Round 1: easy Mario trivia questions
Start here whatever the crowd. These ten are the shared vocabulary of forty years of Nintendo - the job, the kingdom, the villain, the power-ups - and most tables will clear eight or nine of them. That is the point of a warm-up round: it gets everybody scoring before the rounds that separate them.
Read the notes aloud after each answer. Almost everyone knows Mario wears a red cap; far fewer know he wears it because hair was impossible to animate on a sprite that size, and that detail is the one that gets a table arguing about what else in the games came out of a hardware limit.
Q1.What is Mario's job?Tap to reveal
Answer: Plumber
He was a carpenter in Donkey Kong. The 1983 arcade game Mario Bros. moved him into the New York sewers and made him a plumber, and the job title stuck even though he is almost never shown doing any plumbing.
Q2.What kingdom does Mario live in?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Mushroom Kingdom
It is ruled by Princess Peach and populated by the Toads, the mushroom people - which is also why every second power-up in the series is a mushroom.
Q3.What nationality is Mario?Tap to reveal
Answer: Italian
Nintendo has confirmed it repeatedly, though the character was designed in Japan and was only given the name Mario afterwards, after Mario Segale, the landlord of Nintendo of America's warehouse.
Q4.Why does Mario wear a cap?Tap to reveal
Answer: Because hair was too hard to draw and animate
Shigeru Miyamoto has explained that on a sprite a few dozen pixels tall he could not show hair moving as Mario jumped, so he covered it. The mustache solved the same problem lower down: it marked out a nose and a mouth without needing any detail.
Q5.What relation is Luigi to Mario - cousin or brother?Tap to reveal
Answer: Brother
Luigi arrived in 1983's Mario Bros. as a green recolor of the same sprite, because the arcade hardware could not afford a second character design. Nintendo now describes him as Mario's younger twin, and the taller, thinner Luigi only appeared with the American Super Mario Bros. 2.
Q6.Bowser is the king of what creatures?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Koopas
His title in the games is King Koopa, and in Japan Koopa is simply his name - which is why the shelled foot soldiers you stomp all game share it.
Q7.Which Mario character wears a yellow cap with a W on it?Tap to reveal
Answer: Wario
The W is an upside-down M, and that is the whole idea: Wario was built for 1992's Super Mario Land 2 as Mario turned over - greedy instead of heroic, yellow and purple instead of red and blue. The name puts the Japanese word for bad, warui, in front of Mario.
Q8.In the Mario games, what kind of creature is a Paratroopa?Tap to reveal
Answer: A turtle - a Koopa Troopa with wings
Stomp one and the wings come off and it drops to the ground as an ordinary Koopa Troopa. That is the design lesson of a Mario level in one enemy: almost everything has a second, weaker form underneath the first.
Q9.What does a Fire Flower let Mario do?Tap to reveal
Answer: Throw fireballs
It also recolors his outfit to white and red, which is how the player reads their own power state at a glance without looking away from the action.
Q10.What does a Super Mushroom do to Mario?Tap to reveal
Answer: It makes him bigger
Super Mushroom up, Mini Mushroom down, Mega Mushroom enormous - the series has used one shape to mean 'change size' for four decades. Miyamoto has said the mushroom came from the way mushrooms turn up in magical worlds generally, and has specifically corrected the older story that he took it from the cake in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Round 2: where Mario came from
Mario is older than the series named after him, and this round is the part of his history that even regular players tend to get wrong. He did not start as a plumber, he did not start with that name, and in one 1982 cabinet he is not even the hero.
Five questions, and they are the ones worth asking if your room is mostly casual players - the answers are all stories rather than statistics, so a table that guesses wrong still walks away with something.
Q1.What was Mario's first video game appearance?Tap to reveal
Answer: Donkey Kong, in 1981
He is the climbing hero of the arcade cabinet, dodging barrels up a construction site. Nintendo has since folded the game into Mario's own history rather than treating it as a separate series.
Q2.What name was Mario given before he was called Mario?Tap to reveal
Answer: Jumpman
It was a job description. Donkey Kong was the game that made jumping over an obstacle the thing you do, instead of shooting it, and the name simply said what the new verb was.
Q3.In the arcade game Donkey Kong, what is the name of the woman Mario has to rescue?Tap to reveal
Answer: Pauline
She was called Lady in Japan and Pauline in the United States. Peach replaced her from Super Mario Bros. onward, though Pauline stayed the damsel in the Game Boy Donkey Kong in 1994 and across the Mario vs. Donkey Kong games. In 2017's Super Mario Odyssey she returned as the mayor of New Donk City - and as the voice singing the game's theme song.
Q4.Has Mario ever been the villain in one of his own games?Tap to reveal
Answer: Yes - in Donkey Kong Jr., released in 1982
Mario is the one holding Donkey Kong in a cage while Junior climbs to free him, and at the top he shoves the cage out of reach just as Junior reaches the key. It is the one game in which Nintendo has cast him as the villain.
Q5.Has Mario ever starred in a television show?Tap to reveal
Answer: Yes - The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, from 1989
It wrapped animated Mario episodes around live-action skits in which the wrestler Captain Lou Albano played Mario. Two more cartoons followed it, built on Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World.
Round 3: Mario games - levels, bosses and secrets
This is where a Mario quiz stops being general knowledge. Ten questions on the games themselves, from the 1985 NES cartridge through the GameCube era, and they reward the specific kind of memory that comes from replaying a level rather than reading about it.
A warning on Super Mario Bros. 2: the American game is a reskin of a Japanese title called Doki Doki Panic, which is why its bosses look nothing like anything else in the series. If a table disputes Clawgrip, that is why - and it is worth explaining, because it also explains why Birdo, Shy Guy and Bob-omb all entered the Mario cast from a game that was not originally a Mario game at all.
Q1.In the original Super Mario Bros., which level in World 7 is the underwater level?Tap to reveal
Answer: 7-2
The whole game has only two underwater stages, 2-2 and 7-2, and the later one is a near-copy of the earlier one. The NES cartridge reused level data wherever it could - the entire game fits in about 40 kilobytes.
Q2.Who is the boss at the end of World 5 in Super Mario Bros. 2?Tap to reveal
Answer: Clawgrip
A giant crab who throws boulders at you, which you pick up and throw straight back. He came over unchanged from Doki Doki Panic, the Japanese game that was reskinned into the American Super Mario Bros. 2 - which is also why Bowser never appears in it.
Q3.In Super Mario Bros. 3, which stage hides the first Warp Whistle?Tap to reveal
Answer: World 1-3
Crouch on the white block near the end of the stage for about six seconds until Mario sinks behind the scenery, then run right past the goal card and you are carried to a hidden Toad house with the whistle inside. The second whistle is in the World 1 fortress.
Q4.Which island does Super Mario World begin on?Tap to reveal
Answer: Yoshi's Island
It is the first world on the overworld map, and Nintendo later turned the name into a prequel - Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island sends a baby Mario back to the same place.
Q5.In Super Mario Sunshine, where is Bowser when Mario finally reaches him?Tap to reveal
Answer: In a hot tub
At the top of Corona Mountain he is soaking in an enormous bath with Bowser Jr., whom he has told that Peach is his mother. Mario wins by smashing the tub apart from the edges and dropping the whole thing.
Q6.Who is the final boss of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Shadow Queen
She is the demon sealed beneath Rogueport for a thousand years, and she gets out by possessing Princess Peach - so the last fight in the game is against the person you spent it trying to rescue.
Q7.In Luigi's Mansion, which of these is NOT one of Mario's lost belongings - his hat, his shoe, his glove or his belt?Tap to reveal
Answer: His belt
The five items are his hat, his shoe, his glove, his letter and his star. Each one you hand to Professor E. Gadd is the proof that Mario is still somewhere in the house, which is the only thing keeping Luigi walking into the next room.
Q8.In Wario World, what turns Wario's treasure into monsters?Tap to reveal
Answer: A black jewel
Wario buys himself a castle with his hoard, and an evil Black Jewel hidden inside brings the treasure to life against him. It is a pointed joke: greed is the only thing Wario is ever actually punished for.
Q9.Which of these is not one of the eight playable characters in Mario Party 4 - Mario, Peach, Toad or Donkey Kong?Tap to reveal
Answer: Toad
Mario Party 4's eight playable characters are Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Yoshi, Wario, Waluigi and Donkey Kong. Toad is in the game constantly as staff, and the only place you can actually control him is the Beach Volley Folly minigame.
Q10.True or false: Mario never uses a weapon.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
The Hammer Suit in Super Mario Bros. 3 has him throwing hammers, the Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi games arm him with one permanently, and in Super Smash Bros. he fights with whatever the stage drops - bats, beam swords and crates.
Round 4: Mario Kart and Mario sports trivia
Nintendo has used the Mario cast as a ready-made roster for almost every sport there is, and the spin-offs are where a lot of people actually spent their hours. Nine questions here, and they are friendlier than they look: most of them turn on a rule or a design decision rather than on a statistic.
Two of these are true-or-false, which is worth doing on purpose in a middle round. They keep a table that has fallen behind in the game, and the fact note after each one is usually more interesting than the answer - a crocodile from Donkey Kong Country keeping goal in a Mario soccer game takes more explaining than it first appears.
Q1.In Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, what is the last thing you unlock by taking gold in the All-Cup Tour on Mirror mode?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Parade Kart
It is the open-topped car the winners ride in the game's own victory parade, which is why it is the final unlock - once you have beaten everything, the game hands you the trophy vehicle itself.
Q2.How many races are there in a standard Mario Kart cup?Tap to reveal
Answer: Four
Four races per cup has been the format since Mario Kart 64 in 1996, and Mario Kart World still runs its Grand Prix that way. Super Mario Kart on the SNES was the exception - five courses in each of its four cups, Mushroom, Flower, Star and Special. Points are awarded race by race and the cup goes to the highest total, not to whoever wins the last track, which is what keeps a bad first race survivable.
Q3.True or false: Mario Kart sorts its characters into just two weight classes, light and heavy.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
There has always been a middle. Super Mario Kart and Double Dash!! used light, medium and heavy, and later games split those further still. Mario and Luigi sit in the middle; Bowser and Donkey Kong anchor the top.
Q4.True or false: Mario has starred in games about racing, baseball, soccer, tennis and golf.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
Mario Kart, Mario Superstar Baseball, Super Mario Strikers, Mario Power Tennis and Mario Golf cover all five, and that is before the Olympic games he shares with Sonic. The cast works because it is pre-balanced: everyone already knows who should be fast and who should be strong.
Q5.In Super Mario Strikers, which of these is not a sidekick you can put on your team - Toad, Birdo, Hammer Bro or Paratroopa?Tap to reveal
Answer: Paratroopa
The four sidekick types are Toad, Birdo, Hammer Bro and Koopa Troopa. A Paratroopa is the same Koopa with wings attached, and the game has no use for flight on a soccer pitch.
Q6.What kind of creature keeps goal in Super Mario Strikers?Tap to reveal
Answer: A Kritter - a crocodile-like Kremling
Kritter comes from Donkey Kong Country, where the Kremlings are King K. Rool's army. Strikers is one of the few Mario games to draft an enemy out of another Nintendo series and give it a fixed job.
Q7.In Mario Superstar Baseball, what do you need in order to unleash a character's super pitch?Tap to reveal
Answer: A star
Stars are collected during play and spent on special moves, and each character's is their own - Mario throws a fireball, Donkey Kong throws a banana ball.
Q8.What does Mario swing for his power shot in Mario Power Tennis?Tap to reveal
Answer: A giant hammer
The Iron Hammer smashes the ball down into the opponent's court. The hammer is the oldest weapon he has: there was one to pick up in Donkey Kong back in 1981, where it was the only way to hit anything at all.
Q9.What is the standard, gimmick-free court in Mario Power Tennis?Tap to reveal
Answer: Peach Dome
Every other court has a trick built into it - moving floors, ghosts, Piranha Plants. Peach Dome just gives you a clay, grass or hard surface, which is why it is the court players pick when they want to settle an argument.
Round 5: Mario in Super Smash Bros. Melee
Melee came out on the GameCube in 2001 and has never really stopped being played, so a round on it does two jobs: it is the hardest material on this list, and it is the round where the one person at the table who still plays gets their evening. Ten questions, and they are all about things you can see on screen rather than frame data.
It belongs in a Mario quiz for a reason that is also a question here: no other series fills more roster slots in Melee than Mario does. Yoshi and Donkey Kong only have emblems of their own because they were spun out into series of their own. Fair warning that several of these ten reach outside the Mario cast, to Pokemon, Fire Emblem and Zelda - that is the nature of a crossover round, and if your table wants Mario only, stop after round four.
Q1.Which Super Smash Bros. Melee fighter is unlocked by clearing a single-player mode with every other character on the roster?Tap to reveal
Answer: Mr. Game & Watch
He is a flat black silhouette because he comes from Nintendo's Game & Watch handhelds of 1980, whose LCD screens could only switch fixed segments on or off - no shading, no color, no in-between.
Q2.Which of these Melee fighters cannot grapple onto a distant ledge - Link, Young Link, Samus or Zelda?Tap to reveal
Answer: Zelda
Samus has the Grapple Beam and both Links carry the Hookshot, and all three double as a tether back to the stage. Zelda has to teleport with Farore's Wind instead, which is far easier to read and punish.
Q3.Which Pokemon in Melee hurts itself every time it uses an electric attack?Tap to reveal
Answer: Pichu
It is faithful to the Pokemon games, where Pichu has not yet learned to store its own electricity safely - every electric move it uses in Melee adds a little to its own damage counter. Only one other fighter in the game hurts itself: Roy takes 10% for a fully charged Flare Blade.
Q4.Who is the final boss of Melee's Classic mode?Tap to reveal
Answer: Master Hand
A giant white glove - which is the joke, because the whole game is framed as toys being played with, so the last enemy is the hand doing the playing. Crazy Hand, the left one, turns up alongside him on the harder settings.
Q5.Which of these Melee fighters gets five jumps in midair - Kirby, Yoshi, Peach or Mewtwo?Tap to reveal
Answer: Kirby
Kirby gets five midair jumps, inherited from a series in which floating is simply how you move. Jigglypuff is the only other fighter in Melee with the same five; none of the other three here get more than one.
Q6.Which Melee fighter is unlocked by clearing Classic mode with Marth?Tap to reveal
Answer: Roy
Both are Fire Emblem swordsmen, and Roy reached the West in Melee before his own game did - Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade came out in Japan in 2002, months after Melee, and was never released outside it.
Q7.Which Melee fighter can pick an opponent up and walk around while carrying them?Tap to reveal
Answer: Donkey Kong
The cargo carry is a straight callback to 1981, when carrying someone off was Donkey Kong's entire role. He can walk, jump and then throw while holding them, which no other fighter in the game can do.
Q8.How many Melee fighters carry the Mario emblem?Tap to reveal
Answer: Five
Mario, Dr. Mario, Luigi, Peach and Bowser. Pokemon and The Legend of Zelda each fill four roster slots, and Zelda only reaches five if you count Sheik as a fighter in her own right. Yoshi and Donkey Kong started out in Mario games but are counted under series of their own.
Q9.Which Melee fighter gets no upward recovery from their Up special move?Tap to reveal
Answer: Yoshi
Yoshi's Up special throws an egg rather than lifting him, so once he is below the stage his only way home is his double jump - which is exactly why Melee gives that jump armor that shrugs off incoming hits.
Q10.Which of these Melee fighters can push off a wall to jump again - Luigi, Ness, Yoshi or Young Link?Tap to reveal
Answer: Young Link
Press away from the wall as you slide down it and he kicks off for a second chance at the ledge. Melee gave the wall jump to eight fighters - Mario, Samus, Sheik, Fox, Falco, Captain Falcon, Pichu and Young Link - and none of the other three here are on that list.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Mario trivia questions do I need for a quiz night?
Forty to sixty for a full evening. Five rounds of five to twelve, with a scoring break between each, runs about ninety minutes once you allow for the arguments. If you only have half an hour, use rounds one, three and four and leave the Melee round out.
Is Mario a plumber or a carpenter?
Both, in order. In Donkey Kong in 1981 he is a carpenter on a construction site. The 1983 arcade game Mario Bros. put him and Luigi in the sewers under New York fighting off pests, and plumber is what he has been ever since - even though the games almost never show him doing the job.
Who is Mario's brother, and are they twins?
Luigi, and yes - Nintendo describes him as Mario's younger twin brother. He first appeared in Mario Bros. in 1983 as a green recolor of Mario's sprite, because the hardware could not hold a second character design. The taller, thinner Luigi arrived with the American Super Mario Bros. 2.
Which questions on this list are the hardest?
Clawgrip as the World 5 boss in Super Mario Bros. 2, Peach Dome as the plain court in Mario Power Tennis, and the wall jump question at the end of the Melee round. If a table is struggling, offer the four options aloud on those three - they go from impossible to guessable straight away.
Why are so many Mario trivia questions about old games?
Because those facts have stopped moving. Release years, level layouts, boss names and unlock conditions on a finished cartridge are the same today as they were twenty years ago, while anything about a current game's best kart, its roster or its sales can be changed by a patch or an update after you have printed your quiz.
Where can I play Mario-style video game trivia online?
Trivio.NET's video games category has packs by franchise and by console generation, and you play them against other people in real time rather than reading questions aloud from a page.
