High score
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- This article is about video game high scores. For the internet cartoon, see High Score.
History
The high score first achieved cultural significance with the rise in popularity of pinball machines. Players who achieve a high score are often greeted with a congratulatory message and are able to enter their initials or name into the machine. Their score and name will remain there until someone "knocks" them off the high score list by achieving a higher score. This functioning has caused high scores of popular games to carry a certain amount of "bragging rights" as it is proof of excellence in a game.The high score has a close association to the "free game." When in an arcade, many games will offer a player a free chance at another game if they achieve a high score. This has declined in popularity in recent years, as players are often allowed to play for as long as they can without losing, but not given free games even if they achieve a high score.
The first video game to have a high score was Space Invaders (1978), but what made it take off was the personalized highscores introduced in Asteroids (1979). This meant that players now could compete with each other over who had the highest score.
The popularity of the high score has made it nearly ubiquitous among modern video games. In fact, the high score has become a defining feature of many games. Magazines such as Nintendo Power and Sega Visions would often publish high scores submitted by their readers. The high score became most popular when, starting in 1982, the Twin Galaxies Scoreboard began to appear in the pages of Video Games Magazine, Joystik Magazine, Computer Games Magazine, VideoGiochi Magazine (Milano, Italy), Video Games Player Magazine and Electronic Fun Magazine. Later, under Twin Galaxies direction in the 1990s, all performances would have to be videotaped to verify the achievement. The high score also exists in online games in various forms.
Many games include default "high scores" that do not actually represent real players, but are displayed whenever the machine's memory is reset, often with generic initials such as "AAA." These scores often represent certain levels of achievement for a player to aspire to. As a player still needs to knock these off in order to get his own score and initials listed, the default high scores ensure that there is always something for players to compete with (and keep them putting in coins). Many computer games also have default high scores built in, sometimes attributed to fictitious entities (e.g. Commander Keen) or to members of the game's development team.
Some players as a joke will relinquish their bragging rights to enter a fake name or initials with their high score, particularly on arcade games in public places. This can be seen as juvenile humor; even on games that only allow initials, it is not uncommon to see "ASS", "SEX", or other profane or provocative three letter combinations. More recent arcade games often contain safeguards for such treatment, where entering specific three-letter combinations (such as those previously mentioned) will be automatically changed to a different, default name.
Internet influence
While on old games the high score would only be visible on one particular machine, the spread of the Internet has made it possible to compete with the rest of the world. A lot of modern games have the ability to post your high score to a central webpage. Online multiplayer games, especially first person shooters, real time strategies, and RPGs often have ranking systems. These new high score lists and ranking systems often are more complex than conventional high score lists. Some are based on tournaments, while others track game servers continuously, keeping statistics for all players.High score in culture
The high score's prominence in video game culture, and even mainstream society has led to various pieces of art and entertainment. There is a cartoon titled High Score. There is also a book entitled .In an episode of the TV series Seinfeld, George is astonished to find that the Frogger machine he played as a teen still retains his high score. With the owners wanting to get rid of it, George decides to keep the machine for posterity, the catch being that he has to move the game without unplugging it, because if he unplugs the game the high score will be erased. Unfortunately the machine is destroyed when George unsuccessfully tries to move it across the street in a spoof of the gameplay.
On August 1, 1982, the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard issued a colorful poster that listed the world record high scores for more than two dozen arcade video games. The poster was distributed among arcades in the U.S., Canada and abroad. This was the first poster (#1) in a series of colorful posters that continues today, with poster #80 issued in June, 2006.
On September 24, 2005, The Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard issued a colorful poster that offered a $1,000 cash prize to the first video game player who could break George Costanza's fictional Frogger high score of 863,050 points that was portrayed in Seinfeld Episode #174, "The Frogger," and aired on April 23, 1998. Though no player could break this mark before the December 31, 2005 deadline, Donald Hayes of Salem, NH, reached 589,350 points on March 25, 2005, history's highest Frogger score to date.
Score Attack
Some games featured a 'Score Attack' mode, in which charges the player in gathering the highest score possible. Games with a mode like this include, for example, Rez and Gradius IV Fukkatsu. Some games do not include this mode but keeps a record of the score, in which the players can choose wheter they Score Attack the game, or continue normally.
See also
External links
- [Collection of high score replays] at the Internet Archive
- [Twin Galaxies' series of Posters]
- [Cyberscore] - High score and time attack competition
- [Video Game Ownage] - Speedruns and other game videos
- [Twin Galaxies] - The closest thing to an official video game world record authority
- [Amiga Highscores] - Highscores from Amiga games
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