Chasing It Down Trivia Quiz

Answer: Super Mario 64

If you've played through the Nintendo 64 launch title "Super Mario 64" you may remember Mips, a small, yellow bunny with a wise-guy attitude hippity-hopping through the flooded basements of Princess Peach's castle. If you happen to snag the bunny while he hops around (the best way being with a long dive jump) you'll receive a star for your efforts-- one of many hidden in the castle without actually jumping through a portrait. You can catch Mips again, later on, after you start heading upward to the towers. Tired of chasing that rabbit around? I'm sure we could set you up in a race with Koopa the Quick...

Answer: OrangSprint

In "Donkey Kong 64", all five playable Kong members are able to unlock new abilities throughout the game by speaking to Cranky Kong in his lab. By taking a tonic, they receive new powers; Lanky's first is the OrangStand, allowing him to walk on his hands when the player hits Z and B.

The third is the OrangSprint which only works when Lanky enters a barrel bearing his face. When Lanky reaches a point in the game's fifth stage, Fungi Forest, he'll need to use this last ability to beat a speedy jackrabbit. Trust me-- it's not the easiest race.

As always, completion of the task results in another banana returned to the Kong stash. Only two hundred more to go!

Answer: Captain Falcon

Back before Captain Falcon would punch people out on the battlefield he would be in his space-age car, racing across mind-bending courses, defying gravity, and taking on too many G-forces...in space...in "F-Zero" and "F-Zero X" (and "GX"). Reaching hundreds of miles per hour...in space...the game wasn't your typical Nintendo racer; much of the time you needed to be careful not to fly off the track, destroy your vehicle (and explode with it), or place last. Your Golden Fox implies you're Dr. Stewart and the body and grip of that car are way too subpar. You don't stand a chance of catching up.

Answer: Power pellet

Originally a massively-popular arcade game in the 1980s, "Pac-Man" had a simple concept-- eat all the dots onscreen, survive ghoulish encounters, and keep going, building up a score until you're caught and run out of lives. Although the ghosts (Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde) got more difficult to beat in later levels, Pac-Man could always be relied on to get the job done and eat them up if he devoured one of the power pellets in the corners of the screen.

The same mechanic appeared in "Ms. Pac-Man". Amazing that someone who can eat that much can retain their stamina, eh?

Answer: A clock

TT could be found in the lobby for each of the game's five worlds (from the Dino Domain all the way to Future Fun Land) and by honking at him (or hitting him in your vehicle) you could activate time trial mode; a mode in which you try to top your times on different tracks. If you happen to reach a certain benchmark time, you'll activate TT's ghost which, when beaten, would award you with a completion on your track list. If you could beat TT in every non-boss/non-special track (there were twenty in all) you would be able to unlock the clock as the tenth and final racer of the game.

But he's not easy to beat. TT is speedy and great with handling and acceleration. Definitely a good player.

Answer: Katamari Damacy

"Katamari Damacy" was the first game in the odd "Katamari" series, the primary objective of which is to roll a ball around a map until it eats up everything in sight and becomes large enough to shoot into the cosmos to become a star. That's right, the King of All Cosmos has sent you, his little prince, to the Earth to collect everything you can and make the stars, planets, and constellations.

Many of the later games in the series follow the same theme. Sometimes, especially when on a downslope, the katamari can get away on you, crashing into something larger than it at the bottom. Should this happen, you may lose some of the contents.

It takes a quick roll to pick them back up.

Answer: Cheryl

Created by Climax Entertainment (who also made the earlier "Silent Hill: Origins"), "Shattered Memories" was a reimagining of the first game in this survival horror series. In this one, the player becomes Harry Mason, a man who, along with his daughter, crashes his car in the snowy town of Silent Hill.

His daughter goes missing and much of the game is spent not only searching for her, running through the various locations in town, but running from monsters with no chance of defeating them until reality resumes its course.

The game received better praise than usual for a later-era "Silent Hill" title. It was originally only released on the Wii.

Answer: Canary Mary

In Glitter Gulch Mine, early on in "Banjo-Tooie", Canary Mary must have been suffering from fumes or something. By the time you reach the game's final major level, Cloud Cuckooland, the character has eaten her Wheaties to become one of the most difficult N64 races in terms of platform gaming.

In both, you hop into a cart and need to hand-crank your way down the track to claim your Jiggy prize at the end. And then eventually you can move on to Gruntilda, the game's final boss, and beat her in one go because nothing is quite as cruel as that darn canary.

Answer: Cradle

In this stage of the game, Bond has to deactivate a computer, shoot out some cameras, and finally chase that 00-traitor Alec Trevelyan across the level and back to finish the story once and for all. At the end very end of the level, Alec will drop to the bottom of the antenna for a final fight and all it'll take is one well-placed karate chop to the face before he falls off to his death and Bond can latch onto his helicopter ride to safety. Every moment before this, however, is one long rush around the metal framework of the cradle.

The 2010 remake of the game kind of botched the ending; they set it in Nigeria, not Cuba, and ended it with a shoot-out, Wild West style. Not the same.

Answer: Enter the Matrix

"Enter the Matrix" wasn't the perfect game but with the success of the "Matrix" series as a whole, it was an adequate companion. You took on the role of either Ghost or Niobe, both of whom appeared in the latter two films in the series, as you completed missions in and out of the matrix. During several of these, you would be pursued by agents, speedy enemies with the ability to dodge virtually anything. Turning around to survey your distance was a death with; you literally had to keep running and hoping you didn't happen to collide with a dead end.

The game was thought by many to be unfinished and seemed to be un-fleshed-out. Lots of chases though.