Untitled Animal Video Game Quiz

Answer: Goose

A surprise recent hit, the quirkily named "Untitled Goose Game" is a blissfully entertaining little game, in which you play a mischievous goose which makes life hell for the inhabitants of an idyllic English village, accompanied by the piano music of Debussy. That's really all there is to it, but the charming look and witty gameplay made it a success with both critics and players.

It was developed by a small Australian company named House House and released in 2019.

The title of this quiz is a respectful homage to the name of this game, which itself was meant to be a joke.

Answer: Conker

"Conker's Bad Fur Day" was a Nintendo 64 game, produced by the UK game developer Rare, producers of classics such as Donkey Kong, Banjo-Kazooie and Goldeneye 007. The game sounds cute, but Conker turned out to be a drunken, foul-mouthed, violent little critter, who becomes involved in a series of bizarre quests while trying to get home to his girlfriend after a boozy evening in the pub with his mates. On its release it was not very successful, perhaps because of its "M for Mature" rating, although critics praised its graphics and offbeat humour.

The picture shows some horse chestnuts, also known as "conkers".

Answer: Bandicoot

Crash is a genetically altered eastern barred bandicoot, whose evil creator, Dr Neo Cortex, appears throughout the franchise as the main antagonist. The original 1996 release was a platform game in which Crash has to navigate a series of levels in order to rescue his girlfriend Tawna and defeat Dr Cortex. It became a popular franchise, with several spin-offs, and new games still being produced into the 2020s. Apparently, the game's developers had several Australian mammals in mind for the character, who was at one time going to be named Willy the Wombat.

Answer: Duck Hunt

"Duck Hunt" was first produced in 1984 for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and could only be played if you owned the "NES zapper" accessory. The aim was to shoot ducks that appeared at random on the screen; the more you shot, the higher your score.

The game is perhaps best known for the animated dog which laughs at the hunter when he or she misses all of the ducks, in a particularly annoying way.

Answer: Camels

"Attack of the Mutant Camels" is a fairly basic "shooter" type of game, which requires the player to shoot and kill a series of "90-feet high, neutronium-shielded, laser-spitting death camels", which sounds rather exciting. However, you should bear in mind that this was produced in the early 1980s for the Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit platforms, so the gameplay and visuals aren't exactly sophisticated.

A sequel entitled "Revenge of the Mutant Camels" was released in 1984, in which the player controls one of the camels.

Answer: Lemmings

"Lemmings" became one of the most popular video games of the 1990s. Its simple premise was that the player had to guide the lemmings through a series of increasingly complicated levels, by assigning them various attributes such as digging, climbing, parachuting and exploding. To pass each level a certain number of lemmings had to survive without falling to their deaths - a reference to the myth that real-life lemmings commit suicide by throwing themselves off cliffs.

The game was devised by the Scottish company DMA Design (later Rockstar North), which went on to produce the rather different Grand Theft Auto series.

Answer: Cooper

The first game to feature the eponymous raccoon, "Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus", was released in 2002 on the PlayStation 2 console. In the game, the title character and his associates, Bentley Turtle and Murray Hippo, attempt to retrieve Sly's family heirloom, the "Thievius Raccoonus" book, from a gang known as the "Fiendish Five". It is usually described as a "platform stealth" game, in which the characters are encouraged to evade their enemies rather than engaging them in open warfare.

The picture clue refers to the fact that a "cooper" is a maker of barrels. The other options are manufacturers of arrows (fletcher), wagons (wainwright) and beer (brewster - specifically a female brewer).

Answer: Goat Simulator

"Goat Simulator" was developed by the Swedish company Coffee Stain Studios and first released in April 2014 to be played on Microsoft Windows, with versions for other platforms released over the next few years. The player controls a simple goat character, which moves around an urban environment causing chaos by butting and licking things, in typical goat fashion.

The game started as a joke, but an "alpha" version uploaded to YouTube excited so much interest that the developers produced a releasable version which retained the bizarre features that had made the YouTube version so popular.

Answer: Centipede

"Centipede" first saw light as an arcade game produced by Atari, although versions were later released for numerous other early gaming platforms such as Atari's own 2600 and 8-bit systems, as well as the Apple II and Commodore 64. In the basic version, the player has to shoot at a segmented centipede-like creature which descends from the top of the screen through a random network of mushrooms.

It is important to hit the creature's head, otherwise it divides into two independent creatures. Extremely popular at the time, it has remained an iconic Atari creation.

Answer: Hedgehog

Sonic is of course a hedgehog, albeit a bright blue one with red shoes. He first appeared in 1991 on the Sega Genesis console, and has since become probably Sega's most iconic games character, appearing in numerous games on multiple games consoles. He has also appeared in comic books, animated TV series, and a 2020 Hollywood movie starring Jim Carrey as Dr Robotnik, Sonic's nemesis in several of the video games (also known as Dr Eggman).

The other options are all other creatures with spines. Would Sonic the Tenrec have been as popular? We will never know.