What’s the Point(s)?

I have taken possession of my SNES. Last night I was up until 4 am playing my favorite game Zombies Ate My Neighbors. It’s been probably 7 years since I even touched the system and it worked like a dream. There was something I noticed during the game… something I haven’t seen in a game in a while. Points.

You get points for every victim you save in ZAMN. And sometimes you get points for doing lots of damage, or not shooting bazookas, or for picking up gold. I didn’t really notice when games stopped keeping score. But seeing it now, it’s completely unnecessary. What is the difference how many points I get as long as I beat the game?

Keeping score, and getting the “high score” is something that consoles adopted after their predecessors (arcade games) had it. To me, it makes sense in arcades though. You’re with other people and the machine actually saves the leader board. On your home console, be it an Atari, NES, SNES or any others, you are probably the only person using that machine, and completing the game is all you really care about not weather or not you beat your old score… and lets be honest, as soon as you turn off your machine that score is erased anyway so what’s the… um… point?

I remember being a kid and, knowing that you got 50 points for every box you broke in Super Mario Bros., trying to break as many as I could to get the points. I used to do that with games on the Intelivision as well. I can’t say why points mattered but they did.

I don’t know when exactly it was that the score was left out of games, but I guess that just proves that I don’t miss it. It may have been in the PS1/N64 era of gaming that it was phased out, because I don’t remember it at all on any games on my Xbox or GameCube.

Imagine keeping score during Halo. Each character is worth a certain amount of points, and when they die the numbers float above their heads, like in Mario. A running score would be in the top corner, above your ammo, it would be a little ridiculous… so here’s hoping that’s a new feature in Halo 3.

All and all though, I think the keeping score thing was nice, it transitioned from arcade to home console and now it has gone the way of the well, arcade, oddly enough. It was a good time, and now it’s gone.