Nintendo Switch
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50 free Nintendo Switch trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Nintendo Switch was the console Nintendo built after the Wii U flopped: a tablet that docks to a TV, with controllers that snap off the sides, announced as 'NX' and sold at launch without a single bundled game. It went on to outsell everything but the PlayStation 2 and ran eight years before the Switch 2 arrived. These 50 questions cover the hardware and the story around it: the Nvidia chip, the 6.2-inch screen, the Horizon operating system, the Lite's launch colours, the OLED model and its LAN-port dock, bitter-tasting game cards and the 'Switch tax'. Then the culture: Jimmy Fallon playing Zelda, Imagine Dragons in the Super Bowl ad, John Cena in the desert, Labo cardboard, Ring Fit, the hidden Golf game that honoured Satoru Iwata, Joy-Con drift and the Gamevice lawsuits. The hard tier asks about the Tokyo teardown cost, Kojima's 'transfarring' and the Tegra X1+ revision. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something either way. Play it solo or print it for game night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Super Mario game arrived in the Switch's first year, 2017?
Odyssey
Odyssey. In Super Mario Odyssey, Mario throws his cap to take control of enemies, and the game sold nine million copies within about two months.
Q 02What codename did Nintendo use for the Switch before its official unveiling?
NX
NX. Nintendo kept the hardware hidden under that name, and Shigeru Miyamoto said it skipped E3 2016 because the company was worried about imitators.
Q 03What are the Switch's detachable wireless controllers called?
Joy-Con
Joy-Con. Turned sideways, each half works as a small controller of its own, so two people can play straight out of the box.
Q 04Which Nintendo console did the Switch succeed?
Wii U
Wii U. It sold only 13.56 million units in its whole life, a total the Switch passed within ten months of going on sale.
Q 05What does Nintendo call playing the Switch propped on its kickstand on a flat surface?
Tabletop mode
Tabletop mode. It sits beside TV mode and handheld mode as one of three official ways to play, and the 2021 OLED model swapped the original kickstand for a wide adjustable stand.
Q 06What does Nintendo call the precise vibration feature built into the Switch's detachable controllers?
HD Rumble
HD Rumble. At the Switch's unveiling, producer Yoshiaki Koizumi shook a controller and said he could feel ice cubes dropping into a glass one by one, then water rising.
Q 07Which 2015 role-playing epic reached the Switch in 2019?
The Witcher 3
The Witcher 3. Its makers cut back texture detail and foliage to fit the handheld, yet kept the whole game and its two story add-ons, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine.
Q 08The Switch's system-on-chip was developed in partnership with which company?
Nvidia
Nvidia. Nintendo had always built custom chips before, but chose well-established Tegra technology this time so that outside studios could bring games across more easily.
Q 09The original Switch's 32 GB of storage can be expanded with which memory card?
MicroSD
MicroSD. Nintendo used the standard format rather than a card of its own, so the same cheap cards made for phones and cameras can add up to 2 TB of space.
Q 10Which life-simulation series released a Switch game in March 2020 that sold nearly 12 million copies in 12 days?
Animal Crossing
Animal Crossing. New Horizons came out as pandemic stay-at-home orders spread, and its makers said they hoped players would use it as an escape.
Q 11What did the $199.99 Switch Lite give up?
TV output
TV output. The Lite has no dock support and its controllers are built into the body, so it runs only games that work in handheld mode.
Q 12Which Zelda remake launched beside the Switch Lite in 2019?
Link's Awakening
Link's Awakening. It remade a 1993 Game Boy adventure set not in Hyrule but on Koholint Island, where Link must wake the sleeping Wind Fish to leave.
Q 13Which colour was one of the three Switch Lite launch colours?
Turquoise
Turquoise. It launched beside yellow and grey, and because the Lite's controls are fixed to the body, its left side gained a proper D-pad in place of four separate buttons.
Q 21Which Switch launch game had first been announced four years earlier for Nintendo's previous console?
Breath of the Wild
Breath of the Wild. In its first month the Switch version sold 2.76 million copies against 2.74 million consoles, so there were more copies of the game than machines to play it on.
Q 22Which Switch launch title showed off its controllers with face-to-face minigames?
1-2-Switch
1-2-Switch. Players are told to look at each other, not the screen, in games such as a wild-west quick draw and a cow-milking contest.
Q 23Which talk-show host played Zelda on a Switch live on TV in December 2016, before the console's launch?
Jimmy Fallon
Q 14The Switch's OLED model launched alongside which game in October 2021?
Metroid Dread
Metroid Dread. Nintendo had started and shelved a game of that name in the mid-2000s, so its release ended a 19-year wait for a new 2D Metroid.
Q 15What wired connection did the dock of the Switch's OLED model add?
Ethernet port
Ethernet port. The original dock had none, so anyone who wanted a wired internet connection had to buy a separate LAN adapter and plug it into a USB socket.
Q 16What nickname did rumours give a more powerful 4K Switch?
Switch Pro
Switch Pro. Reports had promised 4K graphics, but the OLED model arrived with the same chip and memory as before and a $349.99 price, $50 above the original.
Q 17Which long-standing restriction on Nintendo's home consoles did the Switch drop?
Region lock
Region lock. A game card bought in Japan runs on a Switch sold in America or Europe, though Nintendo still advises buying within your own region for full support.
Q 18The Switch was the first major home system to use cartridges since which console?
Nintendo 64
Nintendo 64. The three Nintendo home consoles after it all ran games from discs, so the Switch's small game cards revived a format its living-room machines had left behind.
Q 19Switch game cards are coated with what to discourage children from swallowing them?
A bitterant
A bitterant. Nintendo confirmed the coating, denatonium benzoate, only after players and reviewers licked the cards at launch and reported a foul taste that would not go away.
Q 20What nickname did the gaming press give the higher prices of some games on Nintendo's hybrid console?
Switch tax
Switch tax. Game cards cost publishers more to make than Blu-ray discs, and more still at larger sizes, so some games were priced above their versions on rival machines.
Jimmy Fallon. After the demo, Shigeru Miyamoto sat in with Fallon's house band, The Roots, to play the Super Mario theme on guitar.
Q 24Nintendo's first Super Bowl ad, for the Switch in 2017, was set to a song by which band?
Imagine Dragons
Imagine Dragons. Their single 'Believer' had been out for only days when the ad aired, and the exposure sent it to number two on Billboard's chart of songs in TV commercials.
Q 25Which wrestler tried the Switch in Nintendo's 'Unexpected Places' campaign?
John Cena
John Cena. He fronted the first stop, a living-room set built in the California desert, before the tour moved on to a Colorado ski slope and a New York park.
Q 26What is Nintendo's line of do-it-yourself cardboard accessories for the Switch called?
Labo
Labo. Its cardboard sheets fold into 'Toy-Con' such as a piano, a fishing rod and a robot suit, which come to life when the Switch and its controllers slot inside.
Q 27Which Switch exercise game sold out around the world in early 2020, with resellers charging several times its price?
Ring Fit Adventure
Ring Fit Adventure. Players jog on the spot and squeeze a flexible ring to fight a bodybuilding dragon, and the game went on to sell more than 15 million copies.
Q 28Which 1980s Nintendo game was hidden in the Switch's firmware as a tribute to Satoru Iwata?
Golf
Golf. Iwata had been its only programmer, and Japanese fans called the hidden copy an omamori, a protective charm watching over every console.
Q 29To unlock the Switch's hidden tribute to Satoru Iwata, players copied his hand gesture from which Nintendo series?
Nintendo Direct
Nintendo Direct. The two-handed 'Direct' motion was Iwata's signature in the video showcases, and the tribute worked only on July 11, the date of his death in 2015.
Q 30Who was president of Nintendo of America when the Switch launched?
Reggie Fils-Aimé
Reggie Fils-Aimé. He retired in April 2019 and handed the presidency to his head of sales, whose real name is Doug Bowser.