History Main / PinballScoring

* ''Pinball/{{Ghostbusters}}'' code is recycled from ''[=GoT=]'' and allows for scores of similar magnitude. While the multipliers have been dialed back to "only" a 6x playfield multiplier (gotten by stacking the 2x and 3x), each skill shot allows the player to gain 10% of their current score. Some modes, such as Stay Puft and PKE Frenzy, can be worth hundreds of millions by themselves, even without multipliers, and then multiplicatively stacking 10% on top of that is just icing.

* Scoring in ''Pinball/Batman66'' can reach absurd levels due in part to the large variety of stackable multipliers, as well as certain "minor villain" power-ups that can keep those multipliers active for the whole ball, or even the whole ''game''. A typical "good" game is around 1 billion, but if you're PAPA 20 champ Escher Lefkoff and really stretch the limits of the game... scores can reach into the ''trillions''.

* In {{TabletopGame/Pinochle}}, some versions give 10 points for Aces around, while some versions it is worth 100 points. All other values work the same. In a game with 10 for Aces, game is usually played to 500, but in the other version, game would be 5000.

Meanwhile, the extremely quick succession of hundreds of small numbers on a scoring readout or on a screen has both a purely visual appeal and utility. Not only it communicates a feeling of achievement, but it also makes the whole process more dynamic and provides important feedback (not unlike flashing lights and other telltales in pinball and action games - the feedback even scales, with more decimals places flashing meaning better result). The ultrafast numbers also connect with a host of stereotypes - from a frantic rush of a million-dollar jackpot to nail-biting sports programmes where one-thousandths of a second decide the winner. Finally, from game design standpoint, more granular points allow for more intricate scoring rules. Soccer has 1s, basketball has 2s and 3s, but in a videogame, you can land a hit that satisfies six different conditions and is multiplied by two different modifiers, plus a randomized factor. This means that a score doesn't have to be legible, but after the game, it must cumulatively measure the exact merit of a current playstyle - with sports-like precision of fractions of a percent.

If the game is in Japanese or Chinese, scores will sometimes have digit separator kanji to keep scores readable. 万 (''man'') is ten thousand, 億 (''oku'') is one hundred million, and, if you're lucky, you may see 兆 (''chou''), or one trillion.[[note]](Unlike in the West, East Asian languages subdivide numbers four digits at a time, rather than three.)[[/note]]

* In Creator/{{Capcom}}'s ''Pinball/{{Breakshot}}'', the dot matrix displays shows a 7-digit electro-mechanical-style scoring reel, thus making the rollover score a comparatively modest 10 million, but a decent [[WizardMode Cutthroat Countdown]] can do this easily and the multiball ScoreMultiplier can also make 10 million an easy goal to achieve. Mixing the two can possibly score over 100 million, and rotation Cutthroat Countdown with three balls could theoretically be worth up to ''225 million''.

* There was actually a [[UsefulNotes/TheGreatVideoGameCrashof1983 cancelled 1983]] ComicStrip/{{Garfield}} game that had a rom where someone got a score of 23,418,862,404,272,676,864. Yes, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield_(Atari_game) really.]] Of course, as the official game was cancelled and the score actually rolls over at 1 million, it's debatable whether or not to even consider this a legitimate example.

* ''[[VideoGame/PuyoPuyo Puyo Puyo~n]]'' in the Dreamcast version allows the player to select a 27x16 grid in Endless mode, which allows for a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw4mE5GIdEw 108 combo]]. The points jump up exponentially for each hit of the combo. There are also a ridiculous amount of new icons to represent the literal trillions of garbage blocks that would drop on an opponent for that combo.

* ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'' sort of [[PowerCreep built up to this]]. While the lowest ATK any monster in the game that has an ATK at all is 100, there are still times where the other digits are used (like an 850 ATK monster gets its strength cut in half to 425). It is uncommon to see any low-level monster (4 or lower) with an ATK of less than 1500 in most player's decks, and a deck with only "vanilla" (no effect monsters) will have ATK around 1900. Low-powered cards are mainly used for special strategies or, more commonly, packing material.

** In ''Galaxies'' and ''Retro Evolved 2'', every enemy drops "geoms" when killed, which increase your score multiplier by one, which does not reset if you die. After collecting them (and it's hard to ''not'' collect them after a while) your score will start to increase [[IncrediblyLamePun geometrically]]. This is especially apparent in ''Retro Evolved 2'', where extra lives are no longer given after a fixed amount of points, but after every power of ten.

* Inverted with the UsefulNotes/SegaGameGear version of ''VideoGame/PinballDreams'', which reduced all scores by a factor of 100.

* Inverted with the SegaGameGear version of ''VideoGame/PinballDreams'', which reduced all scores by a factor of 100.

* Stern's ''[[Pinball/StarWarsStern Star Wars]]'' was also designed to have scores roughly on par with ''Pinball/GameOfThrones'', where 1 billion is considered a solid game. Rather than having persistent playfield multipliers, the player is able to control a set of persistent shot multipliers that can multiply any single shot by up to 40x. In addition, one code revision had a {{Good Bag Bug|s}} which caused Victory Multiball to last far longer than intended, and left many of the major mode multiball scenes' shots persistently lit. While getting to Victory Multiball is not the easiest thing to accomplish, those who ''were'' able to found themselves putting up 11- and 12-digit scores with relative ease (and it would indeed display all 12 digits). Needless to say, this has since been fixed.

* Technically, the lowest score you could earn for doing something in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros'' was 50, for breaking a normal brick as Super Mario (or for each tick of time you have left at the end of a stage). Still, why stomping a Goomba was worth 100 points, rather than 2, is a mystery for the ages.

** The ''Aotenjou'' ("[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin blue-sky ceiling]]", basically "the sky's the limit") [[HouseRules House Rule]] is this trope applied full force. Normally, hands with 4 or fewer han are scored using an exponential formula with a soft {{Cap}} of 8,000 points. Aotenjou uses this formula for ''everything'' and removes the usual caps, so a 13-han hand (which would normally hit the hard cap of 32,000 points) is worth over 2 million points.

* ''Literature/SpaceJamANewLegacy'' involves a basketball gaming app, and thus it's not a regular 2 points for a regular shot and 3 for a distant one, instead there are all sorts of bonuses, such as style, special movements, and minigames, [[{{Calvinball}} often showing up at random]]. The Tune Squad ends the first quarter losing by hundreds of points!

* ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' games normally permit you to hit for up to [[{{Cap}} 9,999]] damage. However, ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' allows you to apply the "Break Damage Limit" attribute to a weapon, which lets you hit for up to 99,999. For conventional players, this attribute is ''necessary'' for {{Bonus Boss}}es, which can have many times the HP of the penultimate boss (120,000 HP); the last boss in the Monster Arena has 10,000,000 HP!

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' has a BonusBoss with an initial HP total over 50,000,000! The damage cap is still at 9999, and only [[LimitBreak Quickenings]] and some [[SummonMagic Espers]] can break it, making the battle mostly a matter of endurance and trying to use [[DeathOfAThousandCuts fast but weak attacks]] that are less penalized by the cap. It gets even worse when the boss's HP falls below 50% and it activates a passive ability that reduces all incoming damage by 30% after the cap is applied, effectively lowering that cap to 6999.

[[IdleGame Idle games]] tend to take this to the extreme, with typical games like ''VideoGame/CookieClicker'' often having counts eventually ranging from the quintillions to the decillions. Some games come very close to the 1.8 × 10[[superscript:308]] limit of a CPU's 64-bit rational number register, displaying such numbers in programmer's notation like 1.8e308; other games like ''VideoGame/AntimatterDimensions'' have custom code to go beyond this limit, and even the exponent becomes subject to pinball scoring, with numbers like 1e200,000,000 becoming commonplace. Idle games released in the early 2020s have used notations that include more Es to raise 10 to additional powers of 10 and then the exponent as a way or the F notation to show how many times the number is raised to the power of 10, like ''VideoGame/ExponentialIdle'' letting you gain over ee40,000 dollars (that's 10^(10^40,000)), or ''VideoGame/ThePrestreestuck'' instead making the point limit F1.8e308 (the number next to F showing that it's 10^(10^(10^(10^(10... repeat 1.8e308 times). This has the effect of undermining the "idle" component, as a year's worth of passive play might be equal to only an hour's worth of active play, as upgrades increase the rate of increase exponentially.