143 Games Trivia Questions and Answers
Every question comes with its answer, an explanation of why, and a named source. Sorted easy to hard, so you can start where you like.
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Easy Games Trivia Questions
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How many face cards are in a standard deck?
12
The four suits each contain a jack, queen, and king, making 12 face cards.
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How many cards belong to each suit in a standard deck?
13
Each suit runs ace through ten, then jack, queen and king, which comes to thirteen cards.
-
On a standard six-sided die, what do opposite faces add up to?
7
Opposite faces on a conventional die are arranged so their values total seven.
-
Who is Pikachu's longtime trainer in the anime?
Ash
Ash Ketchum is Pikachu's longtime trainer in the Pokémon anime.
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A hundred players drop onto a shrinking map. How does the match end?
Be the last player or team standing
Battle royales eliminate players until one survivor or surviving team remains.
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According to Guinness World Records, what is the best-selling video game of all time?
Minecraft
Minecraft holds the Guinness World Record, having passed 350 million copies sold by April 2025 across every platform since its 2011 full release.
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Which company developed Overwatch?
Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment developed Overwatch.
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Who is Mario's main antagonist?
Bowser
Bowser is Mario's principal recurring antagonist.
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How many players are in a standard bridge game?
Four
Bridge is played by four people in two partnerships.
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In contract bridge, one suit is named for the deal. What does a card of that suit do?
It beats a card of any other suit
One suit is named trump for the deal. A card in that suit beats any card from the other three suits, so the two of trumps takes a trick even against an ace.
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Which studio originally developed Halo?
Bungie
Bungie originally developed the Halo series.
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In draughts, also known as checkers, how does an ordinary uncrowned piece move?
One square diagonally forward
An uncrowned man steps one square diagonally forward onto an empty square. Only once it reaches the far row and is crowned a king can it travel diagonally backwards as well.
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Which two chess pieces move during castling?
The king and a rook
Castling is a move involving the king and one rook under FIDE rules.
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Which chess piece moves in an L-shape?
Knight
The knight moves two squares along a rank or file and then one square across, which formally makes it the piece that lands on the nearest square not sharing its rank, file or diagonal. It is also the only piece that can jump over anything in its way.
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In chess, what is it called when the player to move is not in check but has no legal move at all?
Stalemate
A player who is not in check yet cannot make any legal move is stalemated, and the game is an immediate draw however much material the other side has left. It is the classic way a winning endgame gets thrown away.
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Who begins play in a standard game of chess?
The white side
FIDE’s standard rule gives the opening move to the player with the white pieces.
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How many squares are on a standard chessboard?
64
A standard chessboard has eight ranks and eight files, giving 64 squares in total.
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What central mystery are players solving in Cluedo/Clue?
A murder
The deduction game asks players to identify the murderer, weapon, and room.
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What viewpoint defines the classic Doom game's presentation?
First-person
Doom presents the player's weapon and world from a first-person perspective.
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In gaming, what does DLC stand for?
Downloadable content
Downloadable content is added to a game after release, ranging from a costume to a full expansion.
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Who is Sonic's main nemesis?
Dr. Eggman
Dr. Eggman is Sonic's primary recurring nemesis.
-
Which die is most associated with resolving attacks and checks in Dungeons & Dragons?
A twenty-sided die
The d20 is the signature die for D&D ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws.
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What is the D&D referee and narrator traditionally called?
Dungeon Master
D&D calls the person who runs the adventure and adjudicates rules the Dungeon Master, or DM.
-
Which company developed Fortnite?
Epic Games
Epic Games built Fortnite, released in 2017 and carried worldwide by its free Battle Royale mode. The same studio makes Unreal Engine, the graphics technology behind a large share of other studios' games.
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In Counter-Strike, what is the Terrorist team's main round objective?
Plant the bomb at a site
The Terrorist team’s main objective is to plant the C4 bomb at a designated bombsite and protect it until it detonates.
-
How are the main numbered Final Fantasy games labeled?
With Roman numerals
The mainline run goes Final Fantasy I through XVI in Roman numerals, which is why fans write FFVII rather than FF7. Direct sequels break the pattern with a suffix instead, as with Final Fantasy X-2.
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When gamers talk about a game's performance, what does FPS stand for?
Frames per second
Frames per second counts how many complete images the hardware finishes drawing each second. Cinema runs at 24, console games usually target 30 or 60, and competitive players push past 120 because a higher rate shortens the gap between moving the mouse and seeing the result on screen.
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At which release stage does a game first run end to end, with features still missing and testing kept inside the studio?
Alpha
Alpha is the point where the whole product runs end to end but features are still missing or rough, and testing stays inside the team. Beta follows once the feature list is closed and outside testers are let in to hunt bugs. A release candidate is a build believed to be final, and the gold master is the one that ships.
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A stack of crates jitters instead of settling, and bullets pass through walls. Which part of the game engine has failed?
The physics engine
A game engine divides the work between subsystems. The renderer turns the scene into pixels, the animation system moves character skeletons, input maps controller signals to actions, and the physics engine tracks gravity, momentum and collisions. A body passing through solid ground is a collision the physics engine did not register.
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What is it called when software on a modern computer imitates an old console's hardware closely enough to run its original games unchanged?
Emulation
An emulator reproduces the old machine itself in software, its processor, memory map, sound and graphics chips, so the original game code runs believing it is on the real hardware. Because it copies the machine rather than the game, one emulator can run an entire console library, including titles nobody ever tested it against.
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A video game sold in North America carries a large letter E in the ESRB box on its packaging. What does that tell a buyer?
It is considered suitable for players of all ages
The Entertainment Software Rating Board rates games in the United States and Canada and prints its verdict in a black box on the front of the packaging. E stands for Everyone. The bands above it are E10+, T for Teen, M for Mature at 17 and over, and AO for Adults Only.
-
Who is Link's recurring adversary?
Ganon
Ganon is Link's recurring primary foe across The Legend of Zelda series.
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Which game series stars Master Chief?
Halo
Master Chief is the central protagonist of the Halo series.
-
How many players normally receive hands in the classic card game Hearts?
Four
The standard four-player deal uses the full 52-card deck.
-
What is the name of Mario's younger brother?
Luigi
Luigi is Mario's younger brother.
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How many tiles are in a standard mahjong set?
144
The tiles split into three suits of 36 each, bamboos, circles and characters, plus 28 honor tiles for the four winds and three dragons, and eight flower and season tiles used only as bonus draws.
-
In which arcade game did Mario first appear?
Donkey Kong
Designer Shigeru Miyamoto first wanted a licensed Popeye cast; when the deal fell through, Popeye, Bluto, and Olive Oyl were reworked into Jumpman, the ape, and the captive Pauline. Jumpman wasn't renamed Mario and made a plumber until later games.
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Which company makes the Xbox?
Microsoft
Microsoft makes the Xbox console line.
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Which company created Minecraft?
Mojang Studios
Mojang Studios created and develops Minecraft.
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Which game was famously bundled with the original Nintendo Game Boy in many markets?
Tetris
Nintendo paired the portable Game Boy with Tetris, helping establish the system's appeal.
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Which handheld console did Nintendo launch in 1989?
Game Boy
Nintendo's Game Boy went on sale in Japan in April 1989 and in North America that summer, packaged with Tetris. Its grey-green screen looked crude next to the colour handhelds that followed, but it ran for around 15 hours on a set of AA batteries and sold well over 100 million units.
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Which of these village life-sim games is a Nintendo creation?
Animal Crossing
Animal Crossing began in Japan in 2001 as a Nintendo 64 game and has been made by Nintendo ever since. It runs on the console's real clock and calendar, so the seasons, the weather and the shop hours inside the game follow the ones outside it.
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Which company makes the Switch console?
Nintendo
Nintendo makes the Switch console.
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Which console outsold both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 in its generation?
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo's Wii arrived in 2006 with motion controls and Wii Sports in the box, and sold just over 100 million units, ahead of both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. Its successor, the Wii U, managed barely a tenth of that.
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In video games, what does NPC stand for?
Non-player character
A non-player character is controlled by the game rather than by a person, from a quest giver to a passer-by.
-
How many colored ghosts pursue Pac-Man in the original arcade game?
Four
The original game features Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde.
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In which party game does one player convey a word to their team without speaking or writing?
Pictionary
Seattle waiter Rob Angel invented the game in 1985, hand-assembling the first copies himself before it became a hit. Mattel bought the rights in 2001.
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In the classic Pokemon type chart, Fire is super effective against which type?
Grass
The three starter types form a rock-paper-scissors cycle: Grass beats Water, Water beats Fire, and Fire beats Grass, each for double damage.
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How many Pokémon are in the original Kanto Pokédex?
151
The first-generation Kanto Pokédex runs to 151 entries, ending with Mew, which could not be caught in ordinary play and was long treated as a rumour. The second generation added the Johto region and took the total to 251.
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Which Pokémon is the mascot of Pokémon Yellow?
Pikachu
Pikachu has the starring role in Pokémon Yellow, making it the game's mascot.
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In standard poker hand rankings, which hand is highest?
Royal flush
A royal flush is the ace-high straight flush and tops common poker rankings.
-
What is Risk's classic win condition?
Conquer the world
In classic Risk, you win by conquering the entire world and eliminating all opposing armies. This means occupying every territory on the board at the same time.
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Which studio developed Grand Theft Auto?
Rockstar Games
Rockstar Games develops the Grand Theft Auto franchise.
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What does RPG stand for, as a video game genre?
Role-playing game
The genre grew out of tabletop role-playing, where a player takes on a character who develops over the story.
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Who created the 1974 color-matching puzzle with rotating layers?
Ernő Rubik
Ernő Rubik created the puzzle in 1974, originally as a three-dimensional cube for exploring spatial relationships. He later used it to teach his students about three-dimensional space.
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How many letter tiles does each player keep on their rack in Scrabble?
7
Each player holds seven tiles at a time, drawing replacements after every turn. Playing all seven in a single move scores a 50-point bonus, known as a bingo.
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Which company made the Dreamcast?
Sega
Sega developed and manufactured the Dreamcast.
-
What kind of animal is Sonic, Sega's blue mascot?
A hedgehog
Sonic is a hedgehog, which is where the spikes on the back of his head come from, and rolling into a spiny ball is how he attacks. He arrived in 1991 as Sega's answer to Mario, and his blue was picked to match the company's own logo.
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Which company manufactures the PlayStation?
Sony
Sony manufactures the PlayStation console line.
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How do the alien formations move in classic Space Invaders?
Side to side while descending
The formation shifts horizontally, drops a row, and reverses direction.
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How many suits are in a standard French-suited deck of playing cards?
4
The standard French-suited deck used for many familiar card games has four suits: hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades.
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What is Ryu's famous projectile move in Street Fighter called?
Hadouken
Ryu's energy projectile is the Hadouken; the Shoryuken is his rising uppercut.
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What is the standard grid size for Sudoku?
9 by 9
Classic Sudoku uses a 9×9 grid divided into nine 3×3 boxes.
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Which Mario power-up gives Mario his large form?
Super Mushroom
The Super Mushroom makes Mario grow into his large form, Super Mario. In the original Super Mario Bros., this larger form also lets him break brick blocks.
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Who is Sonic's longtime sidekick?
Tails
Tails is Sonic's longtime two-tailed fox sidekick.
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How many pieces make up a traditional tangram puzzle?
Seven
A traditional tangram puzzle is made up of seven geometric pieces called tans. Together, they can be rearranged to create thousands of different shapes and designs.
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Which game series follows Lara Croft?
Tomb Raider
Lara Croft is the main character of the Tomb Raider series.
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Which dice game includes scoring categories for a full house and a large straight?
Yahtzee
Yahtzee uses a score sheet with categories including three-of-a-kind, full house, small and large straight, and Yahtzee itself.
-
Who often serves as Mario's mount?
Yoshi
Yoshi debuted in 1990's Super Mario World as Mario's dinosaur companion. Riding him lets Mario survive an extra hit, and Yoshi can gulp enemies with his tongue to turn them into eggs he throws as projectiles.
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What is the name of Link's legendary blade in The Legend of Zelda?
The Master Sword
The Master Sword is the blade that repels evil, left sealed in stone until the chosen hero can draw it. It has recurred through the series since A Link to the Past in 1991.
Medium Games Trivia Questions
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Which Nintendo series lets players donate fossils to a museum run by Blathers?
Animal Crossing
Animal Crossing features the owl Blathers, who runs the town museum and accepts donations of fossils, fish, bugs and art.
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What was Mario called in his first Donkey Kong appearance?
Jumpman
Nintendo's early Donkey Kong materials called the character Jumpman before the Mario name became standard.
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Which country's glazed wall tiles give the board game Azul its name and its mosaic theme?
Portugal
Azul is built around azulejos, the painted ceramic tiles that cover Portuguese palaces, churches and railway stations. Players draft coloured tiles a few at a time and fit them into a mosaic wall, losing points for every tile they take but cannot place.
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How many checkers does each player start with in backgammon?
15
The standard backgammon setup gives each player fifteen checkers.
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What is the name of Pac-Man's red ghost?
Blinky
Blinky is the red ghost in Pac-Man.
-
How many basic resource types are on the standard Catan resource cards?
Five
The standard game has brick, lumber, ore, grain, and wool.
-
Which chess piece can make an en passant capture?
A pawn
FIDE defines en passant as a special capture available to a pawn.
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How many alignment combinations make up the classic Dungeons & Dragons grid?
Nine
The classic grid combines three moral categories with three ethical categories, producing nine alignments.
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How many tiles are in a double-six domino set?
28
A double-six set contains every unordered pair from zero through six, including doubles: 28 tiles.
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What is the name of Dota 2's annual world championship tournament?
The International
The International is Valve's yearly Dota 2 world championship, first held in 2011. Most of its prize money is crowdfunded by players buying in-game cosmetics, a model that pushed the pot past forty million dollars and made it the richest event in esports.
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Professional StarCraft: Brood War competition grew into a televised national sport in which country?
South Korea
After Brood War arrived in 1998, professional StarCraft became a spectator sport in South Korea, with dedicated cable channels, stadium finals and salaried players on team rosters. That structure became the template most later esports leagues followed.
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Which game series includes the city of Midgar?
Final Fantasy
Midgar is the reactor-powered industrial city where Final Fantasy VII opens.
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In Fortnite, which three materials do players harvest to build with?
Wood, stone, and metal
Fortnite players swing a pickaxe at trees, rocks and abandoned cars to gather wood, stone and metal, then spend them throwing up walls, ramps and towers mid-fight. Wood goes up fastest and metal ends up strongest.
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Which game genre is abbreviated RTS?
Real-time strategy
Players gather resources, build bases, and command units simultaneously rather than in turns, so a battle can be won or lost while you're looking elsewhere on the map. Dune II, released in 1992, is widely credited with setting the base-building and resource-harvesting template the genre still follows.
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Which artificial intelligence runs the test chambers in the first Portal game?
GLaDOS
GLaDOS, short for Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System, runs the abandoned Aperture Science facility, guiding the player through each chamber while quietly turning hostile and promising cake at the end.
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What is the standard board size for the game of Go?
19 by 19
The common full-size Go board has 19 lines in each direction.
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In Go, a group of stones is captured the moment the opponent does what?
Fills the last empty point next to it
A group survives on its liberties, the empty points directly touching it. When the opponent occupies the last one, the whole group is lifted off the board. This is why a group holding two separate internal eyes can never be captured: the opponent can never fill both.
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Who is the protagonist of the original Half-Life?
Gordon Freeman
Valve's official Half-Life site describes the series' debut game as starring Dr. Gordon Freeman, a physicist.
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Which game series features the character Agent 47?
Hitman
Agent 47 is the bar-coded, genetically engineered assassin at the centre of IO Interactive's Hitman series.
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Which studio developed Candy Crush Saga?
King
King, a Swedish studio founded in Stockholm in 2003, released Candy Crush Saga in 2012. Activision Blizzard bought the company in 2016 for around 5.9 billion dollars.
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How many players are on a standard League of Legends team?
Five
Summoner's Rift is normally played by two teams of five players.
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How many colors are in Magic: The Gathering's color pie?
Five
Magic's color pie consists of white, blue, black, red, and green.
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Which studio developed The Sims?
Maxis
Maxis developed the original The Sims game and series.
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A genre of sprawling 2D worlds gated by abilities you unlock takes its name from which two series?
Metroid and Castlevania
The word started as an internet fan nickname in the early 2000s, not a term either Nintendo or Konami used officially. It caught on because Castlevania games like Symphony of the Night borrowed Super Metroid's trick of blocking off paths until a new ability lets you go back and reach them.
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In what year did Nintendo release the Family Computer (Famicom) in Japan?
1983
Nintendo launched the Famicom in Japan in July 1983; it later became the NES internationally.
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Which Nintendo console played its games from 8 cm optical discs?
GameCube
The GameCube, released in 2001, read miniature 8 cm discs holding about 1.5 GB each. Nintendo chose the small format partly to make the discs awkward to copy, and built the machine as a squat box with a carrying handle moulded into the back.
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Who co-founded Atari in 1972 with Ted Dabney?
Nolan Bushnell
Their new company released Pong later that same year, the simple table-tennis game that helped launch the arcade-game industry. Bushnell went on to found the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant chain in 1977, pairing pizza with arcade games for families.
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In the board game Pandemic, how do the players play?
Cooperatively, as one team against the game
Pandemic is cooperative: everyone wins or everyone loses. The players are a disease-control team, each with a different specialist role, racing to discover cures for four diseases before the outbreaks cascade. The opposition comes from the board itself, through the infection deck that seeds new disease cubes after every turn.
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How many diseases are players trying to cure in the original Pandemic?
Four
The base game uses four disease colors and four corresponding diseases.
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In the original Donkey Kong arcade game, what is the name of the woman Mario must rescue?
Pauline
She was simply called Lady in the Japanese original and named Pauline for the North American release; unlike the later Mario heroines she is not royalty.
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In the English-language Scrabble tile set, which two letters are each worth 10 points?
Q and Z
Q and Z are the only 10-point tiles. J and X are worth 8, and K is worth 5.
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What is true of the dungeon levels in a classic roguelike such as Rogue or NetHack?
They are generated afresh at random for every new game
Death is permanent, with no reloading a saved game, one of several defining traits later formalized as the 'Berlin Interpretation' at a 2008 gaming conference in Berlin. Rogue, released in 1980, lent the genre its name.
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Which gameplay rule is a hallmark of traditional roguelikes?
Permanent death
Permanent death is a defining feature of traditional roguelikes: when your character dies, that run ends for good and you must begin again. This makes every decision matter because progress cannot simply be reloaded after a mistake.
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In Scrabble, what bonus is printed on the four corner squares of the board?
Triple word score
A triple word score square multiplies the value of the entire word played across it by three. There are eight of them on the board: the four corners and the middle square of each edge.
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What hardware did the original Dreamcast include for online play?
A modem
The original Dreamcast included a built-in modem for connecting to online services. It helped make online play more accessible, paving the way for games such as Phantasy Star Online.
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Who created the original Tetris game?
Alexey Pajitnov
The official Tetris site identifies Soviet computer scientist and game designer Alexey Pajitnov as the game's creator in 1984.
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What are the falling pieces in Tetris officially called?
Tetriminos
The generic geometric term for a four-square shape is tetromino, blending 'tetra' with 'domino'. Tetris has used the distinct spelling Tetrimino as its own trademarked term since 2001, covering the seven possible shapes: I, J, L, O, S, T, and Z.
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Which game series features the fictional continent of Tamriel?
The Elder Scrolls
Tamriel is the continent that contains every Elder Scrolls setting, including Morrowind, Cyrodiil and Skyrim.
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In Ticket to Ride, what kind of train cards must a player spend to claim a route?
Cards of a single matching colour
Claiming a route costs a set of train cards all of one colour, matching the colour printed on the route and numbering as many cards as it has spaces. Grey routes accept any single colour, and wild locomotive cards can stand in for any colour at all.
Hard Games Trivia Questions
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The console later sold as the Atari 2600 launched in 1977 under what name?
Atari VCS
It launched as the Atari Video Computer System, or VCS. Atari renamed it the 2600 in 1982, once the 5200 arrived and the company started numbering its machines.
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Which 1985 computer game by Chris Crawford simulates nuclear-era geopolitics?
Balance of Power
Balance of Power casts the player as a superpower leader in the Cold War, and ends the game outright if brinkmanship tips into nuclear war.
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Which game is set in the underwater city of Rapture?
BioShock
BioShock takes place in Rapture, the collapsed undersea city built by the industrialist Andrew Ryan.
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Which score is especially central to Call of Cthulhu investigators?
Sanity
Sanity is a core Call of Cthulhu score, while Luck, Power, and Education are also genuine investigator characteristics.
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Which chess variant was invented by Bobby Fischer?
Chess960
Fischer announced the variant in 1996. Also called Fischer Random, it shuffles the back-rank pieces into one of 960 legal starting positions.
-
Which 1970s text adventure was created by William Crowther and Don Woods?
Colossal Cave Adventure
Crowther, a caver who had surveyed Kentucky's Mammoth Cave, wrote the original; Woods expanded it in 1977 and it became the first text adventure.
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Which 1971 Nutting Associates arcade game was based on the earlier Spacewar! concept?
Computer Space
It is considered the first commercially sold video game, built as a coin-operated cabinet for bars and arcades. Its four-button controls, split between rotation, thrust, and firing, proved too complicated for players used to pinball, a lesson that shaped the far simpler Pong a year later.
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In the 2014 D&D Player's Basic Rules, what kind of action is an opportunity attack?
A reaction
The 2014 rules state that making an opportunity attack uses the reacting creature's reaction when a foe leaves its reach.
-
How many dice are used in a standard game of Farkle?
Six
Farkle is played with six dice. You roll, set aside whichever dice score, and decide whether to risk the rest; score with all six and most rule sets let you pick up all six and roll again in the same turn.
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Which game introduced the fictional sport Blitzball?
Final Fantasy X
Blitzball is the underwater ball sport played inside a floating sphere of water in Final Fantasy X.
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In Go, what is the name of the rule that forbids a move immediately recreating the previous board position?
Ko
The ko rule stops two players capturing and recapturing the same stone forever by banning a move that returns the board to the position it was just in. Ko is the Japanese word for an eternity.
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In Go, what is the name for the points White receives to offset Black's advantage in moving first?
Komi
Black plays first in Go, which is worth several points, so White is given a fixed compensation called komi. It is usually set at 6.5 or 7.5 points, the half point guaranteeing that no game ends in a draw.
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Which 1986 Lucasfilm online world for the Commodore 64 popularised the word 'avatar' for a player's on-screen character?
Habitat
Lucasfilm's Habitat ran over the QuantumLink service and gave thousands of users persistent graphical bodies, the sense in which 'avatar' is still used today.
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In international draughts, what does a crowned king gain that a man does not have?
Long-range diagonal movement
International draughts kings are long-range diagonal movers, not merely one-step pieces.
-
What order does the Magic: The Gathering stack use?
Last in, first out
The stack uses last in, first out: the most recently added spell or ability resolves first. Players can add new spells or abilities on top of the stack before anything resolves.
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What does the curved arrow symbol on many Magic cards instruct a player to do?
Tap the permanent
The tap symbol means rotate the permanent sideways to pay that cost or indicate use.
-
Which was the first commercially released home video game console?
Magnavox Odyssey
The Magnavox Odyssey went on sale in 1972, four years before the Atari 2600 and over a decade before the NES. Designed by Ralph Baer, it produced no sound and could not keep score: players taped coloured plastic overlays to the television screen and tallied points on paper.
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Under Japanese riichi mahjong rules, what is the usual structure of a standard winning hand?
Four melds and one pair
A standard riichi mahjong winning hand has four melds, such as sequences or triplets, and one pair. Special hands like seven pairs and thirteen orphans use different structures.
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Which game series features the alien planet Zebes as a major setting?
Metroid
Zebes is the Space Pirate stronghold where Samus Aran was raised by the Chozo, and the setting of both the original Metroid and Super Metroid.
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According to Minecraft's history, what inspired the Creeper's unusual shape?
A failed pig model
Minecraft's official history says the Creeper resulted from dimensions being mixed up while modeling a pig.
-
Which title is widely recognized as a predecessor of Monopoly?
The Landlord's Game
Elizabeth Magie patented The Landlord's Game in 1904 as a teaching tool, built to show how rent collection funnels wealth into a few hands. Home-made copies spread by word of mouth for thirty years, and Monopoly descends directly from one of those versions.
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In online multiplayer games, what does a server's tick rate measure?
How many times per second the server updates the game world
Tick rate is how many times a second the server recalculates the whole game world, positions, shots, hits and deaths, and sends the result back out. A 64-tick server does it roughly every 16 milliseconds; at 128 ticks it is closer to every 8, which is why competitive shooter players argue about it so fiercely.
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What did Nintendo manufacture and sell when it began in 1889?
hanafuda playing cards
Nintendo began in Kyoto in 1889, manufacturing and selling Japanese playing cards called hanafuda.
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In the XCOM strategy games, what does Ironman mode stop a player from doing?
Reloading an earlier save
Ironman keeps a single save file that overwrites itself as you play, so there is no earlier point to go back to. A missed 95% shot or a dead squad member stands, which is what gives the mode its reputation.
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Nintendo failed to license which cartoon character, leading Shigeru Miyamoto to invent new characters and make Donkey Kong instead?
Popeye
The arcade game was first planned around Popeye, Bluto and Olive Oyl. When the licence fell through Miyamoto substituted Donkey Kong, Jumpman and Lady. Nintendo secured the licence later and released a Popeye arcade game in 1982.
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Who is often called the father of home video games for developing the Brown Box prototype?
Ralph Baer
Ralph Baer's Brown Box prototype led to the Magnavox Odyssey home console.
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Which dragon-like Space Pirate is Samus Aran's arch-enemy across the Metroid series?
Ridley
Ridley is the winged, dragon-like leader of the Space Pirates, the one who led the raid that killed Samus's parents when she was a child, and he returns as a boss in game after game. Mother Brain is the pirates' computer overseer on Zebes rather than a creature with a personal history with Samus.
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In shogi, what may a player do with a piece captured from the opponent?
Put it back on the board as one of their own
Captured shogi pieces change sides. On a later turn a player can drop one onto an empty square as their whole move, so material never really leaves the board and positions tend to get busier as the game goes on rather than emptying out.
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What does TAS mean in speedrunning?
Tool-assisted speedrun
A TAS uses tools such as frame advance or rerecording to optimize a run, distinct from ordinary live play.
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In StarCraft, which race is the insectoid swarm?
Zerg
The Zerg are StarCraft's insectoid swarm, a hive species that grows by absorbing the genetic material of whatever it consumes, driven first by the Overmind and later by Sarah Kerrigan. They are set against the human Terrans and the psionic Protoss, and their tactic of overwhelming an enemy with cheap numbers gave English the phrase zerg rush.
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The North American video-game crash of 1983 is often traced to two Atari titles released the year before. One was a home port of Pac-Man; what was the other?
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Atari's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was rushed to market in about five weeks for Christmas 1982, sold badly and became the emblem of the crash that followed. Millions of unsold cartridges were buried in a New Mexico landfill, dug up again in 2014.
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Warhammer 40,000 is set primarily in which millennium?
The 41st millennium
Games Workshop places the setting in the 41st Millennium, the years just after 40,000. The 40th millennium runs from 39,001 to 40,000, so a story set at the year 40,000 and beyond falls in the one after it.
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Which computer RPG series began with the 1981 game subtitled Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord?
Wizardry
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord appeared on the Apple II in 1981 and set the template for party-based first-person dungeon crawlers.
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In xiangqi, where must each general remain?
Inside the palace
Xiangqi rules restrict each general to its nine-point palace.
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