Score? What's it Good For?
Originally uploaded Jan. 13th, 2024.
A dive into Degeneracy.
For a personal project, I’ve been playing a lot of Raizing/Eighting games, particularly their STGs. Battle Garegga, Batrider, Kingdom Grandprix, and Dimahoo. These games are weird, confusing, frustrating… but extremely charming, to say the least.
But as I stream these games to my friends, and browse age old forums to figure out strategies to navigate problems the games present, an age-old topic of contention comes to mind every now and then.
Playing for score.
It’s a simple concept. Push yourself to the end, get a number documenting your efforts. A cause and effect. An in, and an out.
But is it outdated?
The short answer is “no.” It never was, it never will be. But of course, no question has a simple answer like that, so let’s take a sec to think this through.
I can understand why some people would think it’s unnecessary. Like… you wouldn’t tie score to a visual novel (unless it’s tied to gameplay. The only limit of the medium is the developer’s vision.). The case I’m trying to make is that it’s always about author intention. If score isn’t there, it probably wasn’t intended to be.
But I like it, damn it.
In STGs, this is a no-brainer. The first time you get a 1CC is awesome! But… there has to be incentive to return. There has to be a reason to show off everything you’ve learned, a reason to dance with death, a reason to avoid shooting things too quickly or shooting things down immediately. A game’s mastery must be rewarded somehow, and figuring out how rank works and translating that knowledge to gameplay is some of the coolest problem solving in any video game.
In a sense, speedruns are also a way of playing for “score” as well. A band of people working together to discover the esoterics of a game and breaking the limits of what was intended to finish in the fastest possible time sounds like playing for score to me.
Even platformers like Sonic 2 have a reason to have a score counter. It helps give a purpose to each of their individual systems and ties them together in a neat little package.
Again, I get why some people think it’s a little outdated. But – there’s an argument to be made to keep them – it helps pushes the community for these games forward.
To simplify:
To play for score is to become like Icarus, testing fate and seeing how close you can get to the sun before burning up in a fantastic display. To dance on the rays of light, wiping your brow as you carry on. To play for score is to let the onlookers below know that they’ll have to carry on the torch once you pass on, leaving them the keys to the future.
To play for score is to kindle that damn flame, and let it burn.
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