Video Games
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145 free Video Games trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
90 free video game trivia questions with answers. Ninety video game trivia questions that run the whole history of the medium: the Magnavox Odyssey and Pong, the arcade era of Pac-Man and Street Fighter, Nintendo's Famicom, the PlayStation 2, and modern video game trivia on Fortnite, The Witcher, God of War, Hollow Knight, Baldur's Gate 3 and the studios behind them. Expect characters, consoles, release years, genres, record sales and the odd cheat code. The first third is easy enough for anyone who has held a controller (who is Mario's nemesis, which company makes the Xbox); the middle is for regular players; the last stretch will test people who read patch notes. Multiple choice, instant scoring, and a one-line explanation after every answer, so it works as gaming trivia questions and answers for a stream, a LAN party or a pub round. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia, developer and publisher pages, and each question shows its source, so a Discord argument can be settled on the spot.
30 of 145 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What classic arcade game stars a yellow, circular character eating its way through a maze?
Pac-Man
Pac-Man was built around eating instead of shooting because its designer wanted a game that would draw women and couples into arcades then dominated by space shooters.
Q 02In which game series do players settle in a village of talking creatures and repay house loans to Tom Nook?
Animal Crossing
Animal Crossing grew out of co-creator Katsuya Eguchi's loneliness after he left family and friends behind to join Nintendo in Kyoto; he built a game around family, friendship and community.
Q 03Which mechanic is a hallmark of the roguelike genre, named after the 1980 dungeon crawler Rogue?
Permadeath
Permadeath is a hallmark of roguelikes: when the character dies the run is over, and because Rogue's dungeons were generated afresh each time, no two attempts played alike.
Q 04Which esports title has two teams of five competing to destroy the opposing "Ancient" structure?
Dota 2
Dota 2 is Valve's sequel to Defense of the Ancients, a fan-made mod for Blizzard's Warcraft III; Valve hired the mod's lead designer, known only as IceFrog, in 2009 to build it.
Q 05What was the name of the first commercial home video game console, released in 1972?
Magnavox Odyssey
The Magnavox Odyssey could not make sound or keep score, so it shipped with plastic overlays to stick on the TV screen, plus dice and play money to finish its games.
Q 06Which programmer created Minecraft in Java before handing development to Jens 'Jeb' Bergensten?
Markus Persson
Markus Persson, known as 'Notch', wrote the original in Java, handed the game to Jens 'Jeb' Bergensten after its 2011 full release, and left when his studio Mojang was sold for $2.5 billion in 2014.
Q 07Which iconic character serves as the protagonist of the "Halo" video game franchise?
Master Chief
Master Chief's face has never been fully shown in the games: their cutscenes are framed to hide it, so that players can more easily imagine themselves inside the armour.
Q 08The PlayStation 2 doubled as a home player for which movie disc format?
DVD
DVD playback was built into the PlayStation 2, a pivotal choice: it was sold as a games machine, but doubling as a film player widened its appeal well beyond people who wanted games.
Q 09"Doom Eternal" is primarily categorized under which video game genre?
First-person shooter
First-person shooter Doom Eternal rewards aggression: finishing a staggered demon with a 'Glory Kill' restores health and chainsawing one spills ammo, so hanging back starves the player.
Q 10Who is the primary protagonist in the "Uncharted" video game series?
Nathan Drake
Nathan Drake claims descent from Sir Francis Drake, whose coffin he raises in the first game, but later games reveal he was born under another surname and took the Drake name as a boy.
Q 11Which developer is renowned for challenging action RPGs such as "Dark Souls" and "Elden Ring"?
FromSoftware
FromSoftware's punishing games gave a whole subgenre its name: action RPGs built on tough combat and progress lost on death are now called 'Soulslikes', after the Dark Souls trilogy.
Q 12Which hand-drawn indie Metroidvania sends a silent bug through the fallen kingdom beneath Dirtmouth?
Hollow Knight
Hollow Knight was funded through a 2014 Kickstarter that beat its A$35,000 goal; one stretch goal, a playable version of the character Hornet, grew so large that it became the sequel, Silksong.
Q 13Which gaming console revolutionized gaming with its motion-sensing controller, released in 2006?
Nintendo Wii
Q 21Who is the protagonist of the highly acclaimed "The Witcher" video game series?
Geralt of Rivia
Geralt of Rivia first appeared in a short story Andrzej Sapkowski wrote for a Polish magazine contest in 1986; it took only third prize, yet readers demanded more and a saga followed.
Q 22"Stardew Valley" is best described as belonging to which video game genre?
Farm life sim
Stardew Valley, a farm life sim, began as a fan-made alternative to the Harvest Moon games, which its creator felt had been getting worse with each new release.
Q 23Which PC game store did Valve launch in 2003, at first just to update its own games?
Steam
Steam began in 2003 purely as a way to patch Valve's own online games automatically; only in 2005 did it start selling other publishers' titles and turn into a shop.
The Nintendo Wii was far less powerful than the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, yet its simple swing-the-remote games helped it outsell both, with more than 100 million consoles shipped.
Q 14The character Kratos is the protagonist of which Sony video game series?
God of War
God of War began in Greek myth, with Kratos taking revenge on the gods of Olympus; the 2018 game moved him to the Norse world as a father travelling with his young son.
Q 15Which franchise began in 1996 as a pair of Game Boy role-playing games called Red and Green?
Pokémon
Pokémon grew out of creator Satoshi Tajiri's boyhood hobby of collecting insects; the Game Boy's link cable made him picture bugs crawling between consoles to be traded.
Q 16Which software engineer created Tetris in 1984?
Alexey Pajitnov
Alexey Pajitnov wrote Tetris while working for the Soviet Academy of Sciences, so the state held the rights and he earned no royalties until he co-founded The Tetris Company in 1996.
Q 17Which fictional city in the state of San Andreas is the main setting of Grand Theft Auto V?
Los Santos
Los Santos is the series' take on Los Angeles: the developers shot around 250,000 photographs and hours of video of the real city to build it, down to a 'Vinewood' sign in the hills.
Q 18What jammed Atari's first arcade prototype soon after a California tavern installed it in 1972?
Quarters
Quarters: the engineer called to Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale found the 'broken' machine's coin box overflowing, the first sign that Atari had a hit.
Q 19Which major technology company developed and launched the Xbox line of gaming consoles?
Microsoft
Microsoft built its first console around its DirectX graphics software, so the team called it the 'DirectX Box'; the nickname was shortened to Xbox in emails and stuck.
Q 20Which 1989 game by Will Wright made players a mayor, zoning land and laying roads for a growing town?
SimCity
SimCity grew out of the level editor Will Wright built for his helicopter game Raid on Bungeling Bay: he found designing the islands more fun than bombing them.
Q 24What is the name of the main antagonist and recurring villain in the "Super Mario" video game series?
Bowser
Bowser was first imagined as an ox, modelled on the Ox King in the anime film Alakazam the Great, before a colleague's remark turned him into the turtle-like king of the Koopas.
Q 25Solid Snake, real name David, is a protagonist of which stealth-action video game series?
Metal Gear
Metal Gear became a stealth game by necessity: the MSX2 computer could not draw many enemies and bullets at once, so Hideo Kojima had players sneak past guards instead of fighting them.
Q 26Which 1996 game was Mario's first 3D platformer?
Super Mario 64
Super Mario 64 was one of only two games on sale with its console at the US launch; its free camera and 360-degree analog control became the template for 3D platform games.
Q 27Which 2017 game by Brendan Greene drops up to 100 people onto an island to fight until one is left?
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is named for Greene's online handle; he had first built the idea as a mod for another game, titled after the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale.
Q 28Which developer took over the Fallout series with Fallout 3 in 2008?
Bethesda Game Studios
Bethesda Game Studios inherited Fallout when its parent bought the rights from the struggling Interplay, then swapped the old isometric, turn-based view for a 3D free-roaming world.
Q 29Which character is the female protagonist of the "Metroid" video game series?
Samus Aran
Samus Aran's gender was a twist: the 1986 game's manual called the armoured bounty hunter 'he', and only the ending revealed a woman under the helmet.
Q 30Which game won the coveted Game of the Year award at The Game Awards 2023?
Baldur's Gate 3
Baldur's Gate 3 spent nearly three years in early access from 2020, with players' feedback and money sustaining Larian Studios until the full 2023 release that swept the awards.