The Best Retro Gaming Quizzes for Old-School Players

If you can still hear the click of a cartridge sliding into a slot, the whir of a memory card saving, or the exact eight notes of a coin grab — this list is for you. We're not doing "best video games of all time" here. This is the cartridge-and-CRT corner: the NES golden age, 16-bit console wars, Game Boy on long car rides, and the early days when 3D was new and terrifying. Five quizzes for people who played the originals.

Mario: Where It All Started

You can't talk retro gaming without the plumber. The 8-bit Super Mario Bros. didn't just sell the NES — it more or less rescued the entire console industry after the 1983 crash. From World 1-1 to the warp zones to the brutal water levels of Super Mario Bros. 3, the original run defined what a platformer could be.

Our Mario & Nintendo quiz covers the classic era and the company behind it — the obscure power-ups, the level names, the lore most people have absorbed without realizing it. If you grew up blowing into cartridges, this is your home turf. Think you remember every warp pipe? Test yourself →

The original Super Mario Bros. shipped on a cartridge with only 40KB of data — smaller than a single modern emoji-laden text thread. Every level, enemy, and that immortal theme fit in less space than this blog post.

The Console That Built an Empire

Beyond Mario, Nintendo's hardware itself is a retro-gaming religion. The NES, the SNES, the Game Boy, the N64 with its three-pronged alien controller — each one is a museum of design decisions that shaped everything after. Our Nintendo quiz goes broad across the whole classic catalog: the hardware launches, the mascots, the legendary first-party studios, and the cartridge-era weirdness like the Power Glove and R.O.B. the Robot. For anyone who can date their childhood by which console was under the TV, this one hits hard. Prove your loyalty →

Zelda: The Hardest Lore Test on the List

The Legend of Zelda started in 1986 as a gold cartridge with a battery-backed save — a small miracle at the time — and grew into one of gaming's deepest universes. A Link to the Past on the SNES and Ocarina of Time on the N64 are routinely named among the greatest games ever made, and for good reason.

Our Zelda Deep Dive quiz is, fair warning, the toughest entry here. It digs into dungeon orders, item names, the famously convoluted timeline, and the deep cuts that separate the casual fan from the person who has opinions about the Triforce split. Casual players should buckle up. Are you a true Hylian? →

Sonic and the 16-Bit Console War

For a few glorious years in the early 90s, the most important rivalry in entertainment was Nintendo versus Sega — and Sega's whole pitch was speed. Sonic the Hedgehog was the attitude-soaked answer to Mario's wholesome charm, all loop-de-loops and "blast processing" marketing. The Genesis era is peak retro: chunky 16-bit sprites, that crunchy FM-synth soundtrack, and a mascot built entirely to be cooler than the competition.

Our Sonic quiz covers the Genesis classics and the wider Blue Blur history — Green Hill Zone, the Chaos Emeralds, Dr. Robotnik before he was Eggman. If you picked a side in the playground console wars, this is your nostalgia. Gotta go fast →

Pokémon: The 151 That Started a Phenomenon

Few things scream "retro" quite like trying to recall the original 151 from a tiny Game Boy screen. Pokémon Red & Blue turned a handheld with a four-shade green display into a global obsession, complete with schoolyard trading, the MissingNo. glitch, and the eternal Charmander-versus-Squirtle debate.

Our Pokémon quiz leans into that classic-era knowledge: type matchups, evolution lines, gym leaders, and the Kanto deep cuts. It's a nostalgia bomb for anyone who spent recess arguing about whether a Magikarp was worth the bus fare. Catch 'em all over again →

Honorable Mentions for the True Old-School Crowd

Two more for the cartridge faithful. Metroid invented the "explore, get lost, find the upgrade, backtrack" formula that an entire genre is now named after — and the 1986 reveal that Samus was a woman is still one of gaming's greatest twists. And Street Fighter is the arcade-cabinet legend that launched the entire fighting-game scene; if you ever fed quarters into a machine to throw a Hadouken, this one's calling your name.

The beautiful thing about retro gaming is how much of it lives in muscle memory. You might not be able to name your own phone number, but you can probably still input the Konami Code without thinking. That's what these quizzes tap into — the stuff that got burned in during the cartridge years and never left.