kombat helped lead to the creation of which body?
The ESRB
The 1993 US Senate hearings prompted by Mortal Kombat and Night Trap led the industry to form the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) in 1994 to rate games itself.