So while you could see the previous player’s high score if they didn’t reset it, the game’s use of a high score system was largely meant to incentive you to do better than your personal best rather than leave a record of your accomplishments for all future players to see. However, that system meant that a high score could actually become too high to beat, rendering the bonus round unobtainable unless the score (and the personal high score process) was reset. What kind of sick joke is that? Who would ever want to erase a high score? Well, if players can beat their high score within an allotted time, they get to play a short bonus round to make their Sea Wolf score climb even higher. However, the cabinet also features a prominent button that erased the current record. The game only recorded one high score at a time, and if a player beat that mark, the game replaces the old high score with a new one. While Sea Wolf was the first game to introduce the concept of a “high score,” its developers had a very different notion of what that term should mean (at least in terms of how we now think of high scores). Players needed to look through the periscope to view the crosshairs needed to line up shots, while onlookers could still watch the action unfold on the main screen. That incredibly simple concept was thematically enhanced by Sea Wolf‘s periscope-shaped controller. The faster the ship, the more points players receive if they hit it. The only real goal in the game was to shoot torpedoes at different ships. Like many arcade titles at the time, Sea Wolf relied on a pretty basic premise. The first video game to ever use the term “high score” was Midway’s 1976 arcade cabinet, Sea Wolf. While there are a few titles that are arguably worthy of that honor depending on how you choose to define the concept, each of those games iterated on the basic idea of a high score and eventually morphed it into the trope we know and love today. That raises the obvious question of which game actually used high scores first. Not only did many early games not feature tracked scoring systems, but it actually took quite some time for the industry to invent the concept of the high score as we typically define it today. Whatever form they take, modern games typically allow some way for players to upload and save their score for all to see. After all, what is a speedrun but a competition that turns clear times into ranked scores? While high scores aren’t quite as popular as they once were, the spirit of that concept lives on today in various forms. Some players devote their lives to perfecting runs that maximize their in-game points. To some hardcore gamers, acquiring an all-time high score is serious business. To be fair, many gamers love inserting quarters into arcade cabinets, outperforming rival players, and recording their scores after each session. The idea of playing a game to achieve a high score is one of those concepts that wormed its way into our pop-culture consciousness around the time that gaming itself reached the mainstream. Regardless, all modern video game scores and scoring mechanics stem from older titles and the fabled concept of the “high score.” Even games that don’t feature obvious scoring systems are usually secretly judging players (the Metroid series would reward players with different conclusions depending on how quickly they completed the game). Titles such as Devil May Cry 5 use scores to judge a player’s ability to weave together different attacks, while Tetris uses scores as a measure of a player’s critical thinking skills and ability to plan ahead. Tracked scores in video games come in different forms.
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