Nintendo
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This Nintendo trivia quiz has 144 free questions with answers, and more than half of them are Nintendo Switch trivia: the NX codename, the March 2017 launch price, Joy-Con drift and HD Rumble, the Lite and OLED models, cardboard Labo, Ring Fit, the best-selling games from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe to Animal Crossing's lockdown launch, and the Switch 2's magnetic controllers and record first week. The rest runs through the whole company: hanafuda cards in 1889 Kyoto, Gunpei Yokoi's Game & Watch, the Virtual Boy flop, why Mario is called Mario and Kirby is called Kirby, Pokémon's 1996 debut, the DS becoming the best-selling handheld ever, Satoru Iwata's business-card line and the billion-dollar Mario movie. Easy questions suit any Switch owner; the later ones will test people who remember the Famicom. Every answer was checked against a reference page and shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 144 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Nintendo was founded in 1889 to make which traditional game?
Hanafuda
Hanafuda, or 'flower cards', were hand-made by founder Fusajiro Yamauchi; Nintendo never dropped the line and was still selling hanafuda decks in the 2020s.
Q 02What was the first video game system Nintendo ever made, a series of dedicated consoles sold only in Japan from 1977?
Color TV-Game
Color TV-Game began in 1977 with a machine playing six Pong variations, licensed from Magnavox and built with Mitsubishi, which supplied the manufacturing know-how.
Q 03The character later known as Mario first appeared, as 'Jumpman', in which 1981 arcade game?
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong cast Mario, then called Jumpman, as a carpenter on a building site; he only became a plumber in 1983's Mario Bros., set among underground pipes.
Q 04Which Nintendo designer co-created The Legend of Zelda series alongside Shigeru Miyamoto?
Takashi Tezuka
Takashi Tezuka helped Miyamoto design the 1986 original, then directed Link's Awakening, asking for its villagers to be 'suspicious types' like the cast of Twin Peaks.
Q 05Which Nintendo handheld launched in 2001 with a 32-bit ARM processor?
Game Boy Advance
The Game Boy Advance's unlit screen was hard to see in dim rooms, a shortcoming Nintendo fixed in 2003 with the front-lit, folding Game Boy Advance SP.
Q 06In what year did the Famicom, Nintendo's first cartridge-based home console, launch in Japan?
1983
The Famicom launched in Japan on July 15, 1983 at ¥14,800 with three launch games, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Popeye, all ports of Nintendo arcade hits.
Q 07Which Nintendo console was announced in 1999 under the codename "Dolphin"?
GameCube
The GameCube was announced in May 1999 as Project Dolphin and went on sale in 2001; the codename survives in its model number, DOL-001.
Q 08Nintendo long displayed a scorched, still-working Game Boy from which conflict?
Gulf War
Gulf War: the Game Boy was badly burned while with US serviceman Stephan Scoggins in 1991 yet still switched on, so Nintendo replaced his and put the survivor on show.
Q 09In which Japanese city was Nintendo originally founded?
Kyoto
Kyoto: Nintendo never moved away, and the headquarters it used from 1933 to 1959 reopened in 2022 as a hotel called Marufukuro.
Q 10Switch game cards taste bitter to discourage what?
Children swallowing them
Children swallowing them: the tiny cards carry denatonium benzoate, a harmless bittering agent, which players confirmed at launch in 2017 by licking them.
Q 11Before its October 2016 reveal, the Switch was known publicly by which two-letter codename?
NX
NX was named by Satoru Iwata in March 2015, on the day Nintendo announced its move into smartphone games, as proof it was not giving up on dedicated consoles.
Q 12Which 2018 Switch fighting game carried the slogan 'Everyone is here!'?
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate launched December 7, 2018 with every fighter from the series' history, more than 70 at launch, under the tagline 'Everyone is here!'
Q 13What does Nintendo call the Switch play mode where the console is propped on its kickstand?
Tabletop mode
Q 21Which Zelda game launched alongside the Switch and won The Game Awards' Game of the Year?
Breath of the Wild
Breath of the Wild was first planned for the Wii U in 2015; after delays it launched on both consoles on the same day, as Nintendo's last game for the older machine.
Q 22Which Switch launch title is a collection of face-to-face mini-games like Quick Draw and Milk?
1-2-Switch
1-2-Switch launched alongside the console and asked players to look at each other rather than the screen in mini-games such as Quick Draw, Milk and Samurai Training.
Q 23Nintendo claimed the Joy-Con's 'HD Rumble' haptics could simulate the feel of what?
Ice cubes in a glass
Tabletop mode stands the screen on its kickstand so friends can share it away from a TV; the 2021 OLED Model replaced the original's narrow strip with a wide, adjustable stand.
Q 14The Switch's system-on-chip comes from which chipmaker's Tegra family?
Nvidia
Nvidia's Tegra X1 powers the Switch, and a flaw in the chip's start-up code, which no software update could patch, let hackers run their own programs on early consoles from 2018.
Q 15What was the US launch price of the Nintendo Switch?
$299.99
$299.99 was the US launch price; the box held the console, dock, two detachable controllers and a grip but no pack-in game.
Q 16What nickname did players give the fault that makes an untouched Joy-Con stick register movement?
Drift
Drift: after a class action was filed in 2019, Nintendo began repairing drifting Joy-Con free of charge, and its president apologised in 2020.
Q 17What did Nintendo call the Wii U's screen-equipped main controller?
GamePad
The Wii U GamePad could show games on its own touchscreen, but only near the console; that limit, Nintendo said, pushed it to design a home console players could carry anywhere.
Q 18As of 2026, what is the best-selling Nintendo Switch game, at more than 71 million copies?
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a port of a Wii U game that sold 8.46 million; on the Switch it has sold more than eight times as many, 71.53 million by mid-2026.
Q 19Roughly how many million copies did Animal Crossing: New Horizons sell in its first 12 days?
11.8
11.8 million copies (11.77 million) sold between its March 20, 2020 launch and March 31, as the first COVID-19 lockdowns began.
Q 20In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, who sells players the deserted-island getaway package?
Tom Nook
Tom Nook, the tanuki who runs Nook Inc., sells the getaway package and then hands you the house loan, as he has since the 2001 original.
Ice cubes in a glass: at the 2017 reveal, producer Yoshiaki Koizumi held up a controller and said he could feel each extra cube drop in, then the water rising around them.
Q 24Nintendo Labo, announced in January 2018, combined Switch games with kits made from what material?
Cardboard
Cardboard: players folded flat sheets into a piano, fishing rod or robot suit, and a sensor in the right-hand controller read each cardboard piano key as it was pressed.
Q 25Nintendo Switch Online's pricier tier, added in 2021, brought Nintendo 64 games and titles from which rival's console?
Sega Genesis
Sega Genesis games arrived in October 2021, three decades after Sega's adverts boasted that 'Genesis does what Nintendon't'.
Q 26In July 2024 the Switch passed which home console as Nintendo's longest-running without a successor?
NES
The NES had gone about seven years; the Switch 2 finally arrived on 5 June 2025.
Q 27Pressing the Switch 2's new C button opens which feature?
GameChat
GameChat lets friends talk and share their screens and webcams; it grew out of Nintendo's developers sharing game screens over video calls while working remotely in 2020.
Q 28How do the Switch 2's Joy-Con 2 controllers attach to the console?
Magnetically
Magnetically: Joy-Con 2 snap onto the console with magnets and release with a button, replacing the original's rails; they can also be slid on a surface as a mouse.
Q 29Which racing game was the Switch 2's headline launch title in June 2025?
Mario Kart World
Mario Kart World swapped the series' separate circuits for one open world, letting its 24 racers, twice the previous field, drive from one course to the next.
Q 30Which 1980 Nintendo arcade flop had its unsold cabinets converted into a 1981 hit?
Radar Scope
Radar Scope shipped about 3,000 cabinets to the US in 1980 and most went unsold, so Nintendo had Shigeru Miyamoto design a replacement game to recycle them.