30 Sports Trivia Questions and Answers That Will Start Arguments at Your Table
These sports trivia questions and answers are built to make confident people second-guess themselves. Some you'll nail. Some will ruin your evening.
50 Video Game Trivia Questions That’ll Start Arguments at Your Table
The best-selling video game console of all time isn’t the one most gamers guess. It’s not the NES, not the PlayStation, not the Switch. It’s the PlayStation 2, with over 155 million units sold, and I’ve watched confident people argue themselves into corners about this for years. That single fact tells you something about video game trivia: the stuff we think we know is exactly where we’re most vulnerable.
I’ve been writing and running video game trivia for live events since the mid-2010s, and the pattern is always the same. The table full of gamers gets cocky early. They nail the first few. Then a question about release dates or voice actors or some piece of history they lived through but never actually looked up lands on them sideways. That’s the sweet spot. That’s what these 50 questions are built to find.
Some of these are warm-ups. Some will make you feel like you wasted your twenties productively. And a few are designed to make the person at your table who “doesn’t really play games” suddenly become the hero.
The ones everyone thinks they know
1. What is Mario’s full name, according to Nintendo?
This one sounds like a gimme, and it is, but it also starts a conversation. Nintendo confirmed it at a 2012 event and then Miyamoto seemed to walk it back years later. The answer itself has become a minor controversy.
2. What was the first commercially sold video game?
People reach for Pong almost every time. Pong wasn’t even the first Atari game.
3. In the original Pac-Man, how many ghosts are there, and can you name all four?
Everyone gets the number. Almost nobody gets all four names. There’s always someone who confidently says “Clyde” and then stalls out completely.
4. What year was the original Legend of Zelda released in Japan?
This is a confidence trap. People who know Zelda well tend to anchor on the NES launch or on 1987, which was the North American release.
5. What color is Sonic the Hedgehog’s arms?
This question has caused actual distress in live rooms. People picture Sonic and they see blue. All blue. Their brains refuse to separate the arms from the body.
Where the overconfidence kicks in
6. What video game character has appeared in the most games of all time?
Mario seems obvious. Mario is wrong.
7. What was the first video game to feature a jump mechanic?
Donkey Kong, right? Feels right. It’s not.
8. In what game did the Konami Code first appear?
This is the video game trivia equivalent of asking who’s buried in Grant’s tomb. People still get it wrong.
9. What does the “__(64)__” in Nintendo 64 refer to?
Some people say 64 bits. They’re right. But watch them try to explain what that actually means.
10. What is the best-selling video game of all time?
This changes depending on when you ask it, and people who memorized the answer five years ago are now working with outdated information.
11. What was Lara Croft’s original name during development of the first Tomb Raider?
This is the kind of deep cut that rewards people who read gaming magazines in the ’90s. Or Wikipedia at 2 AM.
12. What does “NES” stand for?
I include this as a palate cleanser. You’d be surprised how many people blank on the “E.”
13. In the original Street Fighter II, how many playable characters are there?
People count in their heads. They always either forget someone or add someone from a later edition.
The ones that feel like trick questions but aren’t
14. What animal is Donkey Kong?
I know. I know. But I’ve had people say monkey, and then a whole table argues about the difference between monkeys and apes for five minutes. That’s a successful question.
15. What was the first game in the Call of Duty series set outside of World War II?
People jump straight to Modern Warfare. That’s the famous one. But there’s a gap year they forget about.
16. What is the name of the princess in The Legend of Zelda?
This is a litmus test. Not for gaming knowledge. For whether someone has ever been corrected by a gamer.
17. What game studio developed the original Halo: Combat Evolved?
The Xbox crowd gets this instantly. Everyone else says Microsoft.
18. What is the highest-grossing arcade game of all time?
Adjusted for inflation, this one has generated more revenue than most Hollywood franchises. People guess Pac-Man, and they’re in the right neighborhood.
19. What real-world city is the setting of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City?
Everyone knows this. It’s a vibe check more than a trivia question.
20. In Minecraft, what do you need to craft a bed?
This separates the people who’ve actually played Minecraft from the people who’ve watched someone else play it.
The stretch where people start keeping score
21. What was the first video game Easter egg?
The term “Easter egg” itself comes from this moment. A programmer hid something because he wasn’t allowed to receive credit for his work.
22. What does “RPG” stand for in gaming?
Another breather. But I’ve heard “rocket-propelled grenade” shouted with full confidence at a trivia night, so nothing is safe.
23. What was the first game to use ragdoll physics?
People guess Half-Life 2 or Halo. Both are wrong by years.
24. In Portal, what flavor is the cake that “is a lie”?
The meme outlived the specifics. People remember the lie but not the cake.
25. What was the original price of the PlayStation 3 at launch in the US?
This number was memed into oblivion. If you were alive and online in 2006, it’s burned into your memory whether you wanted it or not.
26. What game holds the record for the longest development cycle before release?
Duke Nukem Forever is the meme answer. And for once, the meme answer is basically right.
27. What does the “__(GTA)__” in GTA stand for?
28. In World of Warcraft, what was the name of the unintentional plague that spread through the game world in 2005?
Epidemiologists actually studied this event. It became a case study in how real pandemics spread. A video game bug ended up in academic journals.
29. What was Sega’s last home console?
A moment of silence for the answer.
30. Who is the voice actor behind Master Chief in the Halo series?
Even people who’ve sunk hundreds of hours into Halo often can’t name him. He’s one of the most heard and least recognized voices in gaming.
The part where your table gets quiet
31. What was the first video game to be adapted into a feature film?
People guess Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter. Both are wrong. The actual answer is worse than either of those movies, which is saying something.
32. In what year did Fortnite’s Battle Royale mode launch?
People who played it from the start feel like it’s been around forever. People who didn’t feel like it showed up yesterday. Both are wrong.
33. What was the first game to feature a female protagonist as the default player character?
This one gets debated. The answer depends on how strictly you define “protagonist” and “default.” I accept a range of answers at live events, but there’s one that’s hard to argue against.
34. How many copies did E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 sell?
This is the game that supposedly killed the video game industry and got buried in a New Mexico landfill. People assume it sold almost nothing. They’re wrong.
35. What is the name of the dog in Duck Hunt?
That laughing, smug, universally hated dog. Surely he has a name.
36. What programming language was the original Rollercoaster Tycoon written in?
This is one of those facts that, once you learn it, changes how you think about what one person can accomplish.
37. What is the Tetris theme song actually called?
It’s not an original composition. It’s a Russian folk song that’s over a century old, and it has a name that nobody at trivia night has ever gotten right on the first try.
38. What was the first console to have wireless controllers as standard?
The Wii feels right. The Xbox 360 feels right. Both are wrong.
39. What is the rarest officially licensed NES game?
Collectors argue about this constantly, but there’s one answer that consistently tops the lists and has sold for six figures.
40. In the Metal Gear Solid series, what is Solid Snake’s real first name?
People who’ve played every game in the series sometimes still hesitate on this one.
The home stretch, where reputations are made
41. What was the first game to cost $100 million to develop?
People guess GTA V. GTA V cost way more than $100 million, but it wasn’t the first to hit that mark.
42. In Animal Crossing, what is the name of the raccoon who runs the shop?
This is a generational marker. If you know this, you’ve either played Animal Crossing or lived with someone who wouldn’t stop talking about it.
43. What does the “__(PS)__” in “PS5” stand for?
44. What game caused the creation of the ESRB rating system?
Two games, really. One was violent. One was violent and had a specific move that made senators lose their minds on television.
45. What is the best-selling handheld console of all time?
The Game Boy feels like the answer. The DS feels like the answer. One of them is right.
46. In Dark Souls, what is the first boss most players encounter?
There’s a boss before the one you’re thinking of.
47. What company originally developed Tetris?
It wasn’t a company at all.
48. What is the name of the flower that gives Mario the ability to throw fireballs?
Simple question. But I’ve watched people say “fire flower” and then immediately doubt themselves, which is the best kind of trivia moment.
49. In what year did the original PlayStation launch in Japan?
Americans anchor on 1995. They’re off by exactly one year and one country.
The last one standing
50. What was the original working title of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and on what console was it first being developed before moving to the N64?
This is a two-part question, and I save it for last because it does something specific to a room. The Zelda fans lean in. They think they’ve got it. The first part is gettable. The second part catches almost everyone, because the answer rewrites the timeline of one of the most beloved games ever made. Ocarina of Time wasn’t always destined for the hardware that defined it. The fact that it ended up where it did, looking and playing the way it did, was the result of a platform dying at exactly the right time. Every great game has a story like that behind it. The ones we remember best are the ones that almost didn’t happen the way they did.
I've been the sports round writer for quiz leagues in Tampa, FL for 9 years, which means I've learned exactly which questions make the football fans groan and which ones catch everyone off guard.
Latest posts by Jason Allen, B.A. Sports Journalism (see all)
- 50 Video Game Trivia Questions That’ll Start Arguments at Your Table - October 10, 2025
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