Arcade Trivia
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152 free Arcade trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This arcade trivia quiz covers the coin-op machines that filled malls, pizza parlours and boardwalks from the 1970s onward. You will get questions on the golden-age classics (Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Asteroids, Galaga, Frogger, Defender, Q*bert), the fighting-game boom of the 1990s (Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat), light-gun and racing cabinets, and the older amusements that came before video: pinball, Skee-Ball and Whac-A-Mole. There are also questions on the businesses built around them, from Chuck E. Cheese to Dave & Buster's. It is written for anyone who ever lined up quarters on a cabinet, and it works as a solo test or as a round for a retro game night. Difficulty runs from easy (who chases you in Pac-Man?) to expert (which processor powered the first solid-state pinball games?), so casual players and collectors both have something to chase. Every answer was checked against a reference page before publishing, so the dates, designers, sales figures and hardware details hold up.
30 of 152 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1971 game by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney was the first commercial arcade video game?
Computer Space
Computer Space, a coin-op adaptation of the 1962 mainframe game Spacewar!, was released by Nutting Associates in November 1971 in a curvy fiberglass cabinet Bushnell designed to look futuristic.
Q 02Atari's Pong was built by engineer Allan Alcorn as what kind of assignment from Nolan Bushnell?
A training exercise
Bushnell gave Alcorn Pong as a training exercise, telling him it was a General Electric contract; the table-tennis concept came from the Magnavox Odyssey, and Magnavox later sued Atari for patent infringement.
Q 03In which Sunnyvale, California bar was the Pong prototype test-installed in August 1972?
Andy Capp's Tavern
The Pong prototype at Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale was so popular its coin box jammed with quarters, convincing Atari it had a hit worth manufacturing.
Q 04Which retailer sold Atari's Home Pong console exclusively during the 1975 Christmas season?
Sears
Sears sold Home Pong under its Tele-Games label for Christmas 1975 after toy retailers turned Atari down; Bushnell approached Sears after spotting a Magnavox Odyssey ad in its sporting goods catalogue.
Q 05Space Invaders designer Tomohiro Nishikado modelled his aliens on the octopus-like creatures from which novel?
The War of the Worlds
Nishikado based the aliens on the octopus-like Martians of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, and borrowed the space theme after seeing Space Battleship Yamato and Star Wars coverage.
Q 06Which company released Space Invaders in Japan in July 1978?
Taito
Taito released Space Invaders in Japan in July 1978 and licensed it to Midway for North America, where it arrived later that year and became a coin-op phenomenon.
Q 07The first Space Invaders cabinets had black-and-white graphics. How did they add colour to the screen?
Strips of coloured cellophane
Both Taito's and Midway's originals used transparent orange and green overlays; Namco's Galaxian brought a true RGB display a year later.
Q 08The 1980 Atari 2600 port of Space Invaders is credited with roughly what effect on console sales?
Quadrupling them
It was the first officially licensed arcade-to-console port and is often called the first killer app for home consoles.
Q 09Under what title was Pac-Man originally released in Japan in May 1980?
Puck Man
Puck Man, from the Japanese paku paku taberu (gobbling), was renamed Pac-Man for North America over fears vandals would turn the P into an F.
Q 10Which of the four Pac-Man ghosts is the orange one that alternates between chasing and fleeing?
Clyde
Clyde, the orange ghost nicknamed Pokey, chases Pac-Man but retreats to his corner whenever he gets within eight tiles; Namco's president had wanted all four ghosts identical and red.
Q 11What is the perfect score on the original Pac-Man arcade game?
3,333,360
A perfect Pac-Man score is 3,333,360: every dot, energizer, ghost and fruit on all 255 levels plus every point available on the glitched 256th split-screen level. Billy Mitchell first achieved it in 1999.
Q 12Which novelty duo took the song "Pac-Man Fever" to No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100?
Buckner & Garcia
Buckner & Garcia's 'Pac-Man Fever' reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982, and the single went gold with more than a million copies sold.
Q 13What was the unofficial Pac-Man enhancement kit that became Ms. Pac-Man called?
Crazy Otto
General Computer Corporation built Crazy Otto as an unauthorised Pac-Man enhancement kit; a settlement with Atari barred selling such kits, so GCC took it to Midway, which released it as Ms. Pac-Man in 1982.
Q 21Which 1981 trackball-controlled Atari game co-designed by Dona Bailey was an early arcade hit with women?
Centipede
Centipede, co-designed by Dona Bailey and Ed Logg, has players fire at a segmented bug winding down through a mushroom field; Bailey was one of very few female programmers in the industry then.
Q 22Defender was the first video game project of which Williams pinball programmer?
Eugene Jarvis
Eugene Jarvis had programmed Williams pinball tables such as Firepower before leading Defender (1981); its joystick plus five buttons for thrust, reverse, fire, smart bomb and hyperspace made it notoriously hard.
Q 23In Frogger, how many frogs must you guide home to clear a level?
Five
Q 14Donkey Kong was created to salvage thousands of unsold cabinets of which flop Nintendo game?
Radar Scope
Nintendo of America was stuck with about 2,000 unsold Radar Scope machines, so Hiroshi Yamauchi ordered a conversion, which gave Shigeru Miyamoto his first game design job: Donkey Kong.
Q 15Donkey Kong's hero was originally called Jumpman. He was renamed Mario after whom?
Nintendo of America's landlord
Mario Segale rented Nintendo of America its first office space; the name Jumpman had been chosen for its similarity to Walkman and Pac-Man.
Q 16Which studio unsuccessfully sued Nintendo, claiming Donkey Kong infringed its King Kong trademark?
Universal City Studios
Universal City Studios lost because the court found it did not own the King Kong rights it claimed; Nintendo's lawyer John Kirby was later thanked with a namesake character.
Q 17At the start of which level number does Donkey Kong's infamous kill screen occur?
22
The kill screen hits on level 22's first barrel board, the 117th screen: the bonus-timer calculation overflows an 8-bit value, giving Mario only a few seconds before he dies.
Q 18The King of Kong (2007) follows Billy Mitchell's Donkey Kong rivalry with which challenger?
Steve Wiebe
Steve Wiebe, a Washington schoolteacher, chased Billy Mitchell's Donkey Kong record in The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007), directed by Seth Gordon.
Q 19Galaga was the 1981 sequel to which earlier Namco shooter?
Galaxian
Galaga (1981) was the sequel to Namco's 1979 Galaxian; its Boss Galaga can capture your fighter with a tractor beam, and rescuing it gives you a dual fighter with double firepower.
Q 20Asteroids, Atari's best-selling arcade game, was drawn on what kind of monitor?
A vector display
Asteroids ran on a vector display, using the Digital Vector Generator hardware built for Lunar Lander to draw crisp lines; players soon found a 'lurking' exploit by hiding at the screen edge.
A Frogger level ends once five frogs have reached the home bays at the top of the screen; Konami made the 1981 game and Sega/Gremlin distributed it in North America.
Q 24Q*bert (1982), the hopper who curses in symbols, was the biggest video game hit for which pinball maker?
Gottlieb
Gottlieb, renamed Mylstar Electronics in 1983, was owned by Columbia Pictures, so the Q*bert rights stayed with Columbia after the pinball company was sold off in 1984.
Q 25Q*bert starts each round at the top of a pyramid made of how many cubes?
28
Q*bert's pyramid has 28 cubes arranged in seven rows; the level ends when every cube shows the target colour, and hopping off the edge costs a life.
Q 26Dragon's Lair (1983) stood out for film-quality animation by which former Disney animator?
Don Bluth
Don Bluth, who left Disney in 1979, animated Dragon's Lair; the Cinematronics cabinet played his footage from a LaserDisc player, a first for a hit arcade game in 1983.
Q 27In Dragon's Lair the player controls Dirk the Daring on a quest to save whom?
Princess Daphne
Dirk the Daring rescues Princess Daphne from the dragon Singe; the game was such a sensation that the LaserDisc players inside many cabinets broke down from overuse.
Q 28Which fruit is the first bonus item to appear in Pac-Man?
Cherry
The cherry is Pac-Man's first bonus fruit, worth 100 points; strawberry, orange, apple and melon follow, with a key as the final prize on later boards.
Q 29Which 1982 Sega game introduced isometric graphics and shadows to arcades?
Zaxxon
Zaxxon (1982) was the first arcade game drawn in isometric projection, casting a shadow beneath the player's ship; the same year Sega's SubRoc-3D used a special eyepiece for stereoscopic 3D.
Q 30Street Fighter II is a landmark of which Capcom arcade hardware, being the fourteenth game to use it?
CP System
Street Fighter II ran on Capcom's CP System board, introduced with Forgotten Worlds in 1988; its combo system was accidental, discovered when players found certain moves flowed into others.