90s Video Game Trivia
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70 free 90s Video Game trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
57 free 90s Video Game trivia questions with answers. Fifty-seven questions on the video games of the 1990s, the decade that took gaming from 16-bit sprites to 3D worlds. The set covers the console wars between the Super NES and Sega Genesis, the arrival of the PlayStation and Nintendo 64, the Game Boy and its Pokémon boom, and the PC classics that shaped whole genres: Doom, Myst, Civilization, Warcraft II, StarCraft, Half-Life and Quake. Easier questions ask about characters and consoles almost everyone remembers, like Sonic's two-tailed sidekick or the number of Pokémon in Red and Blue. Harder ones dig into the history: which console started life as a Nintendo CD add-on, which game shipped the first Rumble Pak, why the ESRB was created in 1994, and which arcade fighter was the first with fully 3D polygon graphics. It works for a pub quiz round, a retro game night or a nostalgic solo run. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on the game or console, and the sentence that establishes it is shown with each explanation, so you can trust the answers even when they surprise you.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Unlike the PlayStation, the Nintendo 64 stored its games on what?
ROM cartridges
Nintendo cited faster loading and piracy concerns for ROM cartridges, but the small, costly format pushed Square toward Sony.
Q 02Sony's PlayStation grew out of a failed deal to build a CD-ROM add-on for which console?
Super Nintendo
Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi had already designed the Super Nintendo's sound chip, and when the CD-ROM deal collapsed, Sony built its own console.
Q 03At the first E3 in 1995, which console did Sega surprise-launch in US stores that same day?
Sega Saturn
The Sega Saturn's $399 surprise launch soon backfired when Sony's Steve Race walked on stage, said just '$299', and walked off to cheers.
Q 04Who waits on Super Mario 64's castle roof after all 120 stars?
Yoshi
Yoshi waits there with a message from the developers, 100 extra lives and a fancier triple jump.
Q 05In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, what is the name of the fairy who guides Link?
Navi
Designer Yoshiaki Koizumi wanted more than a plain targeting marker, so he made a winged ball of light called the Fairy Navigation System, nicknamed Navi.
Q 06Which British studio developed the 1997 Nintendo 64 shooter GoldenEye 007?
Rare
Rare's inexperienced team added GoldenEye's famous split-screen multiplayer only about six months before release.
Q 07Doom (1993) was distributed under which model?
Shareware
id Software released Doom's first episode free as shareware and sold the rest, the model that had already paid off for Wolfenstein 3D.
Q 08Sonic the Hedgehog made his 1991 debut on which console?
Sega Genesis
Sega built Sonic to give the Genesis a mascot fast enough to rival Mario, and his blue matched the company logo.
Q 09Which company developed the 1991 arcade hit Street Fighter II: The World Warrior?
Capcom
Capcom's combos were an accident: producer Noritaka Funamizu spotted extra hits during a bug check and left them in as a hidden feature.
Q 10Which 1992 fighting game's gory finishing moves helped prompt the creation of the ESRB rating system?
Mortal Kombat
Nintendo made Mortal Kombat swap its blood for grey sweat, and Sega's bloodier version outsold Nintendo's by a factor of five.
Q 11Which Pokémon did Shigeki Morimoto secretly add to the original Pokémon games?
Mew
Morimoto slipped Mew in as a staff prank just before release, and Nintendo later gave it away through official promotional events.
Q 12Which puzzle game was bundled with the Game Boy in North America and Europe?
Tetris
Henk Rogers talked Nintendo into bundling Tetris by arguing that Mario would sell the Game Boy to boys, but Tetris would sell it to everyone.
Q 13Which Derby-based studio created Lara Croft and the original Tomb Raider (1996)?
Core Design
Core Design's Toby Gard first pitched a male, Indiana Jones-style hero, and Lara Croft began life as 'Laura Cruz'.
Q 21Which company created the 1994 3D fighting game Tekken?
Namco
Namco's Tekken began as a test for animating 3D characters, directed by Seiichi Ishii, who had helped design Sega's rival 3D fighter.
Q 22Which Nintendo 64 game drew complaints that its stick-spinning minigames gave players blistered palms?
Mario Party
After about 90 complaints, Nintendo settled with New York's attorney general over Mario Party and handed out free gloves to players.
Q 23Which 1993 SNES rail shooter was Nintendo's first polygon game, using a Super FX chip?
Star Fox
Star Fox's Super FX chip was so powerful that Argonaut's developers joked the console was just a box to hold the chip.
Q 14Who is the spiky-haired mercenary protagonist of Final Fantasy VII (1997)?
Cloud Strife
Cloud Strife claims to be a former 1st Class SOLDIER, but he never made SOLDIER: the hero in his memories was his friend Zack.
Q 15Which studio developed the original Crash Bandicoot (1996) for the PlayStation?
Naughty Dog
Naughty Dog jokingly codenamed Crash Bandicoot 'Sonic's Ass Game', since players would spend it staring at the hero's back.
Q 16Which FOXHOUND member in Metal Gear Solid (1998) famously 'reads' the player's memory card?
Psycho Mantis
Psycho Mantis comments on saves from other Konami games on your memory card, and moving your controller to port two blocks his mind-reading.
Q 17Which 1996 Shinji Mikami game traps S.T.A.R.S. officers in a zombie-filled mansion?
Resident Evil
Resident Evil was built to do what producer Tokuro Fujiwara couldn't in his horror game Sweet Home, and in Japan it is titled Biohazard.
Q 18Which 1997 top-down crime game handed players their missions through ringing payphones?
Grand Theft Auto
Grand Theft Auto began as Race'n'Chase, with players as the police, until the team decided nobody wants to be the cop.
Q 19In Donkey Kong Country (1994), who is Donkey Kong's small sidekick hunting the stolen bananas?
Diddy
Diddy Kong began as a redesign of Donkey Kong Jr., but Nintendo objected to the changes, so he became a brand-new character.
Q 20Which 1993 first-person puzzle adventure by Cyan was the best-selling PC game for nearly a decade?
Myst
Myst was built on Macs in HyperCard by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller, whose studio Cyan had started in their parents' basement.
Q 24Which theoretical physicist does the player control in Valve's Half-Life (1998)?
Gordon Freeman
Gordon Freeman never says a word, and Half-Life tells its story through scripted scenes instead of cutscenes.
Q 25Which alien race is one of the three playable factions in Blizzard's StarCraft (1998)?
Zerg
Terran, Zerg and Protoss each play completely differently, an approach widely credited with revolutionizing real-time strategy.
Q 26Diablo (1996) sends players beneath which small town to fight through 16 dungeon levels?
Tristram
Tristram's music came from Matt Uelmen, whose Diablo score was so well received that Blizzard loaned him to the StarCraft team.
Q 27Which musician and his band composed the soundtrack for id Software's Quake (1996)?
Trent Reznor
Trent Reznor called his Quake score 'not music' but 'textures and ambiences and whirling machine noises'.
Q 28What is the name of the Allied spy who escapes Castle Wolfenstein in Wolfenstein 3D (1992)?
B.J. Blazkowicz
John Romero and Tom Hall say B.J. Blazkowicz's grandson Billy Blaze is the boy genius Commander Keen.
Q 29Which Sega console reached North American stores on '9/9/99' and became the company's last home console?
Sega Dreamcast
The Sega Dreamcast sold out on its first day in Japan, but PlayStation 2 hype stalled sales and Sega quit making consoles in 2001.
Q 30Which 1997 PlayStation racing sim sold 10.85 million copies, the console's best-seller?
Gran Turismo
Gran Turismo took Kazunori Yamauchi's team five years, and its studio became Polyphony Digital before the Western release.