146 Fun Facts About Video Game

PlayStation controllers have face buttons marked with a circle, a cross, a square and which other shape?

A triangle: designer Teiyu Goto meant it as the player's viewpoint, the square as a sheet of paper for menus and documents, and the circle and cross as yes and no.

The original Game Boy ran on four of which battery size?

AA cells: four of them ran a Game Boy far longer than its colour-screen rivals lasted, because Nintendo chose battery life and a low price over a better display.

Which Pac-Man ghost is the red one that chases the player most directly?

Blinky is 'Oikake', the chaser, in the Japanese original and makes straight for Pac-Man, while Pinky, the ambusher, tries to get ahead and cut him off.

Geralt of Rivia is the protagonist of which popular video game series?

The Witcher's author, Andrzej Sapkowski, sold the game rights for a lump sum instead of a share of sales, and in 2018 demanded 60 million zloty more.

Microsoft's Xbox took its name from which of the company's graphics technologies?

DirectX powered the console, so its engineers called it the DirectX Box and then shortened that to Xbox; Microsoft's marketers preferred names such as 11-X.

Ken Levine was creative director of which shooter series that began in the undersea city of Rapture?

BioShock Infinite shipped in March 2013, yet within a year its studio, Irrational Games, was wound down, and Ken Levine kept about 15 staff for a smaller one.

Which studio led development of Grand Theft Auto V?

Rockstar North is based in Edinburgh, Scotland; to build the game's version of Los Angeles its researchers shot around 250,000 photographs and hours of video on trips to California.

In Mario Kart, which item seeks out the race leader no matter who throws it?

The blue shell arrived in Mario Kart 64 because, director Hideki Konno said, the team wanted every racer to stay in contention until the end.

Which 1971 release from Nolan Bushnell was the first commercially sold arcade video game?

Computer Space contained no computer: a minicomputer cost far too much for a coin-op machine, so its makers built the whole game from hard-wired circuits and a television set.

Why did Atari's Pong prototype break down soon after its 1972 debut in a bar?

Its coin box overflowed: the bar's owner rang Atari to say the game had stopped working, and the engineer who came to mend it found it jammed full of coins.

Shigeru Miyamoto first planned Donkey Kong as a game starring which cartoon character?

Popeye was the plan: when Nintendo dropped the idea, Bluto turned into a giant ape and Popeye into Jumpman, the carpenter later renamed Mario.

The Legend of Zelda is named after its princess, but what is the hero the player controls called?

Link got his name, the series' creator has said, because the hero was meant to be the link between past and future in an early version of the story.

Sony's '$299' announcement at E3 1995 undercut which rival console?

The Sega Saturn, priced at $399 earlier at the show, went on sale that day as a surprise, four months early; KB Toys, left out of the launch, refused to stock it.

Who composed the iconic 'Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII'?

Nobuo Uematsu never studied music or composition: he began teaching himself piano at twelve, yet went on to write the score of Final Fantasy VII.

What is the name of the protagonist in the 'God of War' series?

Kratos starts as a Spartan soldier serving the gods; he earns the title by killing Ares, the original god of war, at the end of the first game.

Which armoured supersoldier, designated John-117, is the hero of the Halo series?

Master Chief is a rank, not a name: the Spartan supersoldier is Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 of the UNSC Navy.

Nintendo got the NES into wary American toy stores in 1985 by bundling which plastic robot?

R.O.B., the Robotic Operating Buddy, let Nintendo sell the NES as a toy to shops burned by the 1983 crash, although it worked with only two games.

Who co-founded Valve, the maker of Half-Life?

Gabe Newell dropped out of Harvard for Microsoft, spent thirteen years there working on early versions of Windows, then left with colleague Mike Harrington to start Valve.

What is the name of the main playable protagonist in 'Red Dead Redemption 2'?

Arthur Morgan is new to the series: the game is a prequel to 2010's Red Dead Redemption, so that game's hero, John Marston, appears as a younger member of the gang.

Which company primarily develops 'The Elder Scrolls' series?

Bethesda Game Studios carries the name of Bethesda, Maryland, where Christopher Weaver founded its parent company in 1986, although it moved to nearby Rockville in 1990.

Pokémon Red reached the West alongside Blue, but which colour was its partner in Japan in 1996?

Green was Red's partner in February 1996; Japan only got Blue that October as a third version, and the West's 1998 release borrowed its name.

Which studio developed the original 1996 Tomb Raider?

Core Design of Derby lost its creation in 2003: after The Angel of Darkness drew poor reviews, owner Eidos handed Tomb Raider to Crystal Dynamics in California.

Which US ratings board did the games industry set up in 1994 after Senate hearings on Mortal Kombat?

The ESRB was the industry's answer to senators who threatened federal regulation over games such as Mortal Kombat and Night Trap; it has rated games since September 1994.

Which engineer built Pong in 1972 as a training exercise set by Atari's Nolan Bushnell?

Allan Alcorn had never built a game, so Bushnell passed the job off as a contract for General Electric; there was no contract, only a warm-up exercise.

In Christmas 1975, Atari sold its home Pong exclusively through which retailer?

Sears said yes after toy stores had turned Home Pong down: its sporting-goods buyer, Tom Quinn, ordered 150,000 units and sold them under the Tele-Games label.

Which Japanese company developed and published Space Invaders in 1978?

Taito had no tools for microprocessor games, so the game's designer spent months studying American machines and built his own development hardware.

Space Invaders began as its designer's attempt to top which Atari game?

Breakout had hooked Tomohiro Nishikado; for targets he tried tanks, planes and soldiers before settling on aliens, because shooting people was frowned upon.

Why do Space Invaders' aliens speed up as the player shoots them?

Fewer to draw: the board's slow processor redrew a thinned-out swarm more quickly, so the survivors sped up, and the designer kept the quirk as a feature.

Under what title was Pac-Man originally released in Japan in 1980?

Puck Man was renamed Pac-Man for North America over fears that vandals would scratch the P into an F.

According to its designer, the Pac-Man character was inspired by the image of what?

Toru Iwatani said Pac-Man's shape came from a pizza with a slice removed, though he has also credited rounding out the Japanese character for mouth, kuchi.

Toru Iwatani said he designed Pac-Man to appeal especially to whom?

Toru Iwatani said he designed Pac-Man to draw women into arcades dominated by war and sports games, so he built it around eating and gave the ghosts cute, colourful looks.

In the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong, who does Mario climb the construction site to rescue?

Pauline, called simply 'Lady' in the 1981 Japanese release, is the captive that Mario, then billed as Jumpman, climbs the girders to rescue; Princess Peach did not appear until Super Mario Bros. in 1985.

Donkey Kong reused unsold cabinets from which failed 1980 Nintendo arcade game?

Radar Scope sold only about 1,000 of the 3,000 cabinets shipped to America, so Nintendo's president had a first-time designer create Donkey Kong to convert the rest.

What are the falling four-block pieces in Tetris called?

Tetrominoes are shapes of four joined blocks; Alexey Pajitnov began with pentominoes, a five-block puzzle he loved, but twelve shapes proved too many, so he cut down to seven.

Tetris was created in the mid-1980s at a computing centre in which country?

The Soviet Union owned whatever its state programmers wrote, so Alexey Pajitnov had no claim to Tetris and earned no royalties from it for about a decade.

Who composed the soundtrack for the original Super Mario Bros.?

Koji Kondo's first theme was slower and lazier, written for an early prototype; once the game changed and no longer fitted it, he scrapped it for the bouncy tune players know.

Which villain holds Princess Zelda captive in the first Legend of Zelda game?

Ganon appears in the first game as a pig-like beast; Ganondorf, his human form, was only added to the series in later games.

In the first Legend of Zelda, the hero gathers eight fragments of which relic?

The Triforce of Wisdom is in pieces because Princess Zelda broke it up herself and hid the fragments in dungeons before she was captured.

Sonic the Hedgehog's red buckled shoes were modelled partly on the boots of which pop star?

Michael Jackson's boots and Santa Claus both fed into the shoes drawn by artist Naoto Ohshima, whose hedgehog had won an in-house Sega contest to find a mascot.

In Sonic the Hedgehog, what must Sonic be carrying to survive a hit from an enemy?

Rings work as Sonic's armour: holding even one lets him survive a hit, and collecting a hundred earns an extra life.

How much did Microsoft pay for Mojang and Minecraft in November 2014?

US$2.5 billion changed hands months after Markus Persson, worn down by fan anger, tweeted to ask whether anyone wanted to buy his share so he could move on.

Minecraft was originally created by Markus 'Notch' Persson in which programming language?

Java stuck: the original became Minecraft: Java Edition, while the Bedrock version for consoles and phones was rebuilt in C++ for devices that cannot run Java.

Who was the lead programmer whose new 3D engine powered id Software's Doom in 1993?

John Carmack wrote the engine, and id gave its code away in 1997, which is why fans have since ported Doom to digital cameras, phones and a long list of other gadgets.

Doom shipped as three episodes with the first free, under which distribution model?

Shareware let id give away the first episode and charge for the other two, proving a free-sample model that much of the modern games industry went on to adopt.

Which company developed Street Fighter II: The World Warrior for arcades in 1991?

Capcom released Street Fighter II: The World Warrior in arcades in 1991; its six-button layout and a combo system, discovered as a bug and kept, set the template for fighting games.

Which 1982 Atari film tie-in flopped so badly that unsold cartridges were buried in a New Mexico landfill?

E.T. was written by one programmer in a matter of weeks to reach shops for Christmas 1982; a 2014 dig in Alamogordo proved the burial was no urban legend.

Which Atari 2600 game hides a secret room crediting its programmer, the best-known early Easter egg?

Adventure's Warren Robinett hid a room reading 'Created by Warren Robinett' because Atari would not credit its designers; players found it after he had left the company.

Which 1976 console from a California chipmaker was the first to use swappable ROM cartridges?

The Fairchild Channel F's cartridges came from a team led by Jerry Lawson, who left in 1980 to found Videosoft and write software for the rival Atari 2600.

Which company, founded in 1979 by four programmers who quit Atari, became the first third-party console game publisher?

Activision's founders walked out after Atari refused them credit and royalties, although the four had written games bringing in more than half of its cartridge sales.

To whom did Nolan Bushnell sell Atari in 1976 to fund completion of its home console?

Warner Communications paid about $28 million, which finished the console, but Bushnell clashed with his new bosses and was forced out of Atari in 1978.

The Magnavox Odyssey had a separately sold peripheral that was the first video game what?

The light gun, shaped like a rifle, began as part of Ralph Baer's prototype console, but Magnavox split it off and sold it as the Shooting Gallery add-on.

How did Magnavox Odyssey players add visual detail such as backgrounds to their games?

Plastic overlays placed on the TV screen supplied the courts, mazes and haunted houses, because the Odyssey itself could draw only a few plain white blocks.

What was Ralph Baer's prototype for the Magnavox Odyssey nicknamed?

The Brown Box got its nickname from the brown adhesive covering on its case; Ralph Baer built it at defence contractor Sanders Associates before Magnavox licensed the design.

Which hit electronic toy of 1978 did Odyssey inventor Ralph Baer co-create?

Simon reworked Touch Me, an Atari arcade game Ralph Baer saw at a 1976 trade show; he liked the gameplay but called it visually boring, with 'miserable, rasping sounds'.

The PlayStation 2 sold about 160 million units, helped by doubling as a cheap player for which disc format?

DVD playback was the draw for many early buyers in 2000: game sales started slowly, reportedly because people were using the console as a cheap film player.

The PlayStation 2's custom processor, co-developed with Toshiba, was called what?

The Emotion Engine and its partner chips processed images so quickly that Japan put export controls on the PlayStation 2 in 2000, fearing use in missile guidance.

What was the Wii's codename during development?

Nintendo showed the Wii as 'Revolution' from E3 2005 until announcing the final name in April 2006; Satoru Iwata's aim was a broader audience rather than raw power.

What does Nintendo call the Switch's detachable wireless controllers?

Joy-Con sticks became notorious for 'drift', moving characters when untouched; days after a 2019 class action was filed, Nintendo began repairing them free of charge.

Which Zelda game launched alongside the Nintendo Switch in March 2017?

Breath of the Wild did the near-impossible in the US that month: its Switch version sold 925,000 copies, more than the number of consoles sold.

Which controller-free motion camera launched in 2010 with the slogan 'you are the controller'?

Kinect sold 8 million units in 60 days, but bundling its successor made the Xbox One $100 dearer than the PlayStation 4, and Microsoft dropped it from the box within months.

Who led the Nintendo R&D1 team that designed the Game Boy?

Gunpei Yokoi, head of Nintendo R&D1, designed the 1989 Game Boy around his 'lateral thinking with withered technology' philosophy, choosing a cheap monochrome screen and 8-bit processor for long battery life.

The Game Boy succeeded which Nintendo line of single-game LCD handhelds, launched in 1980?

Game & Watch began when a Nintendo engineer on a bullet train watched a bored salaryman toying with his calculator; each unit paired one game with a clock, hence the name.

Who created the Pokémon video game series, with assistance from Ken Sugimori?

Satoshi Tajiri turned his childhood hobby of collecting insects into Pokémon; the hero of the anime, known in the West as Ash, is called Satoshi in Japan after him.

Which studio develops the core Pokémon role-playing games?

Game Freak began in the early 1980s as a self-published gaming fanzine; its creators only turned it into a games studio in 1989.

Grand Theft Auto's primary developer was formerly known by what name?

DMA Design, a studio from Dundee in Scotland, pitched the first game in 1995 under the title Race'n'Chase; the studio took its present name in 2002.

In the Grand Theft Auto series, Vice City is modelled on which real city?

Miami was in the plan from the first pitch: the 1995 design document for the original Grand Theft Auto proposed cities styled on New York, Venice and Miami.

World of Warcraft is set on which fictional planet?

Azeroth had a real epidemic in 2005, when a boss's 'Corrupted Blood' curse escaped its dungeon and spread between players; scientists later studied the outbreak as a disease model.

What was the first expansion pack for World of Warcraft, released in 2007?

The Burning Crusade added blood elves and draenei so each faction could finally play the other's exclusive class: paladins for the Horde, shamans for the Alliance.

Fortnite players buy skins and emotes with which in-game currency, sold through Epic's Item Shop?

In Battle Royale, V-Bucks buy only cosmetics and the Battle Pass, never a gameplay edge; Epic's 2020 attempt to sell them around Apple's App Store cut triggered the Epic v. Apple lawsuit.

In League of Legends, what is each player-controlled character called?

A champion gets stronger during a match by earning experience and gold, but none of it lasts: every champion starts the next match from scratch.

In League of Legends, teams win by destroying which large structure inside the enemy base?

The Nexus is League's answer to the Ancient in Defense of the Ancients, the Warcraft III mod that inspired the game; Riot hired one of that mod's designers, Steve Feak, to help build it.

Which research facility does Gordon Freeman escape in Half-Life?

Gordon Freeman fights his way out of the Black Mesa Research Facility in New Mexico after a failed experiment opens a portal to Xen; Half-Life was Valve's 1998 debut, published by Sierra.

Half-Life's GoldSrc engine was a heavily modified version of the engine behind which earlier shooter?

GoldSrc began as a licensed copy of id Software's Quake engine that Valve rewrote extensively, adding skeletal animation and scripted sequences; novelist Marc Laidlaw was hired to write the plot.

In Portal, what does GLaDOS promise Chell for completing the tests?

Cake is the promised reward, but when the tests end GLaDOS steers Chell towards an incinerator instead; graffiti warning that 'the cake is a lie' went on to become an internet meme.

Portal was originally released in 2007 as part of which Valve bundle?

The Orange Box bundled Portal with Half-Life 2, its two Episodes and Team Fortress 2; Valve had hired the student team behind Narbacular Drop to turn its portal idea into a full game.

In Metal Gear Solid (1998), Solid Snake infiltrates which nuclear weapons facility?

Snake infiltrates Shadow Moses Island, a nuclear weapons disposal facility in Alaska's Fox Archipelago, after the rogue unit FOXHOUND, led by Liquid Snake, seizes it along with Metal Gear REX.

Which company published Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation in 1998?

Konami published Metal Gear Solid, written and directed by Hideo Kojima; in 2015, with Kojima on his way out, the company stripped his name and his studio's from Metal Gear Solid V's marketing.

Hironobu Sakaguchi's 1987 Square RPG was conceived under which working title?

Fighting Fantasy came first because the team wanted a title that shortened to 'FF'; that name already belonged to another game, so it became Final Fantasy instead.

Who created the Dark Souls series at FromSoftware?

Hidetaka Miyazaki directed Demon's Souls in 2009 and then created Dark Souls in 2011 at FromSoftware, where he became president in 2014; the series spawned the 'Soulslike' subgenre.

Which fantasy novelist provided the worldbuilding for FromSoftware's Elden Ring?

George R. R. Martin wrote the history and myths of the Lands Between, events set long before the game begins; FromSoftware's own team then built the playable story on that foundation.

What is the name of the player's spectral steed in Elden Ring?

Torrent comes from Melina, who offers to turn the Tarnished's runes into strength and hands over her steed in return for being taken to the foot of the Erdtree.

In The Last of Us, humans are infected by a mutated fungus from which real genus?

The Last of Us imagines a mutated Cordyceps, the real fungus that hijacks insects' bodies, jumping to humans; Joel, a smuggler, escorts the immune Ellie across a ruined United States.

Which studio created The Last of Us for Sony?

Naughty Dog split into two teams for the first time to make The Last of Us, so that one group could finish Uncharted 3 while the other built the new game.

Which studio first developed Halo as a real-time strategy game before turning it into a shooter?

Bungie began Halo as a strategy game in the mould of its own Myth, and Steve Jobs unveiled it at Macworld in 1999; a year later Microsoft bought the studio and made it the Xbox's launch shooter.

Which alien theocracy is humanity's main enemy in Halo: Combat Evolved?

The Covenant worship the vanished Forerunners and believe the Halo ringworlds will carry them to salvation; in fact each one is a weapon built to wipe the galaxy clean of all sentient life.

Which studio developed Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007)?

Infinity Ward, the studio founded by former Medal of Honor developers, made Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007, dropping the series' World War II setting for a present-day conflict.

Which Finnish company created the Angry Birds franchise in 2009?

Rovio Entertainment had made 51 games and was close to bankruptcy at the start of 2009; its 52nd, Angry Birds, turned the company around.

On which platform was Candy Crush Saga originally released by King in April 2012?

Facebook hosted Candy Crush Saga from April 2012, months before the phone apps; the game grew out of Candy Crush, a plain browser game King had put on its own web portal the year before.

Which sport is one of the five in the original Wii Sports?

Bowling joined tennis, baseball, golf and boxing in Wii Sports; because the game was packed in with the console almost everywhere outside Japan, it became one of the best-selling console games ever.

In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, who sells the deserted-island getaway package?

Tom Nook is a tanuki, a Japanese raccoon dog; the getaway is no gift, because once the player lands he presents a bill for the trip, then a bigger loan with every home upgrade.

Which studio developed the social deduction game Among Us?

Innersloth, a three-person studio in Redmond, Washington, released Among Us in June 2018 to little notice; it exploded in 2020 when Twitch streamers and YouTubers picked it up during lockdowns.

Among Us was inspired by the party game Mafia and which science fiction horror film?

The Thing, John Carpenter's 1982 film about a shape-shifting alien hiding among an Antarctic crew, was the developers' model alongside Mafia; Impostors likewise look just like the Crewmates they hunt.

Games on Roblox are scripted in a dialect of which programming language?

Lua was created in 1993 at a university in Rio de Janeiro as the successor to a language called Sol, 'sun', so it was named Lua, Portuguese for 'moon'; Roblox's own dialect is called Luau.

Which PC gaming platform began life as a tool for automatically patching its maker's own games?

Steam began as Valve's way to patch games such as Counter-Strike automatically, because manual patches left most online players cut off for days; it later opened to other companies' games.

What does the 'DS' in Nintendo DS stand for?

Dual Screen names its two displays, the lower one a touchscreen; the DS was launched as an experimental 'third pillar' beside the Game Boy Advance and GameCube, billed as a replacement for neither.

Atari was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and whom?

Ted Dabney and Bushnell first traded as Syzygy but found that name already taken when they incorporated; Dabney fell out with his partner and left in 1973, selling his share of the company.

Which studio, run by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller, made Myst (1993)?

Cyan, the Miller brothers' studio in Washington state, built Myst in HyperCard on Macintosh computers, which is why the game plays as a series of still scenes the player clicks through.

In Myst, solving puzzles lets the player travel to other worlds known as what?

Ages are reached through magical books; two brothers, each stuck inside a trap book, beg for its missing pages, and a player who frees either one ends up imprisoned in his place.

In which country did StarCraft become a televised professional sport?

South Korea made StarCraft a spectator sport: two television channels, Ongamenet and MBCGame, ran professional leagues watched by millions, and top players signed sponsorship deals.

In the original Diablo, the dungeon levels lie beneath which town?

Tristram's horror ends on a twist: the hero who kills Diablo drives the demon's soulstone into their own forehead to contain him, and returns in Diablo II as the possessed Dark Wanderer.

Which two modders created Counter-Strike, first released in beta in 1999?

Minh Le and Jess Cliffe built Counter-Strike as a Half-Life mod, releasing the first beta in June 1999; Valve hired them, bought the rights and shipped it at retail in November 2000.

Which two S.T.A.R.S. members are playable in the 1996 Resident Evil?

Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine search the Spencer Mansion and discover that their own captain, Albert Wesker, has betrayed them, luring S.T.A.R.S. into the house as test subjects for its monsters.

Who directed the original 1996 Resident Evil?

Shinji Mikami directed the 1996 Resident Evil for Capcom after producer Tokuro Fujiwara tasked him with reviving the ideas of his 1989 Famicom horror game Sweet Home.

In the 1999 game Silent Hill, Harry Mason searches the fog-shrouded town for whom?

Harry Mason searches for his missing adopted daughter Cheryl after a car crash outside Silent Hill; the developers used distance fog and darkness to hide the PlayStation's graphical limits.

The original Metroid (1986) is set on which planet?

Zebes hides the Space Pirates' base, where Samus Aran hunts Mother Brain; only players who finish quickly enough see the armoured bounty hunter take off the suit and learn that Samus is a woman.

Which arcade game's machine does George Costanza buy to save his high score in a 1998 Seinfeld episode?

Frogger is the game: George finds his old high score still standing at a closing pizzeria, buys the machine, then has to wheel it across a busy street, dodging traffic like the frog, before its battery dies.

Galaga (1981) is the sequel to which 1979 Namco shooter?

Galaxian, Namco's 1979 shooter, introduced the swooping alien formations that Galaga expanded in 1981; Galaga's Boss Galaga can capture your fighter with a tractor beam, and rescuing it gives a dual fighter.

Atari's 1979 hit Asteroids was rendered using what kind of display technology?

Asteroids used a vector display, drawing lines directly with the electron beam rather than pixels; Lyle Rains and Ed Logg designed it on hardware built for Lunar Lander.

By what name is the Sega Genesis known in Japan and Europe?

Mega Drive stayed the name in Japan, Europe and Brazil; for North America, Sega's David Rosen said he picked Genesis to mark a new beginning, though a trademark dispute has also been suggested.

Which processor served as the main CPU of the Sega Genesis?

The Genesis ran on a Motorola 68000, with a Zilog Z80 as sound co-processor; the design was adapted from Sega's System 16 arcade board.

Which British studio developed GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64?

Rare first planned GoldenEye 007 as a side-scrolling platform game for the Super NES; an inexperienced team led by Martin Hollis instead spent two and a half years building a 3D shooter.

Twitch launched in June 2011 as a spin-off of which general-interest streaming platform?

Justin.tv began in 2007 with founder Justin Kan streaming his own life around the clock from a webcam on his head; its gaming section grew so popular that it was spun off as Twitch.

Which journalist created The Game Awards in 2014 and hosted its first ceremony?

Geoff Keighley had produced Spike's awards show; he left to stage his own in Las Vegas, backed by the three big console makers, and streamed it online instead of airing it on television.

In Skyrim, the Last Dragonborn must defeat which dragon prophesied to destroy the world?

Alduin, the World-Eater, first appears at Helgen just as the headsman raises his axe over the player; the dragon's attack on the town accidentally lets the future Dragonborn escape execution.

In Skyrim, guards famously grumble that they once took an arrow in which body part?

The knee: guards all over the game repeat the same lament, '...then I took an arrow in the knee', and players heard it so often that it became a meme within weeks of the 2011 launch.

Who is the Allied spy the player controls in Wolfenstein 3D (1992)?

B.J. Blazkowicz shoots his way out of Castle Wolfenstein in id Software's 1992 hit; its creators later declared him the grandfather of Commander Keen, hero of the studio's earlier platform games.

Nintendo was founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to make what?

Playing cards stayed Nintendo's business for decades: hand-made hanafuda first, then in 1959 a Disney-character deck that opened up a children's market and set off a boom in card sales.

The educational game The Oregon Trail is famous for the death message 'You have died of' which disease?

Dysentery is the famous death, but the game itself nearly vanished: three student teachers wrote it in 1971 for a Minneapolis history class, deleted it when term ended and kept only a paper printout, from which it was rebuilt in 1974.

Which studio was founded in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse and was briefly called Chaos Studios?

Blizzard came from a dictionary: another firm owned the Chaos name, the new parent company turned down the stopgap Ogre Studios, and co-founder Allen Adham went through the dictionary until a word stuck.

Which former Apple employee founded Electronic Arts in May 1982?

Trip Hawkins left Apple, where he had been director of strategy and marketing, to found Electronic Arts in May 1982; EA billed its designers as 'software artists' on album-style packaging.

Which Japanese company released the Neo Geo arcade and home system in 1990?

SNK built the Neo Geo home console on the same hardware as its arcade machines, which made it so costly that it launched in Japan as a rental-only system before going on sale at premium prices.

Which Super NES graphics trick rotated and scaled a flat background to fake 3D in F-Zero and Super Mario Kart?

Mode 7 let the Super NES rotate and scale a single flat background layer, enough to fake a racetrack rushing past; true 3D polygons needed the Super FX chip built into cartridges such as Star Fox.

Which manga artist was part of the 'Dream Team' behind Square's Chrono Trigger?

Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball, designed Chrono Trigger's characters, joining Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii on the 1995 SNES classic.

Who created the Shenmue series, whose 1999 original was released for the Dreamcast?

Yu Suzuki left Shenmue's story unfinished after its costly first two games sold poorly; in 2015 fans pledged $6.3 million on Kickstarter, then a record for a video game, to fund Shenmue III.

Which 1998 Nintendo 64 game was the first 3D Zelda and introduced lock-on targeting?

Ocarina of Time's lock-on first used a plain marker over the target; the designers replaced it with a fairy, nicknamed the 'Fairy Navigation System', and she grew into the hero's talkative companion.

In Super Mario 64, Bowser hides the castle's Power Stars inside what?

Magical paintings lead to the worlds where Bowser hid the stars; the developers first tested Mario's 3D controls with a golden rabbit, MIPS, who still roams the castle basement holding a Power Star.

Which mad scientist created Crash Bandicoot in the 1996 PlayStation game?

Doctor Neo Cortex mutates Crash with his Evolvo-Ray to lead an army of animal soldiers, but the experiment fails and Crash escapes, turning the scientist's creation into his enemy.

Which company developed and published the original Mortal Kombat for arcades in 1992?

Midway first wanted a game starring a digitised Jean-Claude Van Damme; when that deal fell through, its four-person team made Mortal Kombat instead and modelled Johnny Cage on the actor.

Who designed The Sims, the 2000 life-simulation game developed by Maxis?

Will Wright conceived The Sims after the 1991 Oakland firestorm destroyed his home and he had to rebuild his life from scratch; the finished game has no way to win.

Which company developed and published the original Sid Meier's Civilization in 1991?

MicroProse, the studio Sid Meier co-founded with Bill Stealey in 1982, developed and published Civilization for MS-DOS in 1991; Meier later left to form Firaxis in 1996.

Under what online alias is Eric Barone, the solo developer of Stardew Valley, known?

ConcernedApe is Eric Barone, who began Stardew Valley to sharpen his skills after failing to land a programming job, then made the whole game himself, from code and art to sound and music.

Which indie developer created the 2015 role-playing game Undertale?

Toby Fox made Undertale largely on his own, music included, after a Kickstarter raised ten times its $5,000 goal; every fight can be ended by sparing the monster, so nobody has to die.

Which studio developed the 2020 roguelike Hades, first released in early access in December 2018?

Supergiant Games kept Hades in early access for nearly two years; dying is part of the design, since each defeat sends Zagreus home to his father's house to grow stronger before the next escape.

Which studio made the 2023 role-playing game Baldur's Gate 3?

Larian Studios, the Belgian developer of Divinity: Original Sin, sold Baldur's Gate 3 in unfinished early access from October 2020 and kept building it for almost three more years.

Which indie game did brothers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer make in the hand-drawn style of 1930s cartoons?

Cuphead's animation was drawn by hand like a 1930s cartoon, which its makers said slowed production enormously; the Moldenhauer brothers remortgaged their house to pay for finishing it.

Which company developed the 2016 augmented-reality game Pokémon Go?

Niantic began as a start-up inside Google, and Pokémon Go grew out of Google's 2014 April Fools' prank, which scattered Pokémon across Google Maps for players to catch.

Which green Minecraft monster, born from a botched pig model, hisses and then explodes beside the player?

The Creeper exists because Notch accidentally swapped the length and height of a pig model, liked the eerie result and kept it.

Which video game character has been played in films by both Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander?

Lara Croft was first sketched as a man with a whip and a hat; her designer switched to a woman after a studio co-founder called the idea too close to Indiana Jones.

Which educational game, first written in 1971 by three student teachers, is known for deaths from dysentery?

The Oregon Trail was written in two weeks for a single history class, then deleted from the school computer at the end of term; its creators kept only a printout of the code.

Which pink character, created by Masahiro Sakurai, copies enemies' powers by inhaling them?

Kirby's round shape was only a placeholder drawn while the game's real star was being designed; Sakurai decided the stand-in suited the game better and kept it.

Which Nintendo character was a green recolour of the hero, handed to player two in the 1983 arcade game Mario Bros.?

Luigi had already appeared about three months earlier, in a Game & Watch handheld also called Mario Bros., where the brothers stack crates in a bottling plant.

Which role-playing series sends a boy named Sora across Disney worlds with Donald Duck and Goofy?

Kingdom Hearts was pitched in a lift: a Square producer happened to share an elevator with a Disney executive because the two companies had offices in the same Tokyo building.

Which 2005 rhythm game by Harmonix came with a plastic controller modelled on a miniature Gibson SG?

Guitar Hero was commissioned by RedOctane, a maker of dance mats that wanted a game to sell its new controllers; a co-founder of Acclaim later regretted turning the idea down.

Which film tie-in game, made in about five weeks, had unsold copies dug from a New Mexico landfill?

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was rushed out for Christmas, flopped, and was long rumoured to lie under concrete in Alamogordo; a 2014 dig proved the legend true.

Which Atari 2600 game hid programmer Warren Robinett's name in a secret room, an early Easter egg?

Adventure carried the hidden credit because Atari refused to name its programmers in public; players only found the room after Robinett had left the company.

Which influential 1962 game was written by Steve Russell and colleagues on MIT's PDP-1 computer?

Spacewar! spread to many of the few dozen PDP-1 machines then in existence, making it the first video game played at more than one computer installation.