People's Champs Trivia Quiz

Answer: Perfect Dark

Rare, which later went to Microsoft after creating a single game for the GameCube ("Star Fox Adventures") saw major success with titles on the Nintendo 64 and none may have been as popular as "Goldeneye 007" which not only won Game of the Year from "Nintendo Power", but ended up being an easy 'Player's Choice' winner for colossal sales. Rare followed up the first-person shooter game with an original IP, "Perfect Dark", which saw the return of the Golden Gun, a powerful firearm pulled straight from "The Man with the Golden Gun", known to kill foes with one bullet. "Perfect Dark" released in 2000.

Answer: Donkey Kong Country 3

Dixie Kong was one of the two playable characters in "Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!" for the SNES (along with Kiddy Kong) having appeared as the second character in the previous instalment. All three games in the "Donkey Kong Country" side-scrolling platformer series ended up receiving the 'Player's Choice' banner and propelling the "Donkey Kong" brand to the top of Nintendo's charts. Further success would be found with "Donkey Kong 64" in 2000, but no other titles in the console line for the series got the banner, even with several appearing on Gamecube.

Answer: Resident Evil 4

Although many of the Nintendo 'Player's Choice' titles ended up being made by Nintendo's in-house development teams, there were a number of popular third-party developers leaving their mark on the consoles, Capcom being a major one, especially in the Gamecube era.

In addition to the major success that came from the Gamecube version of "Resident Evil 4" (which was later remade for the Wii's motion controls), Capcom also found 'Player's Choice' titles with "Resident Evil (1)" and "Resident Evil Zero", also on Gamecube.

Answer: Animal Crossing

While "SimCity" was on the Super Nintendo, "F-Zero X" and "Mario Kart 64" appeared on the Nintendo 64, and while all three of them received 'Player's Choice' designations during their generations, "Animal Crossing" is the latest of these to be released and the latest to receive that title, having shown up in 2001 as a Nintendo EOD original title.

The "Animal Crossing" brand has since become one of the more beloved lines in the Nintendo family and its first game was not only one of the highest-reviewed games on the console, but one of the fastest selling, pushing more than a million units in the United States alone.

Answer: A Link to the Past

This question here is simply looking for your knowledge of the "Legend of Zelda" timeline since all of the console releases in the series ended up getting their 'Player's Choice' stripes quicker than most others; "A Link to the Past", released on the Super Nintendo back in 1996, was just the earliest of the bunch to get it.

The general aesthetic of "A Link to the Past", pulled from the first NES version, ended up carrying over into handheld titles while the console games in the series quickly shifted to 3D worlds, cementing titles like "Ocarina of Time" and "Majora's Mask" as true classics of the era.

Answer: Hotel Mario

"Super Mario World" was actually one of the first console 'Player's Choice' recipients, being one of the highest-selling games on the Super Nintendo altogether and setting a high bar for standards in the world of 2D platforming titles. "Mario Paint" also, surprisingly, held the banner despite requiring extra peripherals for the SNES. Where the series faltered was "Hotel Mario" which, in partnership with Samsung, was released on the CD-i and never ended up being anything more than a licensed, non-Nintendo release that really wasn't worth the disc it was copied on.

Answer: SNES

The 'Player's Choice' program, meant to help cut down the prices of Nintendo's most popular first and third-party titles, started with releases of cartridges on the Super Nintendo back in 1996, late in the console's run, but continued on through a handful of proceeding generations. To be eligible for the program, games needed to sell at least one million units internationally, meaning that if "Pikmin" sold one million copies in Japan (it actually sold about half of that just in Japan) then it would be sold cheaper by Nintendo worldwide.

The branding also continued onto the Nintendo handhelds starting with Game Boy.

Answer: Kingdom Hearts 2

While Nintendo was the only company to use the 'Player's Choice' banner, Sony tried to do the same with their 'Greatest Hits' line (of which "Kingdom Hearts 1" and "2" were certainly a part) and Microsoft used the 'Platinum Hits' line for Xbox. "Kingdom Hearts 2" can only be incorrect here, as a result, because it was never a Nintendo game. "Luigi's Mansion", one of the Gamecube's launch titles, it likely a gimme as being a 'Player's Choice' title having been one fo the few options for all early adopters of the console, but surprisingly the Gamecube also had major success with licensed content based on films or existing IPs-- "Enter the Matrix" and "X-Men Legends" were surprise hits as were games based on "Harry Potter", "Spongebob Squarepants", and the "LEGO" series.

Answer: After the release of the Nintendo Wii

'Player's Choice' releases ended in 2011 when Wii sales took off and Nintendo rebranded the whole scheme as 'Nintendo Selects'. Despite the new line sounding like a way to package choice cuts of meat, the gimmick was still the same-- high-selling games got severe discounts which only fuelled console sales and made Wii even more of a bestseller.

Interestingly, although "Wii Sports" was packaged with the console in many countries, it became a 'Nintendo Selects' title with 82,000,000 copies being distributed in five years.

Answer: Every "Mario Party" title received 'Player's Choice' designation

Interesting story behind the "Mario Party" series: while most of the games in the series received 'Player's Choice' somewhere down the line, the first game on the Nintendo 64 didn't get the award and following that, "Mario Party 4" and "5 on the Gamecube only got the banner in Europe-- not North America. That being said, the series found enormous success, pioneering waves of party/mini-game-style releases for decades after. Sonic appeared in numerous Sega/Nintendo-made games on the Gamecube, most of which were awarded justly, and "Pokemon" also saw success (though "Pokemon Stadium 2" didn't get the award). "Splatoon", first released on the Wii U, was far too late to get 'Player's Choice', though it did become one of the console's top selling games, selling well over a million copies.