Pong (Atari, 1972) is often credited to Nolan Bushnell, but he actually assigned it as a training exercise to a young engineer who did the real design work. Who was that engineer?
- Allan Alcorn
- Steve Bristow
- Ralph Baer
- Ted Dabney
The way the aliens in Space Invaders (1978) speed up as you clear the screen was a deliberate difficulty mechanic the game's designer programmed from the start.
- True
- False
In the original Pac-Man (1980), one ghost's AI makes it break off pursuit and flee toward the maze's bottom-left corner whenever it comes within about eight tiles of Pac-Man. Which ghost behaves this way?
- Clyde
- Blinky
- Pinky
- Inky
Pac-Man was first released in Japan in 1980 under the title '___ Man,' a name changed for the Western market because the first letter was easy to vandalize into an obscenity.
Mario debuted in the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong under the name Jumpman. What profession was he given in that game, before he later became a plumber?
- Carpenter
- Mechanic
- Electrician
- Firefighter
Galaga (Namco, 1981) is a direct sequel that expanded on the fixed-shooter formula of which earlier Namco game?
- Galaxian
- Xevious
- Bosconian
- Gaplus
Centipede (Atari, 1981) is historically notable for being co-designed by one of the first women to program a commercial arcade game, alongside Ed Logg. Who was she?
- Dona Bailey
- Carol Shaw
- Roberta Williams
- Brenda Romero
Q*bert (1982) was developed by Gottlieb, a company historically far better known for manufacturing pinball machines than video games.
- True
- False
Frogger (1981) was developed by Konami, but because Konami lacked manufacturing reach in North America at the time, it was distributed there by which company?
- Sega
- Midway
- Atari
- Taito
The North American video game crash of 1983 is referred to in Japan as the 'Atari ___,' naming the company most associated with the market's collapse.
Which infamous 1982 Atari 2600 game, whose millions of unsold cartridges were reportedly buried in a New Mexico landfill, became a lasting symbol of the 1983 crash?
- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
- Yars' Revenge
- Pitfall!
- Custer's Revenge
The first Pong prototype was installed at Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale, California, and reportedly stopped working because its coin box had overflowed with quarters.
- True
- False
Space Invaders (Taito, 1978) was designed by an engineer who reportedly had to build custom hardware because no existing system could run his vision. Who was he?
- Tomohiro Nishikado
- Toru Iwatani
- Masaya Nakamura
- Gunpei Yokoi