NES
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48 free NES trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Nintendo Entertainment System began life as the Family Computer, a red-and-white Japanese console designed by Masayuki Uemura after Hiroshi Yamauchi demanded a machine cheap enough for every household. Two years later, redesigned as a gray VCR lookalike and sold with a robot and a light gun, it revived an American games market that the 1983 crash had nearly killed. These 48 questions trace the whole story: the Donkey Kong arcade hardware and the ColecoVision benchmark, the 1983 recall, the GameCom codename, the collapsed Atari deal and the Advanced Video System prototype, the 17 launch games, Worlds of Wonder's strong-arm sales, the 10NES lock-out chip and the blinking red light, Tengen's Rabbit chip, the FTC settlement, the Famicom Disk System, the Dendy and other famiclones, the gold Zelda cartridge and the unreleased knitting machine. Easy questions stick to the famous accessories and games; the hard tier asks about engineers, chip makers and regional variants. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and comes with a short explanation that adds one more fact. Play it solo or print it for a retro games night.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Before the Famicom turned it into a video game giant, Nintendo had spent most of a century making what?
Playing cards
Playing cards. Its hanafuda, Japanese flower cards, led a market that kept shrinking, the Famicom's designer recalled, which is why Nintendo turned first to toys and then to video games.
Q 02Where did the NES first go on sale as a US test market in October 1985?
New York
New York. American shops were so wary after the 1983 crash that Nintendo began with a single city, selling the console as an 'entertainment system' with a toy robot rather than as a video game.
Q 03Masayuki Uemura, who designed the Famicom, first came to Nintendo as a salesman for which electronics company?
Sharp
Sharp. He was selling its light-sensing solar cells, which went into Nintendo's toy light guns, and as he later joked, 'I ended up selling myself to Nintendo.'
Q 04Which Nintendo president demanded a simple, cheap console that ran arcade games?
Hiroshi Yamauchi
Hiroshi Yamauchi. When early units began crashing a few months after launch, his staff suggested replacing only the faulty ones; he ordered every console recalled instead.
Q 05The Famicom's hardware was based on that of which Nintendo arcade game?
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong. The engineers wanted the arcade hit to play at home just as it did in the arcade, so they took the machine itself to their chip maker to be studied.
Q 06Generations of NES owners tried to fix a game that would not load by doing what to the cartridge?
Blowing into it
Blowing into it. The ritual spread from playground to playground, but the moisture in breath only tarnished the metal contacts faster; the real fault was a worn or dirty connector.
Q 07The Western NES was styled to resemble which household appliance?
A videocassette recorder
A videocassette recorder. Nintendo feared a top-loading 'game console' would flop after the 1983 crash, so the NES hid its cartridges behind a front-loading door like the VCRs then booming in American homes.
Q 08What was the name of the NES light gun?
Zapper
Zapper. Asked years later why the American console had been given a gun at all, the Famicom's designer got the biggest laugh of his lecture: 'America loves guns.'
Q 09What does R.O.B. stand for?
Robotic Operating Buddy
Robotic Operating Buddy. The robot's game had flopped in Japan, but in America it let Nintendo present the NES to parents and toy shops as something more than a video game console.
Q 10Which console was the NES's main rival in the third generation?
Sega Master System
Sega Master System. It was crushed by the NES in America yet outsold it in Britain and much of Europe, where Sega's machine was still the best-selling console in 1990.
Q 11Why did a broken controller often mean sending an entire original Famicom back to Nintendo?
It was wired into the console
It was wired into the console. Detachable connectors cost too much in 1983, the machine's designer said, and he later called the fixed cables the one thing he felt he had not got right.
Q 12The Konami Code cheat is best known for giving players 30 lives in which NES game?
Contra
Contra. A programmer had written the code two years earlier to get through his own testing of Gradius, which he found too hard to finish, and it was left in the finished game.
Q 13The name Famicom is a contraction of which two English words?
Family Computer
Q 21Why were Japanese retailers surprised by the Famicom's ¥14,800 price at its 1983 trade preview?
It was lower than expected
It was lower than expected. Rumour had Japan's electronics giants planning consoles at more than ¥20,000, so the wholesalers went home confident the Famicom could compete.
Q 22Which arcade port was one of only three games on sale with the Famicom at its 1983 launch?
Popeye
Popeye. Like the other two launch games it was a home version of one of Nintendo's own arcade machines, exactly what the president had ordered the console to deliver; outside publishers arrived a year later.
Q 23Which NES controller owes its fame to a starring scene in the 1989 film The Wizard?
Power Glove
Family Computer. The designer's wife suggested the short form, reasoning that it was neither a home nor a personal computer; Nintendo's president disliked the nickname, but all of Japan used it anyway.
Q 14A DX Antenna billboard is said to have inspired which feature of the Famicom?
Its red and white colours
Its red and white colours. Driving past the hoarding, Nintendo's president remarked, 'That's a good colour', and the next day he brought his own scarf to the designer's desk to show the shade he wanted.
Q 15Which American console did a Famicom engineer take home to his family, who loved its smooth graphics?
ColecoVision
ColecoVision. Coleco's staff had shown Nintendo a prototype just before work on the Famicom began, and its smoothly moving pictures astonished the whole hardware team.
Q 16Which chip maker produced the Famicom's Picture Processing Unit?
Ricoh
Ricoh. It was the only chip maker willing to take the job, and Nintendo's president sealed the deal by guaranteeing an order of three million chips.
Q 17Why did Nintendo swap the square buttons on the very first Famicom controllers for round ones?
They kept getting stuck
They kept getting stuck. The buttons had passed a million-press test in the lab without trouble, but the designers had not expected how much hammering real players would give them.
Q 18At whose suggestion did the Famicom gain a cartridge eject lever, added purely to amuse children?
Gunpei Yokoi
Gunpei Yokoi. Cartridges came out perfectly well by hand, but he argued that children would love making them pop up with a lever, and would play with it even when the console was switched off.
Q 19The D-pad and two-button layout came from which earlier Nintendo product line?
Game & Watch
Game & Watch. An engineer wired one of the handhelds to a Famicom prototype and found players steered by thumb without ever looking down, so the joystick plan was dropped.
Q 20What unusual feature did the Famicom's second controller include?
A microphone
A microphone. The console's designer added it himself, sure that players would love hearing their own voices come out of the television, but very few games ever made use of it.
Power Glove. Mattel's motion-sensing gauntlet looked like the future on screen, but at home it was so imprecise and awkward that its legend now rests on the film rather than on anything it could do.
Q 24In Ghostbusters II, which NES controller do the heroes use to steer the Statue of Liberty?
NES Advantage
NES Advantage. The arcade-style joystick was a real accessory, and its 'Slow' button faked slow motion by pausing and unpausing the game many times a second.
Q 25Which company was originally going to distribute Nintendo's Famicom in North America?
Atari
Atari. The deal stalled at a 1983 trade show, when Atari's executives saw one of Nintendo's arcade hits running on a rival's new home computer, and it was never signed.
Q 26Under what name was Nintendo's Famicom first shown to Americans at the January 1985 CES?
Advanced Video System
Advanced Video System. With a keyboard, cassette drive and infrared wireless controllers it looked like a home computer, but the trade was lukewarm and Nintendo stripped it back into the NES.
Q 27Which 1984 arcade line brought Famicom games to American arcades?
VS. System
VS. System. Its cabinets secretly ran on Famicom hardware; head-to-head play had flopped in Japan but thrived in American arcades, which persuaded Nintendo the console itself could sell there.
Q 28Konami's LaserScope, a headset light gun for the NES, shot at the screen when the player did what?
Shouted 'Fire!'
Shouted 'Fire!'. That was the instruction, but in practice almost any loud noise would do, and a cough or a sneeze fired a shot just as well.
Q 29Which emblem on an NES game's box told shoppers that Nintendo had approved the game?
The Seal of Quality
The Seal of Quality. Nintendo introduced it because a flood of shoddy, unvetted cartridges had helped crash the American market in 1983, and only games it had approved could carry the gold seal.
Q 30Worlds of Wonder made shops stock the NES to get which of its hit toys?
Teddy Ruxpin
Teddy Ruxpin. Its salesmen told retailers that anyone who wanted the talking bear or Lazer Tag would have to stock Nintendo too, and once the console was a hit Nintendo took its distribution in-house.