24 90s quiz questions for a nostalgia round

The 1990s is the decade that currently works best in a pub quiz. It's far enough back that the details have gone fuzzy, but recent enough that most of the room lived through at least part of it, and the bits they didn't live through they've absorbed through endless reissues and nostalgia lists.

These 24 questions cover 90s music, film and television, and the technology and news that defined the decade. They run from gentle to genuinely hard, so you can take the top ten for a mixed crowd or run the lot as a full themed round.

90s music

1Which group's 1996 debut single "Wannabe" went to number one in more than twenty countries and launched one of the decade's biggest pop acts?

Answer:The Spice Girls(click to reveal)

2In August 1995, two Britpop bands released singles on the same day in a chart battle covered on the national news. Blur's "Country House" took number one. Which Oasis single did it beat?

Answer:"Roll With It"(click to reveal)

3Which 1991 Nirvana single, from the album Nevermind, is usually credited with pushing grunge into the mainstream?

Answer:"Smells Like Teen Spirit"(click to reveal)

4Whitney Houston's enormous 1992 hit "I Will Always Love You" was a cover. Which country singer wrote and originally recorded it?

Answer:Dolly Parton(click to reveal)

5Which member left Take That in 1995, several months before the band announced they were splitting up?

Answer:Robbie Williams(click to reveal)

6Which Elton John single, a rewritten version of an older song released following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, became the best-selling single in UK chart history?

Answer:"Candle in the Wind 1997"(click to reveal)

7Which 1998 debut single by a former Mickey Mouse Club performer opened with the line "Oh baby, baby"?

Answer:"...Baby One More Time" by Britney Spears(click to reveal)

8Céline Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" was the theme to which 1997 film?

Answer:Titanic(click to reveal)

90s film and television

9Which 1995 film was the first feature-length film made entirely with computer animation?

Answer:Toy Story(click to reveal)

10Which 1994 Robert Zemeckis film, in which the title character unwittingly turns up at a series of major moments in American history, won the Academy Award for Best Picture?

Answer:Forrest Gump(click to reveal)

11Which 1993 Steven Spielberg film, adapted from a Michael Crichton novel, used a mix of animatronics and computer graphics to put dinosaurs on screen?

Answer:Jurassic Park(click to reveal)

12Which 1994 Quentin Tarantino film tells several interlinked Los Angeles crime stories out of chronological order?

Answer:Pulp Fiction(click to reveal)

13Which 1996 Danny Boyle film, adapted from an Irvine Welsh novel, follows a group of heroin addicts in Edinburgh?

Answer:Trainspotting(click to reveal)

14Which 1999 science fiction film introduced a slow-motion effect that became known as bullet time?

Answer:The Matrix(click to reveal)

15Which American sitcom about six friends in New York first aired in 1994 and ran for ten series?

Answer:Friends(click to reveal)

16Which quiz show, hosted in the UK by Chris Tarrant, first aired in 1998 and gave contestants three lifelines?

Answer:Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?(click to reveal)

17Which BBC children's programme, first broadcast in 1997, featured four colourful characters with aerials on their heads and televisions in their stomachs?

Answer:Teletubbies(click to reveal)

Technology, news and the rest

18Which handheld digital pet, released in Japan in 1996, had to be fed and cleaned up after or it would die?

Answer:The Tamagotchi(click to reveal)

19Which sheep, born in 1996 at the Roslin Institute in Scotland, was the first mammal cloned from an adult cell?

Answer:Dolly(click to reveal)

20Which rail link, connecting England and France, opened to passengers in 1994?

Answer:The Channel Tunnel(click to reveal)

21Which search engine was founded in 1998 by two Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin?

Answer:Google(click to reveal)

22Which country did England lose to on penalties in the semi-final of Euro 96, on home soil?

Answer:Germany(click to reveal)

23Which country won the 1998 FIFA World Cup, beating Brazil 3-0 in the final?

Answer:France(click to reveal)

24Which British territory was handed back to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, ending more than 150 years of British rule?

Answer:Hong Kong(click to reveal)

Writing a good 90s round

The decade is broad enough that you need to spread the questions deliberately. A round made entirely of Britpop singles rewards one quite specific type of person and shuts out everybody else, which is the same mistake as building a whole round from one football season.

Watch the age range in the room. For a crowd in their forties and fifties this is lived memory and you can go reasonably obscure. For a younger crowd, stick to the things that have stayed culturally visible: the big films, the chart-topping singles, the technology people still make jokes about.

Music works particularly well here because so much of the decade is instantly recognisable from a few seconds of audio. An intros round built entirely from the 90s is one of the easiest themed rounds to put together, and our music round ideas covers how to run one.

If you want the previous decade as well, our 80s quiz questions take the same approach, and the film quiz questions set spans every era. The quiz creator will put the slides and answer sheets together once you've settled on your questions.