159 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 159 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
It was a coin-op adaptation of the 1962 mainframe game Spacewar!, and Bushnell designed its curvy fiberglass cabinet 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 based the concept on the table-tennis game of 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 prototype was so popular its coin box jammed with quarters, convincing Atari it had a hit.
Q 04Which retailer sold Atari's Home Pong console exclusively during the 1975 Christmas season?
Sears
Toy retailers had turned Atari down; Bushnell only approached the chain after spotting a Magnavox Odyssey ad in the sporting goods section of its catalogue.
Q 05Space Invaders designer Tomohiro Nishikado modelled his aliens on the octopus-like creatures from which novel?
The War of the Worlds
He also borrowed the space theme after seeing the anime Space Battleship Yamato and a magazine feature on Star Wars.
Q 06Which company released Space Invaders in Japan in July 1978?
Taito
Demand was so high that by December 1978 the company was importing Midway-built cabinets back into Japan to keep up.
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
The name came from the Japanese phrase paku paku taberu (gobbling), and was changed 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
Namco's president originally wanted all four ghosts to be identical and red; designer Toru Iwatani gave each its own colour and personality.
Q 11What is the perfect score on the original Pac-Man arcade game?
3,333,360
It requires maxing out all 255 levels and then squeezing every point from the glitched 256th level, and Billy Mitchell was the first to do it publicly in 1999.
Q 12Which novelty duo took the song "Pac-Man Fever" to No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100?
Buckner & Garcia
The single went gold with more than a million copies sold by 1982, and the album of the same name sold over a million too.
Q 13What was the unofficial Pac-Man enhancement kit that became Ms. Pac-Man called?
Crazy Otto
GCC had to take the project to Midway because of an earlier legal fight with Atari, and Midway turned it into an official sequel.
Q 21Which 1981 trackball-controlled Atari game co-designed by Dona Bailey was an early arcade hit with women?
Centipede
Bailey was one of the very few female programmers in the industry at the time; players fire darts at a segmented bug winding down through a field of mushrooms.
Q 22Defender was the first video game project of which Williams pinball programmer?
Eugene Jarvis
With a joystick plus five buttons controlling direction, thrust, fire, smart bombs and hyperspace, it is routinely listed among the hardest arcade games ever made.
Q 23In Frogger, how many frogs must you guide home to clear a level?
Five
Konami made it and Sega/Gremlin distributed it in North America; by 2005 its home versions had sold 20 million copies.
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 machines, so a conversion kit was ordered, giving Shigeru Miyamoto his first design job.
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
The court found the studio did not actually own the rights it claimed, and 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
It is the 130th stage overall, and a tool-assisted run in 2025 found a glitch that sometimes lets Mario climb straight to the top of it.
Q 18The King of Kong (2007) follows Billy Mitchell's Donkey Kong rivalry with which challenger?
Steve Wiebe
Its subtitle is A Fistful of Quarters, and Twin Galaxies later stripped Mitchell's Donkey Kong records before reinstating some of them.
Q 19Galaga was the 1981 sequel to which earlier Namco shooter?
Galaxian
Its signature trick lets a Boss Galaga capture your ship with a tractor beam; rescue it and you fight on as a dual fighter with double the firepower.
Q 20Asteroids, Atari's best-selling arcade game, was drawn on what kind of monitor?
A vector display
The crisp line-drawn look came from hardware originally built for Lunar Lander; players soon found a 'lurking' exploit by hiding at the screen edge opposite the saucer.
Q 24Q*bert (1982), the hopper who curses in symbols, was the biggest video game hit for which pinball maker?
Gottlieb
Because Columbia Pictures owned the company at the time, the rights to the character stayed with Columbia even after it sold the company in 1984.
Q 25Q*bert starts each round at the top of a pyramid made of how many cubes?
28
You win the level by hopping every cube to the target colour, and jumping off the edge kills the character.
Q 26Dragon's Lair (1983) stood out for film-quality animation by which former Disney animator?
Don Bluth
It ran off a LaserDisc player, and a perfect no-death run of the game lasts under 12 minutes.
Q 27In Dragon's Lair the player controls Dirk the Daring on a quest to save whom?
Princess Daphne
The game was such a sensation that the LaserDisc players inside many cabinets broke down from overuse.
Q 28Roughly how many Pac-Man arcade units were produced, making it the best-selling cabinet of the golden age?
Over 115,000
Asteroids was next at about 70,000 units, followed by Donkey Kong at over 60,000.
Q 29Which 1982 Sega game introduced isometric graphics and shadows to arcades?
Zaxxon
The same year Sega shipped SubRoc-3D, which used a special eyepiece to give players stereoscopic 3D.
Q 30Street Fighter II is a landmark of which Capcom arcade hardware, being the fourteenth game to use it?
CP System
The team, led by Final Fight veterans Yoshiki Okamoto and Akira Yasuda, did not originally intend the combo system; players discovered that certain moves flowed into others.