Quiz Night, Controller Down: 25 Gaming Questions to Split the G4DZ Table

Right, grab a pint, find a table that can fit four people and a bag of crisps, and put the phones face down. This is the G4DZ pub quiz: 25 questions built for UK gaming tables that enjoy a bit of nostalgia, a bit of showing off and at least one argument about the Dreamcast.

It works in a living room, a proper pub or a Discord call. It also works in the comments, where you can tell us exactly which question was unfair and why your mate Dave should have been disqualified.

How to run it

Split into teams of three to five. One point per correct answer. Questions 21 to 25 are deliberately debatable, so award those points by table vote rather than by a strict answer sheet. The host reads the question, gives everyone a moment, then takes the answers. No Googling. No phoning a friend who works at CeX. No pretending you knew the ZX Spectrum answer because your dad had one.

Total is 25 points plus the tie-breaker. If two teams finish level, the tie-breaker decides it. If they are still level after that, let them argue. That is the real quiz.

Round 1: UK gaming memories

1. Which British home computer, launched in 1982, became a bedroom-coding icon and a staple of school playground chat?

2. Which UK developer created Worms, the artillery game that ruined friendships with a single bazooka shot?

3. Which Channel 4 show put video games on telly and made a generation think they could beat the GamesMaster?

4. Which UK high-street chain, founded in 1991, is still a fixture for new and pre-owned games?

5. Which football game, first released in 1992, became a UK favourite for its fast, funny take on the beautiful game?

6. Which UK studio developed GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64?

7. Which British games magazine was famous for cover-mounted cassettes and demos in the 1980s and 1990s? Name any one well-known UK title.

Round 2: Mascots and faces

8. Which blue hedgehog debuted in 1991 and became Sega's answer to Mario?

9. Which moustachioed plumber from Nintendo is arguably the most recognisable gaming mascot on the planet?

10. Which orange bandicoot spun his way onto the original PlayStation?

11. Which purple dragon starred in a Spyro game series that plenty of UK kids got with their first console?

12. Which British archaeologist and tomb-raiding icon first appeared in 1996?

13. Which pink puffball has starred in Nintendo games since the early 1990s?

14. Which egg-shaped hero starred in a series of UK-made puzzle-platform games from Codemasters?

Round 3: Release-year curveballs

15. In which year did Grand Theft Auto V first launch on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360?

16. In which year did The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim first release?

17. In which year did Elden Ring launch?

18. In which year did Red Dead Redemption 2 arrive?

19. In which year did The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild launch alongside the Nintendo Switch?

20. In which year did the original Tomb Raider first release in the UK?

Round 4: Proper arguments

21. Best British-made game ever: Sensible Soccer or GoldenEye 007?

22. Is a 30-hour game too long for adults with jobs, families and a backlog that stares at them like a disappointed parent?

23. Which is worse: a day-one patch that fixes half the game, or an always-online requirement that locks you out when the internet hiccups?

24. Did the Dreamcast deserve better?

25. Fighting games: pad or arcade stick?

Tie-breaker

In which year did the original Sony PlayStation launch in the UK?

Answer sheet

1. ZX Spectrum
2. Team17
3. GamesMaster
4. GAME
5. Sensible Soccer
6. Rare
7. Any one of Crash, Your Sinclair, Zzap!64, Amtix, The One or another well-known UK magazine
8. Sonic the Hedgehog
9. Mario
10. Crash Bandicoot
11. Spyro
12. Lara Croft
13. Kirby
14. Dizzy
15. 2013
16. 2011
17. 2022
18. 2018
19. 2017
20. 1996
21. No house answer. Table vote.
22. No house answer. Table vote.
23. No house answer. Table vote.
24. House answer: yes. But let the table vote anyway.
25. No house answer. Table vote.

Tie-breaker answer: 1995.

The questions that will cause trouble

Questions 21 to 25 are not really about facts. They are about taste, nostalgia and the kind of loyalty that makes someone defend a game they have not played since 2003. That is the point. A quiz should test memory, but a good quiz night should also leave one person saying, at 11pm, that GoldenEye is overrated and another person threatening to leave.

Question 23 is the sneaky one. A patch can fix a broken game, but it can also mean the disc in your hand is not the finished product. Always-online is worse for many UK players, especially when the broadband drops during a boss fight. But a table full of people who have lost an evening to a patch download might not agree.

Question 25 is a trap. Pad players will say arcade sticks are for show-offs. Stick players will say pad players are kidding themselves. Nobody wins. Everybody scores a point in the argument.

Run it, screenshot it, send it to your group chat

If you run this at home, take a photo of the scores and send it in. If you run it in the comments, keep it clean-ish. The G4DZ pub quiz is meant to be played with mates, not settled by a search engine. And if your table ends up arguing about whether the Dreamcast was robbed, congratulations: the quiz worked.