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QUIZ

Button Pushers

Test your knowledge of videogaming

By Sean Monkman

Back in the day, as they say, two glowing lines and a dot on a TV screen were enough to amaze videogamers. (No, really — that's Pong, in its entirety.) My, how times have changed. With innovations built upon a road of sore thumbs and red eyes, the videogame industry's grosses now rival those of Hollywood's movie machine. Those glowing lines have become tennis players rendered right down to individual beads of sweat; the dot is a ball fashioned from millions of polygons. On November 22, a taste of the future arrived with Microsoft's Xbox 360, first of the gaming world's newest generation of home consoles.

1. Pong ushered in the era of arcade games in 1972, when a prototype machine was installed in a California tavern. Gaming legend has it that the bartender telephoned Pong’s maker soon after it debuted, complaining of what problem?
	The machine was cutting in to his beer sales
	Patrons were losing interest in the tavern’s mechanical bull
	He thought the machine was broken, when it was actually overflowing with quarters
	Drunk players were too confused to follow its rules
	The game was attracting unsavoury types with feathered hair and jean jackets

2. Canada is a hotbed of game design, most notably via the Vancouver studio of industry leader Electronic Arts. Which of these was not made in this country?
	The Unreal series
	Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
	Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
	The Need For Speed series
	Celine vs. Predator

3. What unlikely path led the co-founders of Edmonton videogame outfit Bioware to the launch of their company?
	They were ex-Cirque du Soleil acrobats programming stage-direction software
	They were bobsled drivers developing a virtual reality bobsled simulator
	They were draftsmen designing agricultural equipment
	They were doctors intending to form a 3-D medical imaging company
	They were motion-capture models for Nintendo characters Mario and Luigi

4. The inclusion of gruesome decapitation and mutilation “fatalities” in what popular fighting game helped inspire the 1994 formation of the gaming industry’s self-regulating Entertainment Software Ratings Board?
	Karate Champ
	Street Fighter
	Double Dragon
	Mortal Kombat
	Hockey Dad

5. What song did not appear on Pac-Man Fever, the 1982 novelty album — every track was about a different arcade game — by radio jingoists Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia?
	Pac-Man Fever
	Froggy's Lament
	Ode to a Centipede
	Do the Donkey Kong
	The Tetris Tango

6. The $125-million US launch-date sales of what 2004 game set an all-time record for the largest first-day gross of any entertainment product?
	Halo 2
	Madden 2004
	Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
	Spider-Man: The Movie 2
	Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge

7. What is peculiar about the rhythm action game Dance Dance Revolution in Norway?
	It has two pads for the left foot
	There are no licensed songs, so karaoke singers provide the music
	It has been banned for causing an increase in ankle sprains
	It has been officially registered as a sport
	Norwegians are rhythmically challenged, so the game runs at one quarter the speed that it does elsewhere

8. What is the world’s all-time best-selling videogame system, with more than 100 million units sold?
	Playstation 2
	Xbox
	Atari 2600
	Mattel Intellivision
	Nintendo Gameboy

9. At what rate were videogames purchased in Canada in 2004?
	29 sales per second
	29 sales per minute
	29 sales per hour
	29 sales per family
	There were only 29 sales last year

10. Fill in the blanks: Three of the 10 top-selling games in Canada in 2004 were ______ titles; none of the 20 top-selling games in the United States were. On the other hand, three of the 10 top-selling games in United States in 2004 were ______ titles; none of the 20 top-selling games in the Canada were.
	Star Wars, Sims
	hockey, football
	dogsled racing, NASCAR
	euchre, poker
	curling, skateboarding