Love, Virtually Trivia Quiz

Answer: Five

Popuri, Ann, Karen, Maria, and Elli are all up for grabs in "Harvest Moon 64" in which you need to manage a farm and earn money to keep yourself afloat. Finding your wife is an inevitability though. Finding a wife leads you to a bigger house, a happier life, and a child. To develop a relationship, you need to appeal to the girls of town. Giving Maria bugs (something she enjoys), for example, will make her like you quicker.

When you're married, your wife will often pick up a chore around the house to do. Popuri, for example, will gather eggs from the chickens in your coop.

Answer: Hot Date

Although the original "Sims" game was far from perfection, the original game and its expansions all made perfect sense. One-by-one, and more consistently then natural, expansions hot into stores from "Livin' Large" to "House Party" to "Hot Date" to "Vacation" to "Unleashed" to "Superstar" to "Makin' Magic" and then back again. "Hot Date" is the clincher here. "Sims" could fall in love, by all means, but dating was a no-no. With "Hot Date", Sims could go downtown on outings, buy flowers, gifts, and keepsakes, and date in one of many pre-made spots or a location of the player's creation from nightclubs to restaurants to boutiques. To influence a relationship without Sim free will (obviously a toggled option), you need to talk to other Sims and reward them when necessary. Later versions of the game would improve upon this mechanic.

Answer: Super Princess Peach

A bit of role-reversal, but what the heck, right? In the Nintendo DS game "Super Princess Peach", Mario has been kidnapped by Bowser and it's her turn to travel throughout the worlds to save him. Maybe this'll take her mind off cake and make her a little more grateful...
While the game was a popular in-house title, it failed to make waves soon after and it slid by with fewer people noticing it than expected.
Throughout the Mario series, the titular hero has had a penchant for saving the Princess from certain danger, rain or shine, fire or ice. Ever since the original "Donkey Kong" games when Jumpman needed to save Pauline from the evil simian, it's been clear that the two were meant for each other.

Answer: A Boy and His Blob

Released in 2009, nearly twenty years after the original "Boy and His Blob" game (on the NES), "A Boy and His Blob" for Wii showed the adventures of a small boy who discovers that a blob has come crashing down from the ubiquitous Planet Blobolonia. Using Jellybeans, 'Boy' can transform the blob into amazing tools he can use to navigate dangerous platforming levels (ie. a cannon, a ladder, a balloon, etc.). Perhaps the most heartwarming parts of the game occur when Boy gives the blob a hug, and the two smile in their embrace. This is perhaps the only video game I can't get frustrated in...even when I'm losing.

It's just that cute.

Answer: Elika

As the Prince rids the land of all evil, Elika realizes she must sacrifice herself in order to reclaim the land for her people. The Prince won't have this though. After Elika commits suicide to finish the ritual, the Prince realizes his love and brings back the darkness to have her by his side. Selfish? Well, the story continued in downloadable content for the game ("Epilogue"). Players would later continue the story in "Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands" in 2010.

Although Elika was important to the story of the game, she was also integral to gameplay. Every time the Prince fell to near-certain doom, she would fly over and lift him up, saving him from death.

Answer: Weighted Companion Cube

Maybe your only glimmer of hope at the end of that tunnel that is the Aperture Science Enrichment Center, the Weighted Companion Cube appears later in the game. Denoted by a heart on each of its six sides, it's a symbol of friendship in the game unmatched by anything. Using the cube and your portal gun, you can access new areas and reach the end of the level for success and the inevitability (or is it?) of cake and escape.

At the end of one stage however, GLaDOS forces you to 'euthanize' your beloved Companion Cube to advance in one of the more heart-breaking scenes of the game (not really).

After completion of the game, you'll discover that maybe everything ended up well for the one true friend you had during your stay.

Answer: To find his wife

In one of the most popular survival horror games ever released (at least on the PlayStation 2), "Silent Hill 2" follows James Sunderland who has arrived in Silent Hill to find his deceased wife. Having been summoned to the wretched locale by a letter from his true love, he fights his internal horrors and struggles with the psychological nightmare that is the town.

Other games in the series follow similar stories. "Silent Hill: Shattered Memories" (Wii) follows Harry Mason as he searches for his daughter, Cheryl, in the town.

It's up to the player's actions to determine whether or not the character finds what they're looking for in the town though...

Answer: Ensure that adequate water is provided

Created by Blue Fang Games for the PC (in 2001), "Zoo Tycoon" took the moderately-popular Tycoon fad and pushed it into another commercial goldmine. The aim of the game, clearly, is to capitalize off a zoo. Despite the simple concept, a lot of factors go into the game from keeping guests happy to setting up animal enclosures. Animals will either love you or hate you depending on your decisions though. An animal can love their enclosure if they have a specific amount of water, very specific regional foliage, and a suitable sleeping quarters.

In addition, zookeepers must regularly clean the enclosure. If the animals love their habitats, the guests will love the zoo. If the guests love the zoo, then you'll be successful. The game spawned sequels on both the PC and the Nintendo DS.

Answer: Mass Effect

"Mass Effect", released in 2007 by BioWare, took criticism indeed. After its release, the media picked up on the relationships which could be built by the player character, Commander Shepard, between himself and one of two female characters (one of which was human and one of which was an alien). Nonetheless, the inclusion of an intimate moment spurred talks of video game censorship and gave designers food for thought. With Rockstar Games pushing the envelope around the same time with the 'Hot Coffee' mod for "Grant Theft Auto: San Andreas", "Mass Effect" appeared on the news and generated a fair bit of buzz. Suffice to say, it was one of the more popular franchises to emerge from the console; the sequel was released in 2010.

Answer: Final Fantasy X

In perhaps one of the more heart-breaking stories depicted on the PlayStation 2, Tidus and Yuna fall in love during the course of Square-Enix's "Final Fantasy X". As they move through Spira to fight Sin, the game ends as Yuna discovers that Tidus has been a spirit for the entire duration of the game, and they can never actually be together. Yuna spends the game's sequel, "Final Fantasy X-2", searching for Spheres to recover Tidus in hopes that they may one day be reunited.