Genre
Name that Game
Mechanics
Visual Style
Video Game History
100
This genre, popularized by Super Mario Bros., focuses on jumping between platforms and avoiding obstacles.
What is a Platformer?
100
What is Super Mario Bros.?
100
This number, often represented by a red bar or hearts, tracks a character's "life" and leads to a "Game Over" if it reaches zero.
What are Health Points (or HP)?
100
This art style intentionally mimics the blocky, low-resolution look of 8-bit or 16-bit games.
What is Pixel Art?
100
Released in 1972, this simple table tennis game by Atari is considered the first commercially successful video game.
What is Pong?
200
Call of Duty and Overwatch are examples of this genre where you view the world from the character's eyes.
What is a First-Person Shooter (FPS)?
200
This is the sound a yellow circle makes as he eats dots in a maze.
What is Pac-Man?
200
This mechanic allows players to combine basic resources to create new, more complex items and tools.
What is Crafting?
200
This 3D rendering technique makes characters look flat, "cartoony," and outlined in black.
What is Cel-Shading?
200
This 1983 event, caused by a flood of low-quality games like E.T., led to a massive recession in the North American video game industry.
What is the Video Game Crash of 1983?
300
Games like Final Fantasy and Pokémon belong to this genre, which emphasizes story, character statistics, and leveling up.
What is a Role-Playing Game (RPG)?
300
This short, triumphant tune plays when Link holds a new item above his head.
What is The Legend of Zelda?
300
A term for the repeating set of actions that a player performs over and over, such as "explore, fight, loot" in Diablo.
What is a Core Gameplay Loop?
300
This visual style aims to look as true-to-life as possible.
What is Photorealism (or Realism)?
300
This 1985 console is credited with "saving" the home console market and introduced this iconic directional controller.
What is the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)?
400
This genre, named after two classic Nintendo franchises, involves exploring a large, interconnected map that opens up as you gain new abilities.
What is a Metroidvania?
400
This "!" sound effect signals that an enemy has spotted you.
What is Metal Gear Solid?
400
This mechanic, central to Gears of War and The Division, allows the player to hide behind objects to avoid enemy fire.
What is a Cover System?
400
An art style where all objects in the 3D world are constructed from grid-based blocks.
What is Voxel Art?
400
Games like EverQuest (1999) and its massive successor World of Warcraft (2004) popularized this genre where thousands of players inhabit the same persistent online world.
What is an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game)?
500
Games like Hades or The Binding of Isaac are in this genre, defined by permanent death and levels that are randomly generated on each playthrough.
What is a Roguelike (or Roguelite)?
500
This fast-paced, upbeat track is the theme for the very first level of this blue hedgehog's first game.
What is Sonic the Hedgehog?
500
This common RPG mechanic is a visual chart of character abilities, often branching out, that allows the player to choose new powers or upgrades as they level up.
What is a Skill Tree?
500
This 2.5D visual style presents the world from a fixed, angled, top-down perspective where parallel lines in the world do not converge.
What is an Isometric perspective?
500
This 1993 Id Software title popularized the first-person shooter genre and pioneered online multiplayer "deathmatches."
What is DOOM?