Pogosticks and Video Game Competition

I've always had a fascination with the world's best anything. It has always been something that came to mind ever since I was a kid. When I was around 8 years old I got a pogo-stick for Christmas. I spent that night practicing and actually managed to get a few 100 consecutive jumps that same day. Fast forward a few weeks and I managed over 1000 jumps, at which point I became curious as to what the world record was for most jumps on a pogo-stick. I browsed an old 1992 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records at my grandparents' house and found an entry of I think it was a 12 year old who managed over 100,000 consecutive jumps on a pogo-stick.  Looking further into this, it appeared he was sponsored by a company who actually custom made a pogo-stick for the attempt lasting nearly 24 hours. By recollection, this is former champion Gary Stewart pictured below:

That didn't deter me. When I was 9 years old I set out to break the world record for most pogo-stick jumps. There was actually a counter on one pogo-stick my family bought for me, and it's funny, I actually remember being angry that it looped back to 0 after going past 999 jumps. My several attempts resulted in my record of (what I remember as) ~32,000 consecutive jumps (the attempt resulting in a broken pogo-stick).  I actually broke my 2 pogosticks within the span of a week. If not for those incidents, I would likely have likely kept on trying. I love competition, and video games have always been something with enjoyable competition.

I have been rediscovering my love for high score competition in video games. When looking at many classic games like Pac-Man, Tetris, or Frogger, it is a bit interesting to see just how well people can play these games. I feel one can only truly appreciate a high score if they themselves have attempted it first. The world record for Frogger (arcade) is nearly 1 million points, and to most people that sounds impressive, but not many really understand just how difficult that score is, how long it takes, and whether it actually is good or not. I consider myself good at Frogger, but my score still isn't even 1/5th of the world record. To say the least, I'm very impressed with that record.

Even George Costanza's high score doesn't cut it!

Frogger is a game that is just plain great for high scores. There really aren't any rules attached to it, just play, survive, and score as high as you can. Many classic games are this way, and they are easily the best ones to compete on for high scores. However, there are many more games that aren't the best for high score. 

Super Mario Bros is my favorite game, but I realize it's not very good for high scores. The reason is because you can infinitely gain lives and stay in the same level forever if you wanted. Sure, you could track that score, but it is merely a matter of who can stand to play the game the longest. 

For Super Mario Bros, tracking the high score without any rules is meaningless. Twin Galaxies, the authority on video game high scores, has created rulesets for many games that fall into this category. For this game, they gave a restriction of 5 lives and rule that states one cannot abuse the turtles for tons of points. While this works in some regard for competition, at the end of the day, it is an arbitrary ruleset. While I love Super Mario Bros, it is just not good for high score competition. I may hold the Twin Galaxies' record for highest score in this game, but it is diminished by the fact that the game can easily be abused to score much higher.

There are games that are good for high scores and games that aren't. Many classic arcade games were specifically designed for high score competition. Video games have quickly moved away from the notion of high scores, and arcade games remain the only games that are really suited for it.

The question now for video games outside the arcade era isn't "How high can you get?", but instead the question has become "How fast can you get?" 

Super Mario Bros. may not be good for score, but it makes a great speedrun. In fact, you can speedrun almost any game. Speedruns are great because there aren't any rules attached. Like Frogger, I'm free to do as I please and do the best I possibly can without a ruleset dictating or limiting my ideas or abilities.

Just like there are games with tactics that "ruin" high score competition, there are games where speedruns "ruin" the game as a result of having no in-game rules. One may skip huge sections of a game with a game-breaking glitch (pictured above) resulting in faster speedruns. The solution to this problem is creating secondary categories such as "100% completion," as to not skip anything in a game. Categories that are uninteresting won't be competed, and as a result, the competition remains on the categories that are best suited for the specific games. The concept of "no rules for in-game play" might not always work out perfectly for speedruns, but doing anything else results in arbitrary (and uncompeted) rulesets. 

Speedrunning of today is like arcade high scores of the 80s. How fast can you get?