super mario bros 1
the name of the world you can get to through glitches
the minus world!
What item must Sonic collect and hold onto throughout a level to protect himself from dying when hit by an enemy or a hazard?
Gold Rings. As long as Sonic has at least one ring in his possession, taking damage will only cause him to scatter his rings instead of losing a life.
This was the original, three-word official name of the console when it launched in 1977, named after its internal project code before it was rebranded as the Atari 2600 in 1982
the Video Computer System (or Atari VCS)
What was the infamous nickname given to the three flashing lights on the front of the original Xbox 360 console that signaled a fatal system error?
The Red Ring of Death (or RROD)
The iconic PlayStation 2 console is widely celebrated in gaming history for holding what ultimate sales record?
It is the best-selling video game console of all time (with over 155 million units sold).
In Super Mario Bros., if you run completely out of lives and get a "Game Over," you don’t actually have to start all the way back at World 1-1. What specific button combination can you hold on the title screen when pressing "Start" to continue from the beginning of the World where you just died?
You hold the A Button and then press Start. This hidden built-in shortcut allows you to continue from world X-1 (for example, if you game over on 6-3, this trick starts you back at 6-1).
If a real-life colony of ants marched into Green Hill Zone and cracked open a standard Moto Bug (the iconic red, wheeled, robotic ladybug), what specific kind of small animal would they find trapped inside acting as its organic battery?
A Squirrel (specifically named Ricky in the classic lore).
Early models of the console are highly prized by collectors for featuring this specific number of chrome switches on the top panel, before two of them were moved to the back to save production costs
six (Acceptable: The "Heavy Sixer" or "Light Sixer")
What was the official name of the motion-controlled, camera-based peripheral introduced during the Xbox 360 era that famously required no physical controllers to play?
Kinect
What was the official name of the vibrating, dual-analog controller introduced during the late PS1 era that became the structural blueprint for every PlayStation controller that followed?
The DualShock
According to the original 1985 instruction manual packaged with the game, Bowser and his Koopa army used "black magic" on the citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom before the game begins. What did they physically turn the Toads/citizens into, which Mario interacts with throughout the game?
They were turned into bricks, blocks, and horsetail plants (or bushes). This means every time you break a brick block in the game, you are technically smashing a transformed citizen of the Mushroom Kingdom!
What is the official name of this iconic, spin-charging move that debuted in Sonic 2?
The Spin Dash.
The brain of the Atari 2600 was a budget-friendly variant of the famous MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, designated by this specific four-digit number.
the 6507
At its 2013 launch, the Xbox One included a heavily promoted multitasking feature that allowed players to pin a live TV stream or a second app to the side of the screen while playing a game. What was the name of this feature before Microsoft removed it in 2017 to improve console speed?
Snap Mode (or "Snapping" an app)
When Sony launched the PlayStation 3 in 2006, it included a distinct, clean user interface featuring a horizontal bar of categories and vertical lists of options. What was the official name of this menu system?
the XrossMediaBar (or XMB)
Goombas are famous for being the very first enemy you see in World 1-1. However, during development, they were actually the last enemy added to the game. Why did the developers wait until the absolute end of development to create and insert the Goomba?
They were added because early playtesters kept dying to the Koopa Troopas, and Shigeru Miyamoto realized the game needed a simple, single-stomp enemy to teach players how to jump. Because they were added at the final second, the NES cartridge was almost completely out of memory. To save space, the developers made the Goomba a tiny "chestnut" shape and gave it a simple two-frame walking animation that just flipped the same image back and forth.
hat species of animal was this original prototype hero design, which later became the character Mighty?
An Armadillo
Due to severe hardware constraints and the high cost of RAM in 1977, the standard Atari 2600 console contained a minuscule base amount of random-access memory—specifically this many bytes.
128 bytes (Note: Not kilobytes, just 128 single bytes!)
What was the name of the futuristic, cyberpunk-style city that served as the primary setting for the 2007 Xbox 360 exclusive title Crackdown?
Pacific City
Before the original PlayStation launched in 1994, Sony famously spent years co-developing the technology as a CD-ROM add-on for another major gaming company's console before the deal fell through at the last minute. Which company was Sony originally partnering with?
Nintendo (The project was known as the "Nintendo PlayStation" or SNES-CD).
Super Mario Bros. features a famous glitch called the "Minus World" (World -1), which is reached by clipping through a wall in World 1-2. On the standard western NES cartridge version, the Minus World is an inescapable, infinitely looping water level. However, if you play the Japanese Famicom Disk System (FDS) version of the game, the Minus World is completely different. What happens in the Japanese version of the Minus World?
On the Japanese version, the Minus World is not an infinite loop—it actually contains three distinct levels (World -1, -2, and -3) that you can fully complete.
World -1 is a modified underwater level featuring a swimming Bowser and floating Princess Peach sprites.
World -2 is a vertical bonus-style level based on World 7-3.
World -3 is a castle level based on World 4-4, but without the maze pattern. If you beat World -3, the game returns you to the main title screen as if you just won the game!
In Sonic Rush Adventure, what are the "Fire Ants" actually called in-game, and what do you use them for? (Hint: It isn't a bug!)
The Answer: Iron Material (used by Tails to construct and upgrade Ships/Vessels).
Frustrated by Atari's refusal to give developers screen credit or royalties for the games they coded for the 2600, a group of four star programmers split off in 1979 to found this legendary third-party publishing giant.
Activision
When the original Xbox 360 launched in North America in November 2005, two separate retail models were available for purchase. One was the premium $399 "Pro" package that included a 20GB hard drive. What was the official name of the cheaper, $299 bare-bones model that shipped without a hard drive or a wireless controller?
The Xbox 360 Core (or Core System)
To save your games on the original PlayStation 1, you had to use a physical Memory Card. A standard PS1 Memory Card was notoriously small—it didn't measure space in megabytes, but rather in "blocks." Exactly how many blocks of storage space were available on a standard, official PS1 Memory Card?
15 blocks (which equated to a tiny 1 Megabit, or roughly 128 Kilobytes of data).