Early Games of the Nintendo Entertainment System Quiz

Answer: Clu Clu Land

This 1985 game was one of the initial releases for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The title of the game is adopted from a Japanese phrase which means "around and around". In the game Bubbles is a balloonfish who is trying to recover a set of gold ingots that have been stolen. She finds them in various on-screen mazes. The collected ingots will usually form a recognizable shape.

Answer: Kung-Fu Master

Irem Software Engineering designed this 1985 game. Thomas is the titular Kung-Fu Master who travels through the five levels of the Devil's Temple encountering and fighting many opponents along the way. Thomas is capable of several moves including punching, kicking, jumping, and crouching. A player can win one extra life beyond the original by scoring 50,000 points in the game.

Answer: Golf

"Golf" includes a full 18 holes of play. Your clothing colors depend on if you are player one (red/blue) or player two (white/black). Player one has been retroactively identified as Mario. "Golf" was the first golf video game to include a power and accuracy bar that is common in modern golf video games.
Kenji Miki and Shigeru Miyamoto designed this 1985 game.

Answer: 10-Yard Fight

Gunpei Yokoi was a designer for this 1985 video game. On offense, you played the role of the quarterback and could run with the ball, lob the ball to a running back or launch a bomb for your wide receiver. On defense, you controlled one or two players while the computer handled the rest. You could play against the computer or against your pal. For those who don't know, in football the team attempts to move the ball forward at least 10-yards in four tries.

Answer: Hogan's Alley

Shigeru Miyamoto designed this 1985 game, which also uses the NES Zapper gun. Set in a target facility you, the player, are faced with trios of cardboard cutouts. The premise is simple. Fire on the cutouts that look like gangsters and not on the ones that look like innocent civilians. In a bonus level, you fire instead at tin cans on a wall.

Answer: Excitebike

Shigeru Miyamoto designed this 1985 game. In this game, your character was atop a motorcycle. The way that the motorcycle was shown to accelerate was later used in "Super Mario Bros." to show Mario or Luigi begin at a walking pace before moving into a run.

In "Excitebike" itself you are trying to finish in third place or higher in a motocross race in order to make the championship heat. The buttons on the controller provide acceleration and a special "turbo boost" that can be used for short intervals.

Answer: Gyromite

Nintendo R&D1 designed this 1985 game. The Robotic Operating Buddy (R.O.B.) was only used for "Gyromite" and "Stack-Up". In "Gyromite", the equipment included a pair of trays and spinning gyros that were held in the robot's hands. The way the gyros landed would cause certain buttons to be punched on the player two controller.

The game is described as a "puzzle platformer" where you are trying to retrieve several sticks of dynamite.

Answer: Baseball

Like many other sports games with head to head competition, you could play against the computer or another human character. Like traditional baseball, the team which scores more runs wins. Each player has the choice of six teams, who have different colored uniforms but otherwise are all alike. Several million copies of this game were sold. Shigeru Miyamoto designed this 1985 game.

Answer: Duck Hunt

"Duck Hunt" was a 1985 game designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Hiroji Kiyotake. This game uses the NES Zapper gun and for several years was packed with the NES itself. The laughing dog also helps flush out the game and retrieves any ducks you hit. As you progress through various levels, the ducks become harder to hit.

The game had good graphics for the time and was generally described as being entertaining in short spurts.

Answer: Ice Climbers

A giant condor has stolen the vegetables and placed them on 32 different ice-covered mountains. Popo (in blue) and Nana (in pink) each have wooden mallet that assists in climbing as well as smashing enemies. The player encounters several different types of ice blocks which require different solutions. Likewise there are several different types of opponents faced in addition to the condor. Nintendo R&D1 developed this 1985 game.