Highscore Nemeses

Nowhere is the fight for perfection more keenly illustrated than in the quest for a highscore. The game in question is often entirely arbitrary, but the goal itself is absolute: get the biggest collection of numbers to align itself at the top of your screen.

On some level, it’s man vs machine; organic brain-squidge vs crunchy computer guts. In 1989, the computer Deep Thought beat a humanoid called Levy at a game of chess. While it’s currently believed that no piece of software could ever beat one of us squishies at Go (the Japanese boardgame of militaristic stones), it’s sure as shit that you can’t beat a computer inside a videogame. You’re in that computer’s house, it is the God of you; you are enclosed in a realm that exists entirely within a set of rules determined by its cold, hard code. “Beating” a computer at something like a racing game is facing the epitome of dry condescension.

In actuality, a highscore-oriented game forces the computer into redundancy in terms of competition. It quickly becomes you, yourself, whom you wish to defeat. Crush those inaccuracies; wipe out the misplaced bullets, the mistimed jumps and the various Tetris blocks that slammed down into the earth before you had enough time to even register their existence. (Let’s forget about DS Tetris – turn around your oddly shaped block with an RSI-inducing A-hammer until the end of time and it will stay there, revolving, placidly ignoring your illegality.)

The highscore nemesis comes as a byproduct of the unforgiving nature of slamming your head repeatedly against a pixel wall. It’s a tangible way in which to assess your own success. It pulls a seemingly endless and perhaps literally infinite game into the realm of beatable reality. The kinds of game in which a nemesis can be employed to great effect are many and varied; a weird collection of odds and ends that bear little relation to each other beyond the obvious connection of a possible highscore.

The humble internet flash game poses a fertile battleground. The game itself is irrelevant if you’re merely thirsty for win-blood, but the most recent of this genre that I’ve been involved with is the much-lauded (and it’s certainly well-earned laud) Robot Unicorn Attack.

While the game is great, it actually harbours too much good feeling. Jumping through clouds and grinning from ear to ear does not give rise to an unquenchable thirst for a collection of numbers. As such, my highscore was woefully inadequate in comparison with my nemeses’ and I didn’t even mind.

Ideally, the game should be so full of inescapable on-screen stress as to render any ounce of conscious thought an absurd impossibility. Games especially fit for this purpose are high-level, unforgiving, bullet-hell-on-earth shmups. One which I had a considerably long-term battle inside of some years ago (that I still recall with a vivid horror) is Dodonpachi.

In Dodonpachi you are a small space ship attempting, ceaselessly, to shoot everything until it explodes. Everything that you are trying to shoot is also, rather inconveniently, shooting at you. Your small hitbox is flying around in figure-eights and getting squished into small spaces betwixt narrowly-evaded splays of bullets while you attempt to process whether the amount of risk you currently shoulder is worthy of a precious bomb, which wipes your enemies away with an assuaging immediacy. All the while, eyes flick upward to check the current score status and the stress increases exponentially the closer you get to (relative) victory.

A variation on the highscore is the time-trial. Many weeks were spent embroiled in a battle for the best time on the various tracks of the enjoyably zippy F-Zero GX. 90-degree angle turns were taken with increasing precision, every boost available was grinded over and carefully employed and Captain Falcon was there to console me on the hard days. Trials 2 supplied a more recent dose of temporal competition; the game has you attempting to bully gravity into submission while bouncing around on precariously-placed platforms astride a trial bike, trying not to break every single bone in that poor man’s body on the way to the torch-lit finish-line.

There is some divergence, though. The merits of a highscore nemesis rely heavily on a certain level of patience. The key to a fruitful and long-term nemesis relationship is to wait, politely, for your rival to beat your score. Then, and only then, should you proceed to trounce them. A series of whimful Steam sale purchases lead to the discovery that one of my friends is a terrible nemesis. His highscore will increase by degrees, unchallenged, on any given day until the bar is raised to such ludicrous heights that my sad spirit is left nodding its head floorward before I even fire up the game. I still play Lumines occasionally – a game of disappearing blocks that feels more satisfying and difficult to wrangle than most others of the disappearing-block ilk – but his highscore is nothing short of a mockery, and my heart is dashed on the rocks of despair.

The true level of despair possible in this form of dedication is showcased masterfully in the film King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. The tears of Steve Wiebe can be felt wholeheartedly by any sorry sucker ever taken in by the quest for numerical superiority.