/vr/ - Retro Games

>>8029403
Born in the 91 and never gave a fuck about hi-scores.

I didn't back then but I do now... too bad I aint got nobody to share my machines with so we can compete because I'm too casual to go for world records. I still like to set personal bests though.

Not on games like Super Mario Bros though, it's more something for single screen arcade games.

It was an 80s thing. I prided on keeping the high score at a few games at the local 7-11 and laundromat. No one could touch my jackal score in particular.

>>8029403
me, only in Tetris

>>8029403
No one cared unless they were playing in a public arcade or were one of those nerds that sent a picture of their TV to Nintendo Power or another gaming magazine.

>>8029403
I was born in 1987 so only a borderline Zoomer. I don't remember anyone caring about high scores in goal-based games like Mario or Megaman 1, but I don't remember life before 1993 very well. It's possible that back in 1985 there was still a fair amount of people who cared, but it was probably always a minority.

>>8029501
>I was born in 1987 so only a borderline Zoomer.
Only missed it by a decade.
>On topic
No, no one gave a shit about scores unless you were looking to settle an argument with your brother and rock paper scissors had lost appeal.

>>8029403
I was born in the eighties, no one I knew gave a shit unless they were heavy into the arcade scene. Like, three people tops? Super small crowd. Otherwise, with PCs and home consoles the conversations went more along the lines „hey I’ve finally finished X, did you know you can unlock Y after beating the game again using Z?! Mental!!”, that sorta shit.

>>8029403
I only remember life from the 90s onwards and the only time my peers were keen on keeping a highscore was when that handheld tetris videogame called brickgame was a fad everywhere. So yes, I remember I kept track of my personal best and when someone else claimed his score was better I'd put some work towards beating it. Nokia's snake game also had a bit of competition in high school times

>>8029403
in arcades, the concept of a score was inherited from other public games that predated video games. scores in general were useful to compare how well you played and/or how far you played, especially for earlier games where they were more simple, only had objectives that increase your score and weren't able to be completed from start to finish (often looping forever). high scores allowed you to see the score from who was the best (that day) and aim to beat it, which makes you spend more quarters.
these concepts transferred over to home games for similar reasons, but mainly as a way of providing an objective for the game. without battery saves or disk storage, your high score would be gone after powering off and you'd have to write it down on a dedicated page for scores in the manual. there were obviously not as many people playing any one personal copy of the game. because of that, they were much less important except for contests and magazines. eventually more and more games stopped tracking score at all until today where it's common for games to not include the concept.

>>8029403
no. high scores were one of those weird contrived things in popular culture that very few people actually gave a shit about, which makes sense, humans aren't inclined to long strings of digits. getting to a reset, the credits, etc. was as far as anyone cared beyond the moment to moment spectacle.

Yes. Scrubs saying they never cared about high scores were incapable of achieving one.

>>8029534
>high scores were one of those weird contrived things in popular culture that very few people actually gave a shit about,
It is a carryover from pinball and early arcade games that had no end and simply looped forever. 1987 onward far more games were played to completion so the sense of accomplishment shifted from a high score to actually beating the game.

Even on NES radio stations would sponsor local tournaments for high scores and partner with local video rental stores for the prizes. These were held every summer. Aside from those local events, during the regional fair the national tour would come through (sponsored by Nintendo) where you competed against people nationwide. This carried on into the 16bit era.

The last high score tournament I competed in was super Mario world and I didn't rank high enough to matter. It gathered huge crowds though.

>>8029534
>very few people actually gave a shit about
so actually yes then?

'85 middle-agedfag and no

High score tables were carried over from arcade ports. It's supposed to be the arcade game at home including the high score screen. Most console-exclusive games dropped them early on. Computerjank developers were a bit slow, in the 90s you'd mostly see them on janky DOS shareware and console games made by eurojankers who came from the 8-bit microcomputer scene.

Try and beat my score of 3 million in super bomberman, bitch.

>>8029403
>Did people actually care about getting high scores (outside of arcades, as they're a different story) back in the day?
Yes, depending on the game, of course.

>>8029403
The only time score mattered was for lives/continues for me.

However when I was younger there was local hobby/arcade store where I got high score on Marvel vs Capcom from using multiple credits that upset the previous high scorer enough to unplug the machine so he could 1 credit high score it.

>>8029501
>I was born in 1987 so only a borderline Zoomer.
This is like the fucking left right dichotomy autism, isn't it? You're either a boomer or a zoomer, not between it. Fucking retards.

>>8029501
old flip phones weren't even ubiquitous when you were in highschool, you're definitely not a zoomer.

Only time I cared was in a online flash game where you played a hookshot mechanic and there were like the week records you could compare you to, so I tried to make 1st or 2nd on those

>>8029403
Kinda, some games magazines had high score pages, take a photo of the screen and send it in and a few even gave tips on how to do take a picture of a TV and have it not look bad.

The only time I remember a single instance where it even came up in conversation in public is when a friend of mine beat some battletoads hi-score in a some game magazine (I think ?).

Aside from that me and my mom would compete in tetris but really it was only once or twice.

>MFW trophies and achievements are the modern day equivalent.

>>8029403
Nope except that you'd get an extra life every X points (in Galaga the first e l was for 20 000 or 30 000 and then every 70 000 if I remember correctly ... and in that game DOUBLING UP your ship was great but also risky so you needed extra lives) in many games.

Which means it was more about 'how far can you get* on one credit' ... home versions of arcade games often had a fixed number of continues (credits). And 'how far can you get in the game' (what level).

* at the army assesment center in Delft (the Netherlands, yup) there was a Galaga cabinet; I got to level 37 on it before I was called away to do some test - one credit, 3 ships to go

>>8029420
Yeah no shit because your childhood was the sixth gen.

>>8029403
Born 1982 here. High scores in games like SMB were never really acknowledged as far as I know. It was just a leftover remnant from arcade games.

>>8030340
You mean 5th gen, with spillover from 4th. I'm born in 92 and 6th gen was middle school. 5th was elementary.

>>8030353
No you were a fucking clueless little kid during most of the fifth gen. Your actual cognizant childhood doesn’t really start until you’re like 10.

>>8030369
You're 1 year away from being in Jr High School when your 10 what the fuck are you talking about?

>>8030407
Including sixth grade as middle school will forever be bullshit. At any rate, you’re still obviously a fucking kid at that age. Your generation can call that period your tweens if you want but you were obviously still a child. For fuck’s sake, you were only eight when the PS2 launched in 2000.

>>8029850
Pussy faggot centrist, have some fucking principles and stand for something you spineless bitch. Leftists are more respectable than you even as they flaunt their transitioning toddlers

>>8029403
Yes and it used to be you'd take a picture of your tv screen and send your high score to Nintendo Power, and they'd put your name in their magazine.
I remember keeping track of my high scores on a couple different games with my brother and friends in a notebook. I also kept track of what games we beat in the same notebook.

If they gave lives, sure.

>>8029403
Only if it counted as finishing the games like with Crazy Taxi.

>>8030774

>>8029403
Born in 87 nobody gave a single fuck. It s a boomer thing (like legit boomers who grew up on Atari)

>>8029501
'87 is close to being a zoomer you fucking retard.

>>8030962
And all centrists are cowards. Cope all you want.

Born in 1984.

High schools mattered, at arcades, for arcade titles where getting a high school was the main objective, and such scores were tracked within the game cabinet.

In random NES titles like SMB1, they were never ever ever discussed. Ignore them completely. In titles like SMB1, people really just discussed whether you could beat the game with no continues and no warps. And when you did that, they asked if you could do it on one life. Then after you could do that, MAYBE people would ask how fast you could do it, but you'd answer like "roughly 30 minutes in one life." You wouldn't have a stopwatch or anything back then.

>>8031050
*high scores

It's been a long week.

>>8029403
Depends on the game.
>>8029485
yeah.

>>8029836
lmao
nerds

>>8029403
shit for atari boomers, cause their ship looped to infinity and beyond

>>8030531
LOL fucking roasted him.

>>8030369
holy shit you're a faggot.
plenty of kids born in the late 80s and early 90s played nes throughout the 90s
and none of us cared about high scores

>>8030774
You legitimately have brain damage

>>8030369
>Literally seething that I have memories

>>8029403
No. A "score" feature was practically mandatory on almost all games back then for reasons unknown to everyone. Nobody cared about actually gaining high scores.

I would say the should be done away with, but I don't mind them if they have an actual gameplay purpose, like Rondo of Blood giving a 1-up every 20,000 points.

And a scoring system is fine with some newer games when they end up tying some kind of reward behind it, like a ranking system. Like Sonic Adventure 2 for example, how S ranks are tied to score, or the Trauma Center series, with XS ranks tied to score.

>>8029403
No people did. Some subhuman aspies might have.

I don't care generally, but I always wanted to break a score count by getting 9999999+ points in one of these NES arcade games. Recently, i did it with Mario Bros. The game just reverts score to random 4-digit number after that, I've got 5342 or something like that.

>>8029403
Consider the fact that very few if any games made these days have a score system.
There's your answer.

>>8029403
If the game was a puzzler or area clearing game, like an arcade game that never scrolled, the score mattered to us because it measured our progress beyond just the screen we were at.

Sidescrollers with score was just a holdover, no one paid any attention to that. You already had broader context in your game now.

>>8030774
This is your brain on /pol/

>>8029858
I was born in 88 and they were ubiquitous when I was in middle school. I'm not a zoomer though. I'm just another burnout millennial. However much that term has been ruined it's still better than calling yourself a zoomer. >>8029501 should be ashamed of himself.

>>8029403
Outside of beating your bro's or whoever's high score? Not really, no, especially not in platformers unless there were score specific rewards like continues. Of course that's just me and my circle of friends growing up, there's always going to be someone that wants to best their own high scores even if just for the sake of it.
>>8030369
>Your actual cognizant childhood doesn’t really start until you’re like 10.
I've seen this bullshit stated before, but really only on 4chins. Is it some kind of bizarre cope from literal retards that can't form memories until their double digits? Do they not understand how kids learn?
>>8030531
>you can't enjoy products aimed at kids when you're just a kid!
Christ, you really are just a coping retard.

>>8029403
Only games I ever cared about score were on Atari 2600. Like, Pac-man or River Raid or Space Invaders, the score was literally the only thing going on.
NES forward, not a single fuck given about scores.

>>8030962
>actually what a self-proclaimed centrist believes
This is beyond sad. Monkey want banana?

>>8029403
When you have only one new game for half a year (one for xmas, one for birthday), you kind of want to max it out in every possible way.

>>8029403
cared about score insofar as the game rewarded you (1-ups in sonic for instance)

>>8031531
>Is it some kind of bizarre cope from literal retards that can't form memories until their double digits?
Remember when the NPC meme got started? I think these people are literal NPCs.

>>8031605
Even then I wasn't trying to run up the score to get them. I was just happy when it happened.

Only in games where score was the entire point

Icycalm's "Why scoring is for aspies and those who defend it are morons" basically sums up the history of scoring as such.

A) Games are short experiences that loop the same content. Scoring is king because its the only way to measure proggress.
B) Games are long enough so actually beating them is the fun and engaging thing. Scoring is linear and acts as sort of a progress meter. If you still cant beat level 3 but beat your old high score it means you are getting better
C) Autistic Scoring in shmups happen because shmup developers realize its easier to just make whacky scoring mechanics then to make new mechanics that actually interact with the rest of the game
D) Games develop better ways of measuring progress like letter grades in Devil May Cry. Scoring begins to die completely and only remains in old games because Japs are traditionalists.
E) Actual Autists get a obsessed with these rising numbers and hold back shmup innovation, demanding more autistic scoring rather then deeper mechanics
F) A few genuinely bad developers attempt to reintroduce scoring into games not realizing innovation has them obslete in anything more complicated then R-type, and even R-type is boarderline.

>>8029403
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>8029534
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For games people could actually beat somewhat regularly, yes, especially if you had many people playing at the same place / on the same system and could input their initials, etc... As time went on more people played alone and everyone had consoles at their own house and didn't play the same game together as much. Also, growing up I didn't know anybody at all that even legit beat Mario, everyone just played until they got tired of it then quit, or warped. Games with rankings were a bit of bragging rights or an achievement, like Resident Evil or MGS, and the many games thay had ranks per level or chapter were a bit of bragging rights if you played together.

scores gave a rough idea about completion rate and gave a reference point for people talking to each other about games, mostly for the generation born in the 70s.

Paper publications and Magazines had high score rankings, sometimes giveaways for achieving a certain score.

They served many purposes!

>>8031724
>reddit here
>let me tell yall about how things were before i was born

People cared when it came to games where the only objective was to ee how high a score you could get. For games you could actually beat, nobody really gave a shit.

You had these autists writing in to video game magazines bragging about getting 999.990 points in Super Mario Bros and Mega Man, but they always felt like autists who kept beating the game over and over to see the score rise, everyone that had actually beaten these games knew there wan't anything overly impressive about a high score, all it proved was that you cared enough about that score to grind it out for a couple hours.

>>8029485
Zoomer here, but when I play Tetris on the NES, I care way more about my line count than my score

>>8029403
93 here, I grew up on 3rd/5th gen and arcades and I never cared about hi-scores.
My only brush with gen 2 was those knockoff all-in-one consoles which I liked a lot but arcade culture never existed here, even in arcades.

>>8029501
Zoomers are people who didn't get to enjoy the internet before web 3.0 and globohomo raped it.

>>8030774
Have a day off mate

>>8029403
The last game I cared about scoring in was Starfox 64. After playing enough to where I am guaranteed to beat the game everytime it was the scoring that kept me coming back for more. I can't think of any other 5th gen or newer game like that.

>>8029403
When I was growing up in the 90s and 2000s my family would track high scores in various games and we'd try to beat each other's high scores.

The ones I remember focusing on the most were Super Mario Bros (this got ruined when we found the one up trick though), a few Shmups, the Tony Hawk series, and SSX Tricky.

Achievements being added into games in the mid 2000s barically supplanted higgh scores (and also finding cool hidden secrets and cheat codes...)

>>8029403
The only time I really recall actively trying to get a good score was in Sonic 2, where you would get a continue if you got a high enough score at the end of an act.
>>8030369
>Your actual cognizant childhood doesn’t really start until you’re like 10.
Nonsense. I have distinct memories of being 7 years old and standing on top of my bathroom sink in order to reach something on top of a cabinet.

>>8031563
Poor Jesus
>cries
Christmas was his birthday so he'd only get ONE game per year!

Is score an accurate representation of skill? Like in platformers you can rack up points by killing every enemy or other repetitive tasks that a skilled player would fly over and not care about.

>>8032845
>Is score an accurate representation of skill?
it always depends on the game
games on where the better you play the most score you get would make it so score is a measure of skill

>>8032845
It generally tends not to be, since the techniques for minmaxing score are always different than truly skilled play and you will wind up going out of your way to fulfill them for a high score, be it via an exploit or not.

>>8031042
you're like 14
go outside

>>8030369
>Your actual cognizant childhood doesn’t really start until you’re like 10.
Literally literally retarded

>>8029403
80's thing, there were some magazines in the late 80's, early 90's that put your name all the way up if you sent them screenshots, so a lot of kids crazed over high scores

>>8032725
>>8033000
Yeah of course you have SOME memories prior to 10 years old. But I would strongly argue that around 10 or so is when you actually start forming your own tastes and opinions of things and also when you start recognizing bad games and movies and such.

>>8033663
You wouldn't do anything strongly. Even with your retarded argument you caved as soon as a couple people called you on your bullshit.

>>8033946
I never once made the claim that you have no memories prior to age 10, retards. I said you’re a clueless little kid when you’re still a single digit age.

>>8033950
In fact I’ll even say it’s weird you all even interpreted it that way.

My first system was a Game Boy and I really cared about my high scores in Tetris.

>>8033663
This is such hopeless backtracking, just be glad you're on an anonymous imageboard so you can stop posting on the thread already.

>>8034003
>No you were a fucking clueless little kid during most of the fifth gen. Your actual cognizant childhood doesn’t really start until you’re like 10.

That’s my entire original post. Tell me where I made the claim that people don’t remember anything before age 10 and I’ll concede.

>>8034014
Yeah and that's wrong, dipshit. Backpedal some more.

>>8034023
Explain why it’s wrong and I’ll concede. I’m not backpedaling. I completely stand by my post here >>8033663.

>>8034030
Nobody cares what you stand by, you posted something wrong and we can all see why.

>>8033950
>>8033951
Just embarrassing

>>8030369
Born in 89, got a SNES for christmas at age 5 and played an old NES at age 4. I played SNES and NES with my friends and we never gave a fuck about high scores. We never played arcade games either because that wasn't popular where I lived and we probably weren't old enough to care. I feel like you had to be born 83' or before to care about high scores, and that's assuming you got into video games right away.

High scores were always something I never understood. I never gave a fuck if it reset when I lost all my lives, I just cared about beating the game. It always confused me in games like Super Mario that showed score counters.

be serious boomers, did you actually compare high scores in games like Super Mario?

>>8029403
What's not to understand? Speedrunning is a big thing now, and that's just replacing a scoring system with playtime as the comparison. It's all ways to compete with yourself and others in a given game.

>>8034131
See >>8034014

>>8034102
You accused me of making a claim I never made and you accused me of backpedaling which I also didn’t do.

>>8029403
Born in 81. No one gave two shits about high score. On home consoles it was a holdover of arcade game design and only really mattered in a few games where you needed the score to be something specific to trigger something or other.

The whole high score bit remained big in popular culture for a while because writers who grew up with pinball or when arcades were big and high scores were dick measuring kept thinking that was a thing well in to the 90s. But that's the nature of pop culture writing, they're always 10-20 years behind because the young people take that long to work themselves in to writing jobs and then have to tell the fogies that's not how it works any more.

High score is still a thing, just now it's who holds speed running records, but you can go your whole life playing games and not giving two shits about that too.

>>8034853
>it's still coping
Autism. Not even once.

>>8035135
There was an episode of I think CSI where some chick was made out to be a massive gamer because she "held the high score in all the biggest MMORPGs"

>>8035214
Still no actual response I see.

>>8035379
Kek I love when out of touch cop procedural writers attempt to do video game related episodes.

Survival (beating the game) was more important than score. Story and was least important of all because most games outside of jarpigs barely had one

>>8035618
You'll be able to remember the """actual response""" when you're older than 10, zoomlet

>>8031681
>Icycalm
nice bait, too bad there are too many new people in nu /vr/ to bite it

>>8036801
See >>8034014. I’m waiting.

>>8036818
>im coping
And seething
It pleases me

i record my scores against each other when i clear a sonic game, but those games have pretty well thought out scoring systems.

>>8037338
Still waiting.

It was basically Boomer version of Zoomer Cheevos, or Millenial version of "100%-ing", not veryone cared, but a good portion of serious players did.

>>8030369
lmao, get a load at this fagg, thinks he knows me better than myself

>>8029403
no
it was just an 80s nip thing to do, putting highscore counters in games where it doesnt matter

>>8038970
the only time scores have ever mattered is in arcades and/or home console ports of arcade games
so no

>>8029403
born in 83 and never gave a fuck myself or seen anyone do

except
>>8029485

>>8029403
In most platformers like Mario or Sonic, people generally didn't care at all. Sometimes score would give you extra lives, continues or other bonuses and you'd care about it. But there are a lot of games where the scoring is just something extra and not well-thought-out. In those games, people might compare scores like that for fun and make up challenges based around it, but it's generally not taken seriously.

>>8039279
imo the perfect way to make Japanese games would be to have a western consultant there to tell them when they’re doing stupid Japanese shit.

>>8029472
based
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX5_Ada91qY

>>8029472
It’s 7-Eleven, not 7-11.

>>8030369
>admitting to be a potato-teir retard who wasnt self-aware until 5th grade
Your opinion has no value.

>>8041798
See >>8033663 and >>8033950. Already clarified my statement and I stand by it. Before around 9 or 10 you don’t know shit about shit.

>>8041807
Wow, you were able to self-reflect on your own retardedness. Hope it didn't take 20+ years for you to become that cognizant.

>>8041813
Refute my statement then. Otherwise you’ve got nothing.

>>8031531
Seriously, not saying i remember every thought process from that age, but i have memories from being in pre-pre school daycare, and there are mush brains out there that can't remember their elementary school days? Sounds more like their brains blocking out trauma if anything.

>>8033663
Bullshit. You know why Nintendo man-babies exist? Its cause they played those games when they were very young and that formed their tastes. Just admit you had some shitty childhood or have a shit memory.

Oldfag born in '77 here, and in my neck of the woods high scores were really important to myself, my cousins and our friends. We all grew up in the age of Atari and the arcade, and to get the highest score in Pac-Man or missile Command or Asteroids (to name a few) was a really big deal. Of course, once the NES and the various Sega consoles came out, it became more about beating the games and getting the high score was put on the back burner.

Nowadays, for myself at least, high scores only really matter if I'm playing something like Tetris or Columns. Otherwise, I'm not really bothered....

>>8041835
I got childhood memories I didn't block out because I got touched by an uncle, but you do you king.

>>8042028
I’ll clarify further: I’m not saying you have a fully adult brain at fucking 10 years old, you guys. I’m saying that’s around the age you start forming more independent opinions of things and becoming more clearly aware of the world around you. I think that’s also about the age where kids start having sleepovers and shit.

>>8041894
I see what you’re saying but Nintendo’s games are actually good and they deservedly have warm nostalgic feelings toward them. As a little kid I played plenty of total garbage movie and TV licensed games not really realizing how bad they were. At a young age, you’ll play or watch whatever because it beats doing homework and shit.

>>8042045
>sleepovers
Oh so it was a friend's dad?

Born in 89 and honestly the only time when I've cared about high scores were in the early days of XBLA and trying to be the top player on my friends list in stuff like Geometry Wars and Zuma

Anons like this >>8041918 experiences are appreciated.

Cringe at late 80s / 90s posts. You weren't even alive when it was a thing, you niggers.

>>8042604
No one under the age of 35 should post on this board desu.

>>8029403
Hell yeah. Especially pinball machines. You'd get a high score only to come back and see a person you've never met his initials on top of the table. It went back and forth. We had a rivalry. Never met the guy.

>>8042637
Could've been a woman for all I know.

>>8042641
Only if she has a penis.

>>8042641
i remember seeing this one like 40yo lady who absolutely used to shred the stargate cabinet at a local burger joint
everyone else lasted like 45seconds but that lady could go for essentially as long as she wanted
she was always nice enough to let the kids play tho

>>8037984
>still coping

>>8042776
My dad met my mom at the arcade. She was a boss at Pacman ( at least that's how he remembers it)

>>8042878
I've thought about playing Pacman against her. Just to check. But it would have to be that version on a cabinet.

>>8042892
I want to see the person my dad fell in love with.

>>8041798
kek, owned.
imagine being so braindead that you don't have any solid memories prior to the age of 10

>>8042776
When was that? If several years ago then she could have spent a lot of time playing when there weren't that many games around and you just gitted gud at what there was.

You guy can harp on me about the memories thing if you want but that’s not even a claim I never once said that lol. Poor reading comprehension on your part.

>>8044035
it was a long time ago
she prolly just played the shit out of defender back in the 80s when she was a little girl

also
>tfw no 80s arcade-junkie gf to euthanize humanoids with

>>8029403
mostly no, but depends on the game