Page 22 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #38 FREE Edition

What is NES High Score? An Introduction to NES Speedrunning and High Score Competitions
By Steven Lynn (8-bit Steve)
Video Games with a scoring system have been
around for a very long time. In fact, Guinness World Records lists 1976’s Sea Wolf as the first video game to record scores. This means that the idea of a high score
in a video game was around before I was even born,
and about nine years before the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States. While
there were definitely games that tracked time-based scoring, like 1982’s Pole Position, high scores based on an increasing point total were still the central focus of competition in the early days of arcade gaming. This competition sparked an idea by a man named Walter Day, who started his own scoreboard website called Twin Galaxies. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia regarding Walter Day and Twin Galaxies:
“In mid-1981, Walter Day, founder
of Twin Galaxies, Inc., visited more
than 100 video game arcades over
four months, recording the high
scores that he found on each game.
On November 10, he opened his own
arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa, naming
it Twin Galaxies. On February 9,
1982, his database of records was
released publicly as the Twin
Galaxies National Scoreboard.
Twin Galaxies became known as
the official scoreboard, arranging contests between top players. Twin Galaxies’ first event attracted international media attention for gathering the first teams of video
game stars. Top players in North Carolina and California were formed into state teams that faced off in a ‘California Challenges North Carolina All-Star Playoff,’ playing on 17 different games in Lakewood, California, and Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. California defeated North Carolina 10–7 over the weekend of August 27–30, 1982. Similar competitions were also conducted during the summers
of 1983 and 1984 when Day organized the players in
many U.S. states to form teams and compete in high score contests for the Guinness Book of World Records. The states included California, North Carolina, Washington, Illinois, Nebraska, Ohio, Michigan, Idaho, Florida, New York, Oklahoma, Alaska, Iowa, and Kansas.” - Wikipedia 2022
WHAT WEBSITES TRACK NES HIGH SCORES TODAY?
While it is no longer owned by Walter Day, Twin Galaxies is still the oldest and largest worldwide organization that tracks video game scores, including NES scores. The very
best players in the world have been competing there to hold the top high scores in their games of choice ever since the NES was released in North America in 1985.
A number of websites have tried to compete with Twin Galaxies over the years that have come and gone. I do
not consider any of them reputable or credible, with the exception of one website that is very new to the scene: In February 2021 a group of score enthusiasts got together and created the website LVLUPScore. This site was designed to include the best ideas from other websites and remove as many of the downsides that people disliked. I have been using the site since its first year of existence and I am very pleased with it overall. The community has seemed to adopt it as well because the site has grown significantly in just its first few years.
HOW DO NES SPEEDRUNS DIFFER FROM NES HIGH SCORES?
A speedrun, in general, is an attempt to play through to
the end of any given game
in the shortest amount of
time possible, ignoring score entirely. Speedruns are broken down by categories. The most popular category is generally “Any%.” The Any% category in
speedrunning means that anything goes: any glitches, tricks, or other tactics are allowed to push the completion time as low as possible. There are still some instances where tactics and tricks are banned in Any% runs, but this is usually when they are so gamebreaking that they warrant a new category. There are plenty of other category types for speedruns, like glitchless, 100%, low%, No major glitches, and many others. Any% is where speedrunning really shines though, because it keeps the runs short
and the incredible tricks plentiful. So then, what’s the difference between speedruns and high scores on the NES?
NES high scores are nearly the polar opposite of speedruns. The only scores that are tracked by time
are games that already have an in-game timer, such as Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, Track & Field, Slalom, Wario’s Woods, most of the racing games on the console, and of course Excitebike. As a general archetype of high score competitions, the longer you play the game the higher your score goes. Glitches are banned in almost all cases,
22
OLD SCHOOL GAMER MAGAZINE • ISSUE #38