Old School Computer Games Trivia Quiz

Answer: Raiders of the Lost Tomb

Nevada Smith is described in the story to the first episode as being the research assistant to a certain archeology professor, though no mention who that may be. In the first episode of the sequel series, "Arctic Adventure", the name is given as Dr. Jones, strengthening the idea that "Pharaoh's Tomb" and its sequel are based on the then-three "Indiana Jones" movies. This Dr. Jones even hands Nevada a .38 revolver for his next adventure, replacing the spears you use in the first series. Interestingly producer Apogee's hint sheet for "Arctic Adventure" listed Nevada Smith as the student of Indiana Jones.

Designed by George Broussard and developed by Micro F/X Software, "Pharaoh's Tomb" was originally published by Lone Star Micro on November 8, 1990 as "Pharaoh's Pursuit" as a single eighty level game. Broussard took the game to Apogee Software (now 3D Realms) where it was released a little over a month after the Lone Star Micro release date as "Pharaoh's Tomb". The Apogee release divided the game into four episodes; "Raiders of the Lost Tomb", "Pharaoh's Curse", "Temple Terror", and the final episode being "Nevada's Revenge". Each episode was twenty levels long.

An interesting bit of trivia on "Pharaoh's Tomb", Broussard is noted as being possibly the only video game designer to completely design and program a game on their own and then misspell their own name in the credits. Opening screens read "Program Coding and Design by George Broussad".

Answer: False

"Arctic Adventure" saw a number of differences from "Pharaoh's Tomb". Among these changes was that you didn't progress from level to level in a sequential order. Instead, like other games such as the "Commander Keen" series and "Secret Agent" you would exit a level, now called caves instead of chambers, to a central map and be able to pick your levels at will.

Some levels had to be played in order to access other levels, but for the most part it was up to you the order in which you played.

Answer: Battle Chess

It's only supposition that J.K. Rowling could have heard of, or even played, "Battle Chess", but the game does have some similarities to wizard's chess. In 3D mode, when they player selects a piece and where they want it to move, the piece comes to life with its own animations. Queens sashay across the board. Pawns will jog from square to square. Rooks/Castles transform into troll-like monsters and stomp their way to their destination. Each piece has their own unique way of capturing certain pieces, the piece being captured dictating what animation is used. For instance rooks/castles will simply squash pawns, but queens they eat when they capture them.

"Battle Chess" was originally released in 1988.

Answer: Wolfenstein 3D

You play William Joseph "B.J." Blazkowicz, referred to in the manual as the "Allies bad boy of espionage and terminal action seeker". In the original character history from "Wolfenstein 3D Hints Manual", and the "Spear of Destiny Hints Manual", B.J. is the son of Polish immigrants to the United States. Born August 15, 1911, B.J. went on to become a top spy for the allies in World War II and even win the Medal of Honor. More recent games have apparently made B.J. a Jewish-Polish American, something that doesn't seem that big a leap.

Despite generally being regarded as the grandfather of the first-person shooter, "Wolfenstein 3D" was not actually the first game in this genre. 1973 saw the one of the earliest first-person shooter called "Maze War". Between 1973 and the May 5, 1992 DOS release of "Wolfenstein 3D" there would be a number of other games in the genre, including a game from "Wolfenstein 3D" developer id Software called "Hovertank 3D" with an engine (software framework) that was the prototype for the engine used in "Wolfenstein 3D". But what caused "Wolfenstein 3D" to earn the moniker that it established things like fast paced action and technical prowess that came to be hallmarks of the genre. It's also seen as having caused an interest in the genre, possibly due to the use of the shareware distribution theme for the first episode of the game making it faster for more folks to play the game as they didn't always have to purchase the first episode. Though like most shareware games the first episode was just a taste of the entire game which you then had to order from the publishers if you wished to continue and finish the game.

Answer: Commander Keen

The "Commander Keen" franchise is another id Software developed franchise, as is "Doom". B.J. Blazkowicz's background establishes him getting married when he's 40 to a Julia Marie Peterson. They have a son, Arthur Kenneth Blazkowicz who becomes a local talk show host in Milwaukee as Arthur Blaze. Arthur marries Susan Elizabeth McMichaels and together they have three children, two boys and a daughter. The younger son, named after his grandfather, goes by the name Billy Blaze. And according to the "Commander Keen" series, when Billy dons his older brother's football helmet he takes on his alter ego of Commander Keen. Neither of Billy's siblings are never officially named.

Interestingly id Software's other popular franchise, "Doom", has the player character of Doomguy also related to B.J. Blazkowicz. Depending on the source, Doomguy is either the son or grandson of Billy Blaze.

Answer: Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket

The name Bean-with-Bacon is a reference to an old George Carlin comedy skit. The joke was that instead of using deodorant one could stick bay leaves under their arms and end up smelling like soup. Bean with Bacon was supposed to be a type of soup in the skit.

Billy Blaze, aka Commander Keen, is an eight year old boy genius and an inventor. The Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket was built using things he found around the house. In "Marooned on Mars", the very first episode of the Invasion of the Vorticans storyline (the first storyline of the series), the plot of the game is to recover four components of the Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket. These are the manual flight controller (a joystick from his brother's game system), the ship's electrical power source (his mom's car battery), the ion propulsion unit (his mom's vacuum cleaner, which he reworked), and the ship's fuel source (a bottle of everclear he took from his father's liquor cabinet). In addition to these unlikely spaceship items, Billy Blaze used old soup cans (most likely bean with bacon soup), plastic tubing, rubber cement, and other household items to build the spaceship. Despite the haphazard nature of the items used, the ship is actually shown to be well built.

Answer: SimCity

The idea from "SimCity" came to designer Will Wright while he was working on another game called "Raid on Bungeling Bay". Wright found that he had more fun playing with the level editor for the game than the actual game. Wright's interest in urban planning combined with the level editor and the influences of Polish sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem and MIT professor Jay Wright Forrester would eventually result in the creation of the city building and management game "SimCity".

"SimCity" would be a financial success for publisher Maxis with a million copies sold by the end of 1992 and close to another million sold by the end of the decade. From 1993 to 1999 it was ranked as the 9th best video game in the US alone, a spot its sequel "SimCity 2000" would also hold during the same time period. In addition to numerous sequels, including the 2013 reboot also named "SimCity", "SimCity" spawned a number of spinoffs. The most successful of these sequels being "The Sims", which has become a franchise in its own right.

Answer: Hydrofoil

"PHM Pegasus" was developed by Lucasfilm Games (which became LucasArts in 1990) and published by Electronic Arts. Its titular craft, the PHM Pegasus is based on the PHM-1 USS Pegasus, lead ship in the Pegasus-class. In US Navy nomenclature, PHM stood for Patrol Combatant-Missile (Hydrofoil). USS Pegasus was commission in 1977 and decommissioned in 1993. According to the website NavSource the Pegasus was capable of hull born speeds of 11 knots (12.65 mph or 20.37 kph), but could reach speeds of 40+ knots (46.03+ mph or 74.08+ kph) when foil born. Hydrofoils use a foil, a wing-like structure, mounted to the hull on struts to increase their speed and fuel efficiency. As the boat gains speed with the foil in the water, the foil lifts the boat and results in a decrease in drag and an increase in speed.

Though the game had eight missions when first released, a later release for IBM and IBM-compatible computers added another ten mission. The IBM version of the game includes a mission in which you find yourself having fallen through a time warp to May 27, 1941. In this mission your goal is to sink the German battleship Bismarck.

Answer: Sopwith

"Sopwith" originally came out in 1984. In the game you fly a WWI era biplane, most likely a Sopwith biplane given the name of the game. No mention if it's the famed Sopwith Camel, a Sopwith Pup, a Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter, or some other Sopwith biplane from WWI. Given the graphics of the time there's very little detail to the plane which might have been used to distinguish which type of Sopwith it is supposed to be. Aside reversed colors, enemy aircraft look exactly the same as yours, though their probably supposed to be German Fokkers given their body color.

Created by David L. Clark for the Canadian company BMB Compuscience, "Sopwith" was followed in 1986 by a sequel. "Sopwith II", technically version 2.0 of "Sopwith" took the original game and added a number of changes to it. Among these were cows as flocks of birds the player has to dodge, smarter AI, and multiplayer mode.

Answer: Monster Bash

In "Monster Bash", developed and published by Apogee Software, you play as Johnny Dash, a ten year old boy in white with blue polka dot footie pajamas and a red ball cap. Armed with your trusty slingshot and an endless supply of stones, you most battle zombies, witches, skeletons, buzzards, invisible men, mosquitoes the size of a VW Bug, devils, and a number of other monsters in order to stop the evil Count Chuck's plans of transforming puppies and kittens into a hideous army of nightmarish creatures. Along th way you collect a number of limited use power ups; triple shot stones, boulders, sunburst, and homing rockets. Each power up has it's own special features which make them better in certain circumstances than others.

In 1992 rival company EpicMega Games poked fun at the Commander Keen franchise in their game "Jill of the Jungle". In the Freeware version of the game a supposedly 13 year old Billy Blaze tells the press he's retiring because he can't compete with the heroes of Epic, with Jill of the Jungle declining to comment on the announcement. Though id Software had developed the Commander Keen franchise, Apogee Software had published five of the episodes (the three episodes of 1990's "Invasion of the Vorticans" series and the two episodes of 1991's "Goodbye, Galaxy" series). When "Monster Bash" came out in 1993 Apogee referenced the comments in "Jill of the Jungle". In the story for the first episode, when Johnny Dash learns about what is happening to the pets he demands to know if this is the work of Jill of the Jungle. And if so he plans to beat her up.

Answer: Paganitzu

1991's "Paganitzu" was the sequel to 1990's "Chagunitzu". The story in "Paganitzu" has the action taking place three years after the event of the first game, these events supposedly made the player character, Alabama "Al" Smith, rich and famous at the time but since then his name has become relegated to such tabloid stories as him giving birth to twins. Al sets out to find the temple Paganitzu.

Unlike Nevada Smith's adventures in both "Pharaoh's Tomb" and "Artic Adventure", "Paganitzu" is purely about solving puzzles. Al has no weapons with which to defend himself from the creatures of the tomb, so you have to figure out each puzzle in each room. Some puzzles need you to trap, and thus kill, creatures. Others have you block creatures so they can't attack you. And other's still don't involve creatures at all. In each room there are a number of keys to collect so you can advance to the next room.

Two of the three episodes of "Paganitzu" each sound like their plays on '80s action-adventure romantic comedies starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito. Romancing the Rose appears to play off "Romancing the Stone" while Jewel of the Yucatan does the same with "Jewel of the Nile".

Answer: Dr. Proton

Dr. Proton plans to take over the world with an army of something called Techbots. Most Techbots look to be pure machine while at least one type looks to a cross between machine and some organic creature. One of the Techbot types looks like it took inspiration from the Robocop movies. However, one of the most memorable Techbots was clearly inspired by the Energizer Bunny and is a purple bunny beating a drum.

After "Duke Nukem" was released Apogee Software learned that the cartoon series "Captain Planet and the Planeteers" had a villain character named Duke Nukem. As the cartoon premiered in 1990 Apogee was concerned that DIC Enterprises, then the production company of the cartoon, and distributor Turner Program Services might sue for copyright infringement. The name of the game was therefore changed to Duke Nukum beginning with version 2.0 to avoid legal actions. However, when the sequel game was being developed it was discovered that the Duke Nukem name had not been trademarked and Apogee immediately copyrighted the name, returning the Duke Nukem spelling to all future releases of the original game and all sequels.

Answer: False

"Hocus Pocus" was one of those games where the title of the game was also the name of the player character. Hocus Pocus set out on a quest set forth by the head of the Council of Wizards, an elderly wizard named Terexin, to defeat a series of tests. These tests, once passed, would earn Hocus Pocus a seat on the Council of Wizards and the right to marry his love Popopa.

As Hocus Pocus you're armed only with an infinite lightning spell. Of course like various other games you could find power ups on the various levels in the form of potion bottles. One power up would allow you super jump abilities, another rapid fire, another so called laser shots (really just three fire balls that pass through everything), and another teleported you from one place to another. The first two would last so many seconds while laser shot was good for three shots and more powerful than your lightning bolt and teleport was a single use item. There might also be a lightning bolt power up that would allow you to more rapidly fire regular lightning bolts in a level (unlike rapid shot that allowed you to hold down the fire button for a continuous stream of lightning bolts).

Answer: Star Wars: X-Wing

As amazing as it may sound, prior to "Star Wars: X-Wing" no "Star Wars" game was released by LucasArts (Lucasfilm Games prior to 1990). LucasArts had produced games for other Lucasfilm movie franchises, such as Indiana Jones, but were unable to produce a Star Wars game as the license for the franchise lay elsewhere. Prior to 1993 all "Star Wars" games were produced by other companies such as Broderbund, Parker Brothers, Capcom, etc.

In 1992 the license rights to Star Wars games reverted to LucasArts. Totally Games, which had worked with LucasArts on such LucasArts games as "Battlehawks 1942" and "Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe", developed "Star Wars: X-Wing".

Answer: Doom

id Software had developed 1992's "Wolfenstein 3D", which had been published by Apogee Software. Following the release of "Wolfenstein 3D" and sequel/prequel game "Spear of Destiny" the team at id began developing a new first-person game that was soon named "Doom". The name of the game came from a line in the movie "The Color of Money" while inspiration for it came from Dungeons & Dragons campaigns and the movies "Evil Dead 2" and "Aliens".

In the original "Doom" you played as an unnamed space marine whose appearance in the HUD bears a striking resemblance to B.J. Blazkowicz from "Wolfenstein 3D". Although there were other names fans would give the character, the most popular was Doomguy. According to the 2005 game "Doom RPG" the character's name is William Joseph Blazkowicz, the same name as both B.J. Blazkowicz and the real name of Commander Keen. However, the 2010 game "Doom II RPG" lists the character name as Stan Blazkowicz. It is possible both characters are related, or one is a clone of the other, and has been established that they are descended from B.J. Blazkowicz, who in turn has been established as Commander Keen's grandfather.

Answer: True

In the 1990's fighting games were all the rage and in 1994 EpicMega Games released a slightly different fighting game from most in the form of "One Must Fall 2097" Set in the then far future of 2097, you operate a four story tall Human Assisted Robot, or HAR. Each HAR was given a bit of a background that established its original date of creation and possibly its original purpose. The Jaguar, for instance, was introduced in 2070 as a security unit (Jaguar pilots are said to be hired by companies as bodyguards). The Pyros was introduced 2076 to be used for space station design. And the 2083 Flail was meant as a construction unit.

Eventually HARs were turned into gladiatorial robots. You play as an HAR pilot, entering the games various tournaments and earning money with which to upgrade your HAR, buy a new HAR, or improve your own skills. As with most fighting games, each HAR has its own set of special moves for you to learn and, hopefully, master.

Answer: Master Cain

When playing the first episode of Apogee Software's 1993 game "Bio Menace" you are lead to believe that you're principle antagonist is going to be Dr. Mangle. But after you defeat Dr. Mangle he reveals that he himself has been manipulated by the evil Master Cain. The next two episodes deal with Snake's search for Master Cain. Each episode features its own main boss for snake to defeat, as one might expect of most games of this type.

The second episode of "Bio Menace" has a couple of interesting cameo appearances. First, one level has one of the hostages Snake has to rescue as Commander Keen. Apogee had published the first five episodes of the Commander Keen franchise back in 1990 and 1991 and Apogee made use of the Keen engine in "Bio Menace", so it's little surprise Billy Blaze, aka Commander Keen, might make a cameo appearance in the game. On another level you can enter a secret area where you supposedly enter the Apogee and id Software offices and run into some of the programmers for "Bio Menace". Around these "offices" you see references to both the "Commander Keen" franchise and the "Duke Nukem" franchise, both of which Apogee published.

Answer: Carmen Sandiego

The Carmen Sandiego franchise of computer games began in 1985 with Borderbund's "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?". Prior to 1995 the games tended to ask the question "Where in _____ is Carmen Sandiego"?", with the blank being the theme of that particular game. For example in my favorite game of the franchise, "Where in time is Carmen Sandiego?", the crimes committed by Carmen and V.I.L.E. all took place in the past and you had to travel to different points in history to track them down and recover whatever was stolen.

The video game franchise was so popular it spawned the popular PBS children's gameshow "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" starring Gregg Lee as host and Lynne Thigpen as the Chief of the Acme Detective Agency. It would also be noted for the music of a capella group Rockapella, who also provided comic relief on the show. The TV show would then affect the video game franchise as Thigpen would record videos as the Chief for reboots of some of the earlier games of the franchise.

Answer: Halloween

Originally called "Halloween Harry" when it was released in October 1993, the game was renamed "Alien Carnage" when the third version was released in November 1994. The reason for the name change was that the name "Halloween Harry", the name of the player character, largely limited sales of the game most of the year as folks would view it as being a Halloween game. Aside from a name change, the only other difference to the game was that the first and third episodes were swapped while the second and fourth episodes remained the same. As Apogee tended to use an episodic shareware model wherein the player could get the first episode of a game for little or no money then have to pay to get the rest of the game, this meant that anyone who already had the first episode when the game was "Halloween Harry" would effectively get half the game for little or no money if they then got "Alien Carnage"

"Halloween Harry/Alien Carnage" was developed by the Australian company Interactive Binary Illusions and Subzero Software and was designed by John Passfield, Robert Crane, and Steven Stamatiadis. For Passfield, this was actually Halloween Harry's second game. Passfield had created the first "Halloween Harry", released in 1985, for a company called Honeysoft Publishing Company. Designed for the Australian Microbee computer system, the original "Halloween Harry" was inspired by the movie "Ghostbusters" and introduced Halloween Harry as a 21st century ghost hunter.

Answer: True

There were five different human enemies in 1992's "Secret Agent", the lowly guard, the sentry, the ninja, the ninja master, and the high ranking thug. The guard, dressed all in white, was slow and carried a knife. The red dressed sentry carried some spear-like weapon.

The ninja was swinging a pair of nunchucks and was the fastest of the human enemies; fittingly the ninja was dressed all in black. The ninja master was clad from head to toe in blue and carried a gun with which to attack you from a distance. And thug, the supposedly deadliest of the human enemies, was dressed in black and carried a gun just like the ninja master.

Although as you went up from guard to thug the enemies were supposed to get tougher, in reality from sentry to thug when you shot them they would transform into the human enemy immediately below. That is a thug became a ninja master. Ninja master became a ninja. Ninja became a sentry. And a sentry became a guard. Guards when shot turned into tombstones, which you could shot for a hundred points or walk into for a thousand points.