Sometimes, it's more about the numbers than the letters.
NICE CLEAR!!
— Text shown upon clearing a stage in Sutte Hakkun
You've just beaten a level and a screen comes up tallying up the points you got from the coins you collected, and from any bonus objectives you accomplished. The points are totaled up from each source and added into your overall score. Even in games where The Points Mean Nothing, this screen is a popular way to give the player a breather between levels and a sense of advancement.
Popular categories include:
- Level Clear - A flat number of points just for finishing the level. Sometimes the amount depends on the difficulty setting.
- Time - Extra points depending on how quickly the level was completed, or, more rarely, how long it was survived.
- Enemy - Points for number and type of enemies defeated; much of the time, these points are given during the level.
- Health - Points are given for excess health, sometimes draining straight from the health meter for effect, then re-filling the health bar for the next level.
- Collectibles - Coins and other pickups. Sometimes unused items such as Smart Bombs award points, similar to Health.
- Style \ Discovery - Finding shortcuts or clearing obstacles in an interesting way.
- Flawless Bonuses - Extra points for satisfying certain conditions, such as taking no damage, finding every secret, not defeating any enemies, etc.
- Difficulty - Harder difficulty levels award more points for completing harder challenges.
Some games just show you how long you took to beat the level. Often it will also show the "Par" time the developers of the game think the level can be completed in. Like you've just sweated your ass off to finish the level, it took you 48 minutes to finish and it was really hard to get it even that quickly. So below your 48:13, is the developer's Par time: 1:45. Well, maybe not totally unreachable, you just do like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day when he explained how he was able to toss cards into a hat and never miss once: "Oh, not much practice, eight, ten hours a day, every day for six months."
In newer games, Scoring Points are often replaced with statistics and a rating of the player's performance. In this case, they're vulnerable to Rank Inflation. A super-trope of Factor Breakdown, if the factors aren't shown at the end of a stage and are not necessarily about score.
Examples:
- ANNO: Mutationem: Getting a Game Over in the Mysterious Console DLC displays the total score for all the enemies defeated and the progress made in the roguelike minigame.
- Balloon Kid does it when counting the balloons Alice collected in each stage.
- The Battletoads Arcade Game tallied up the number of enemies of each type killed by each player at the end of each stage.
- Blast Corps
- Children of Mana displays one, after defeating a boss.
- Command & Conquer had this in every game. The first game had the best score screen, though. Great Shot playing in the background, kills tallied up by a line of people dying and buildings exploding (for Nod anyways, which had their own, awesome score screen music), fancy scaling effects on letters whenever you type in your initials, it was a real treat. Multiplayer and Skirmish matches also had similar score screens, the third games in particular gave you a timeline graph representing each player's progression in economy, units, and buildings and showing when each player won or lost and if they constructed a superweapon along with other stats such as kills, losses, total gross resources gathered, total money spent, etc. A newspaper ad
◊ for the game also had some grim fun with this trope, showing the portraits of a number of notorious dictators past and present (and Jacques Chirac) under the slogan "Previous High Scores".
- Contra
- Cradle Series: After each level, you're shown a screen that tallies up resources earned, as well as a time bonus.
- Critical Mass has one after every level.
- DanceDanceRevolution, as well as its Korean simile, Pump it Up
- Elite Beat Agents, Rock Band, Guitar Hero... it's a must for any rhythm game.
- beatmania has typically taken it a step further and placed backgrounds on them that depend on the grade, often containing female characters in swimsuits.
- Elite Beat Agents, Rock Band, Guitar Hero... it's a must for any rhythm game.
- Doom. It measures your monsters killed/artifacts found/secret areas discovered percentages, as well as the time taken, compared to the par time and then showing how much time in total you're taking on a single play-through of the game/episode.
- The web serial Dream High School. After you read through the (current) length, there's a bar showing everyone's combined Story Points as well as a leaderboard. If you have an account, you'll also see your Story Points stated in big text.
- Duke Nukem
- Dungeon Keeper
- Dynamite Headdy
- Early Fighting Games would do this, draining the fight timer and your health bar into end-of-round bonuses if you won the round. At least, as long as the idea of scoring points was around; Mortal Kombat dropped it after the first game, while Tekken never had it to begin with.
- Final Fantasy:
- Interestingly, Final Fantasy XIII has a score screen. It's used to determine how much TP (used for sub-abilities) you get, and for achievements. It was kept for the entire trilogy, in some cases also affecting item drop rates.
- Final Fantasy XV also does this, showing a "Report Card" and awarding EXP to your party based on Gameplay Grading for Time (how quickly you won the battle), Finesse (how well you utilize blindsides and counters), and Offense (how many enemies you defeat in an encounter).
- Fishdom: After each level, you're shown a screen that counts money earned based on blocks destroyed, points earned, time left, and trophies that you already own.
- The Gran Turismo series, albeit with prize money instead of score.
- Into Space: After each finished day, the game shows how much money you've earned from altitude, pickups, and other bonuses on such a screen.
- The King of Fighters, since 1994.
- Katamari Damacy
- Mega Man:
- Mega Man Zero gives you a score out of 100 based on multiple categories: time spent on stage, number of lives lost, how much damage you've taken, and number of Cyber Elves used, then adds them up to give you a letter grade. From Zero 2, you unlocked an EX Skill for getting an S rank.
- Mega Man Battle Network: After every battle, the player is rated on his performance and awarded either a chip or some quantity of Zenny, depending on his ranking.
- Monster Hunter caps off each quest you complete with several screens: one for the items you get as quest rewards and for breaking parts off a monster (and you get to see a freeze-frame of the hit that brought down the monster), another for items your Felyne partner picked up or stole from enemies (unless you didn't bring a cat with you), and two more to count up the money, Pokke Points or both you earned, and guild experience.
- Need for Speed: Underground
- Odin Sphere
- The Outfoxies shows a group of six televisions with images of the player's opponents. After each opponent is defeated, before the score it tallied, your character marks off their victim in a unique way:
- John Smith slaps a sign reading "DONE" on the screen.
- Betty Doe switches the television off.
- Eve shoots the screen.
- Bernard White punches the screen.
- Professor Ching types "DISPOSED".
- Danny and Demi cross out their victim with a crayon.
- Dweeb changes the channel to cartoons.
- Pinball games have an end-of-ball bonus if the player doesn't tilt.
- Professor Layton and the Curious Village
- Progressbar 95: After clearing each level, you are shown a screen which counts how many points you've earned from the stage based on collected blue segments (as opposed to the orange ones which don't give points unless you got a bonus with them) and other bonuses.
- Ristar has a dynamic one that adds up points while the titular character rockets his way to the next world with triumphant music playing in the background.
- Sonic the Hedgehog, often with a distinctive "cash register" sound when the game finishes totaling your score.
- Some modern games still use it, like Soulcalibur IV. Of course there are other ways to score points. Clothing Damage, Flawless Victory and so on.
- Star Fox
- Streets of Rage typically has a timer bonus, a level clear bonus, and a difficulty bonus (usually labeled as a clear bonus) when tallying up the bonus points at the end of each level. The third game replaced the timer bonus with a health bonus since the timer was removed.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- Super Mario World and various other games in the series.
- Paper Mario
- Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island and its sequel Yoshi's Story.
- Wario Land 4 had one at the end of every regular level, where your remaining hearts were poured into a little more cash for your level score, which is then added to your total cash reserves.
- Sutte Hakkun compares your score against your personal best. While you get no bonuses due to the nature of the scoring system, you are given a penalty if you use a hint before clearing the stage proper.
- Classic and similar modes in the Super Smash Bros. series quickly rack up your score after each fight. In Melee and beyond, the battles also have score screens.
- Sydney Hunter and the Caverns of Death: At the end of each level, the game shows how many emeralds, crystals, rubies, gold bars, and pineapples were collected.
- Tomb Raider had an end of level statistics in the first game showing how long it took you to complete the level, how many secrets you found, number of enemies killed, and so on. The next two games expanded the statistics to show how many health kits you used, ammo spent, hits made, and how far you traveled. Later games dropped the system.
- Touhou, for the first nine games, at least. The tenth had nothing of the sort, and the closest the following games have is briefly showing your stage clear bonus.
- Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team has this after completing each level.
