History Main / PinballScoring

In most sports and a number of video games, ScoringPoints is the best way to keep track of your success. But when you think about it, what is a point? Can you quantify its value? Is a point in one game necessarily as valuable as a point in another game? Think about such things [[FridgeLogic long enough]], and you may come to the conclusion that a point is really nothing more than a bizarre variation of currency, easily redeemed for fame and glory.

* This happened to the ''DevilMayCry'' series after the first game. In one, 50,000 red orbs took a minimum of two or three playthroughs to get, but the player could gain 50,000 red orbs in the second or third games in the first five or so levels.

** In ''Imperishable Night'', game eight, the player collects Time Points in order to raise the value, either by shooting as a human character, or grazing bosses' bullets as a youkai character.

-->Scoring is quite unique in pinball; the game is notorious for being generous with "points," a unit of measurement analogous to the haypenny, the microsecond, and the nanometer -- they are all units of measurement that are too utterly small to be of any use whatsoever.

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* Seen in the arcade shoot-em-up ''GigaWing'' (pictured above), needed because of how the game's score multiplying system works. A good player can easily get a ''score multiplier'' in the millions (meaning that the point value of every destroyed {{mook}} is multiplied by a million), and decent final scores start in the trillions. In fact, this aspect of the scoring system is touted in the AttractMode.

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* In standard Japanese {{Mahjong}}, all hand values are rounded up to the nearest 100 at the end of calculations. As a result, some competitions and games will show scores in thousands, e.g. 7.7 (thousand) instead of 7,700.

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*** For those confused about the kanji in the picture: the rightmost kanji (''ten'') means "point", the second rightmost (''man'') is for the number 10,000, the third rightmost (''oku'') is for 100 million, and so on. These kanji appear in the Japanese version only.

* In the flash game ''Winterbells'', your score doubles every time you hit a bird. This can lead to scores in the quadrillions without much difficulty.

* In the freeware game ''Icy Towers'', the points awarded for a combo scale quadratically with its length. Unsurprisingly, the high score list is really just a "longest combo" list, since it is very possible for a good player to get three digit combos and it is much more difficult to start a combo anywhere except the beginning of the game.

* Between [[ModernWarfare Modern Warfare ]] 1 and 2, every XP event you get has a zero added onto its original value (TDM kills are worth 100 instead of 10, etc.).

* A simple comparison for collectible card game fans: In ''MagicTheGathering'', creatures' powers and toughnesses are generally in the single digits; a 10/10 creature is a big deal. A ''{{Pokemon}}'' with 10 HP, on the other hand, is a OneHitPointWonder; their HP max out at about 150. ''{{Digimon}}'' creatures have stats in hundreds, and ''YuGiOh'' cards have stats on the order of 2000, with some exceptions. ''DuelMasters'' creatures are in the thousands. Don't even think of using these figures to determine which creatures would win in a fight...

** The points go to the corresponding houses in Hogwarts anyway, though it's not a one-to-one ratio- at one point in the book it's stated that Harry won 30 points for Gryffindor in a match. Though again, this matters only insofar as Harry Potter keeps getting his house docked about 30 points a day. Nobody seems to use singletons these days....
*** [[{{Fanon}} There is no evidence from the books]] that points scored in matches are added to house points.
*** The 150 points from the snitch are explained in [[AllThereInTheManual Quidditch through the Ages]], where it all started when a Golden Snidget (thing the snitch, just it's a bird) was released during a match with 150 galleons promised as a reward to the one who could catch it. The number was then kept when the Snidget catching was actually incorporated into the game.

** GuitarHero and RockBand both subvert this trope; single notes are worth 50 points (with a multiplier of one,) two-note chords are worth 100, and so on and so forth in Guitar Hero. These values are halved in Rock Band. However, sustained-notes give one point for each 25th of a beat the note is sustained (with a multiplier of one.)

[[caption-width:384:"Every [[strike:10,000]] strike:1 trillion points, I smoke two joints."]]

In most sports and a number of video games, ScoringPoints is the best way to keep track of your success. But when you think about it, what is a point? Can you quantify its value? Is a point in one game necessarily as valuable as a point in another game? Think about such things [[FridgeLogic long enough]], and you may come to the conclusion that a point is really nothing more than a bizarre variation of currency, easily redeemed for fame and glory.

Some games are simply more generous with their scoring systems than others. Some games will give you 10 points for an action that would earn you 100 points in another. Zeros are particularly easy to append to scores. Yet in the end, the extra powers of 10 are meaningless and serve only to make one's performance look that much more impressive.

There is a practical variant of this technique, in which the smaller, meaningless digits are used for a purpose separate from scoring as many points as possible. When used this way, the score is really more like two scores placed end to end.

* The most visible use of this trope lies in the pinball medium. Machines routinely display scores in the millions, and often even greater, depending on the machine.
** ''Attack From Mars'' is particularly noteworthy. The skill shot at the beginning of the game is worth 10 million points. In the wizard mode, your goal is to earn 5 billion points, at which time you are awarded 5 billion more.
** Notable aversion: ''NBA Fastbreak'', which has a scoring system surprisingly closer to real-life basketball. High scores are typically in the hundreds.

*** ''{{Metroid}} Prime Pinball'' caps at 199,999,990. Hackers discovered this quickly; legitimate players followed.

* A simple comparison for collectible card game fans: In ''MagicTheGathering'', creatures' powers and toughnesses are generally in the single digits; a 10/10 creature is a big deal. A ''{{Pokemon}}'' with 10 HP, on the other hand, is a OneHitPointWonder; their HP max out at about 150. ''{{Digimon}}'' creatures have stats in hundreds, and ''YuGiOh'' cards have stats on the order of 2000, with some exceptions. ''DuelMasters'' creatures are in the thousands. Don't even think of using these figures to determine which creatures would win in a fight...
** People have tried to make [[PowerCreepPowerSeep conversion systems]]. It ends in madness.

* When a classic gambling game such as poker is played for 'fun' (when the winner gets [[BraggingRightsReward little more than bragging rights over his buddies]]), it's routine for players to agree that the lowest-valued poker chip is worth $1,000, or $1 million, with higher-valued chips being multiples of that base. Everyone wants to feel like JamesBond.
** The same thing happens in gambling tournaments when played for money. A casino tournament with a $15 buyin will rarely give the player $15 in tournament chips; $1500 is a far more likely starting amount. Of course, the chips are useless outside of the tournament, and a player's winnings tend to be determined by a payout based on elimination order, so there isn't a need for a "tournament dollar" to correspond to real money in any way as long as all players start with the same amount.

**** Having the blinds at 10/20 allows them to be raised to 15/30 at the next blind level, which is only a 50% increase. A 1/2 blind can only be increased to 2/4, a 100% increase that shocks the game play more.

* Tennis has a bizarre 15-30-40-game point system. Forty used to be 45, but was too hard to say quickly. The points corresponded to degrees on a circle--thus, if you won 4 units of 15 degrees 6 times (enough to win a set), you made it around the circle. This weird symbolism exists because Europeans in the 17th century were obsessed with geometry.

** The points go to the corresponding houses in Hogwarts anyway, though it's not a one-to-one ratio- at one point in the book it's stated that Harry won 30 points for Gryffindor in a match. Though again, this matters only insofar as Harry Potter keeps getting his house docked about 30 points a day. Nobody seems to use singletons these days....

* {{Rhythm Game}}s use this frequently, especially when they base their scores on a constantly increasing multiplier. Scores in the millions are expected for songs lasting less than five minutes.

* To a lesser degree, this trope is ''everywhere'' in gaming. Even in the earliest, least ridiculous examples, you will find that shooting a ship, clearing a ''{{Tetris}}'' line or [[GoombaStomp stomping a Goomba]] earns you 100 points. As opposed to one.
** Technically, the lowest score you could earn for doing something in ''SuperMarioBros'' was 50, for breaking a normal brick as Super Mario. Still, why stomping a Goomba was worth 100 points, rather than 2, is a mystery for the ages.

*** For those confused about the kanji in the picture: the rightmost kanji (''ten'') means "point", the second rightmost (''man'') is for the number 10,000, the third rightmost (''oku'') is for 100 million, and so on. These kanji appear in the Japanese version only.

* Averted in many Konami arcade beat-'em-ups of the early 1990s, like ''TheSimpsons'' and ''TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles'' - everything worth a point was worth exactly one point. Even the FinalBoss.

* ''[[CapcomVsWhatever Tatsunoko Vs Capcom]]'' measure damages in this manner. If you've been playing or watching the Japanese version, and have some knowledge of kanji, you'll notice that damages start in the ''ten thousands'' and can rise to the ''billions''. The English translation for non-Japanese regions revealed it in all its glory - a magazine screenshot shows Ryu landing a [[KamehameHadoken Hadoken]] for 19 hits and 8.655 billion damage. Yeah.

** Come to think of it, what's the point of scoring in ''any'' FightingGame? Is there more value in landing a spinning piledriver than there is in a fireball? And how can it be easily quantified? (Granted, there's always the personal satisfaction of a spinning piledriver, but that's just me.)

* In the freeware game ''Icy Towers'', the points awarded for a combo scale quadratically with its length. Unsurprisingly, the high score list is really just a "longest combo" list, since it is very possible for a good player to get three digit combos and it is much more difficult to start a combo anywhere except the beginning of the game.

* Spades: Making a bid earns your team points in quantities of 10 per trick, while the ones digit of your score is reserved for counting overtricks. Once you reach 10 overtricks, your score is penalized accordingly and the ones digit wraps around.

* Many video games with a continue feature increment your score by one point whenever you continue. Thus, high scores that end in 0 show more efficient gameplay than those that do not.

* During single-player games in the ''SuperSmashBros.'' series, your score is deducted 99 points for using what the game deems "stale moves". Assuming that no other units digit bonuses exist (and at least one game has such a bonus), the ones digit serves as a count of how many times you have done this.

[[caption-width:384:"Every [[strike:10,000]] [[strike:1 trillion points]] 1,000, I smoke two joints."]]

* A simple comparison for collectible card game fans: In ''MagicTheGathering'', creatures' powers and toughnesses are generally in the single digits; a 10/10 creature is a big deal. A ''{{Pokemon}}'' with 10 HP, on the other hand, is extremely wimpy, because their HP max out at about 150. ''{{Digimon}}'' creatures have stats in hundreds, and ''YuGiOh'' cards have stats on the order of 2000, with some exceptions. ''DuelMasters'' creatures are in the thousands. Don't even think of using these figures to determine which creatures would win in a fight...

** Somebody coded ''Psycho Pinball'' wrong; it's the only pinball game that has a {{Cap}}. The score loops back to zero after 999,999,990 - you can count the billions in your head, but it's not the same.

** And let's not even talk about the {{Dragonball}} TradingCardLame, when it existed. "OverNineThousand" was literal.