1. Which pioneering video/arcade game company began by making traditional playing cards called ‘hanafunda’ with flowers on them? Sega Nintendo Sony Atari

2. Which of these founding arcade/video game companies found that the original name ‘syzygy’ they’d chosen from astronomy for a celestial alignment had been used already so they chose the word for a play in the traditional board game ‘Go’? Atari Nintendo Sega Bally

3. In 1972, one of the most wildly successful arcade (and then video) games, 'PONG', was tested in a bar in the town of Grass Valley in Northern California and a pub called Andy Capp’s in Sunnyvale, California. Why was the first day’s trial run unsuccessful? The customers were getting aches in their necks watching the ball bounce back and forth and might have sued. The technology required to run it took up an entire room! Customers could not play it and drink at the same time as it required too much coordination! The milk carton containing the quarters (25 cent coins) was jamming the mechanism.

4. The forerunner of 'PONG' was created in 1958 and was called ‘Tennis for Two’ by an American physicist. He basically created it on a lark to amuse visitors during kind of boring visits to the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. It ran with an oscilloscope. Who was this cigar-smoking, pinball-loving scientist? Steven Yang Steve Jobs William Higenbotham William Gates

5. One of the most popular video/arcade games of all time is without a doubt “Pac-Man” by Namco then Midway division in the USA. Which of these statements is NOT true about the game? The original name of the game was Puck-man but it was changed in English speaking countries so that vandals would not change the first letter. “Pac-Man” caught on immediately and beat “Space Invaders” out of the water. Many experts say that the name came from the Japanese ‘Paku paku taberu’ of a mouth chomping. “Pac-Man” inspired a spin-off entitled “Ms. Pac-Man” in which the happy couple actually receives a “Jr Pac-man” from the stork.

6. Here is an enormously popular arcade game from 1981 in which a frog avoids road hazards. Immortalized in an episode of “Seinfeld” in which George Costanza attempts to conserve his score on an old machine kept in a pizza parlor on which his only true accomplishment in life thus far would disappear if the power failed. Do you know the original name of Sega’s “Frogger”? Froggy went a jumping Dead Frog in the Middle of the Road Highway Crossing Frog Why Did Frog Cross Road?

7. Which enormously popular arcade/video game inspired an art form created by mosaics in public places and has been documented online by anonymous artists on several continents? Space Invaders Donkey Kong Pac-Man Asteroids

8. Many of you know that the super famous character of Mario by Nintendo was named for the Italian landlord of the American warehouse in which the developers were working, but what was the character’s original name? Fujiman Plumberman Donatello Jumpman

9. Along came Sega in 1991 with a cobalt blue rival for Mario and other popular video game characters, "Sonic the Hedgehog". Taking over the controls from its former icon ‘Alex Kidd’ a kid with rather big ears, in came Sonic at the speed of sound. However, sharing the drawing table with him, were several other possible characters. Which of these was NOT discussed as character? An armadillo A cat named Mikado A rabbit A Teddy Roosevelt-like character in pajamas

10. Another perennial favorite from the eighties is the game originally created in Russia called ‘Tetris’ by Alexei Pajitnov while he was working for the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow. “Tetris”, drawing inspiration from traditional games using structures and shapes, became instantly popular and yet, the game is a prime example of a licensing world war in which few companies were uninvolved for their piece of the pie and, sadly enough, the original creator did not profit. Nintendo’s handheld Game Boy version truly popularized this game in 1989. According to university researchers, ‘Can Tetris be played forever?’ Yes No