Article - Introduction to Scorekeeping for Japanese Arcade Games and Why World Record Videos are not Mandatory - Written by Plasmo

I noticed that recently the same   types of questions regarding world records, verification methods etc.   keep popping up. Newcomers to arcade games, perhaps used to how the   speedrunning scene is handling their records, often seem to  wonder what  is going on in this scene and how we can even accept world  records  without any video proof. For this reason, I have written this  small  introduction that aims to cover the methods of scorekeeping, their   historical background and the common way we determine world records.   This guide focuses on shmups, but is likewise applicable for arcade  games of other genres.

– Let’s get started! –

1. History

Arcades  have been around since the late 70s and the hunt for high scores  existed from the very beginning.  Already the infamous Space Invaders  had a built-in score counter,  making it possible to compete against  your friends. Many early games  have very rudimentary scoring systems  and often loop endlessly, testing not only the skill and reflexes of the  player, but also his endurance.

The  first official scoreboard  concerned with arcade games was Twin  Galaxies, which was founded by  Walter Day in 1981 and still exists up  to this day.In the beginning, the scores from their database were made  public in the Twin Galaxies arcade and by appearing in video game  magazines. One major limitation was their strong focus on the USA. Twin  Galaxies called their scores “world records,”  which was additionally  enforced by their recognition from Guinness Book  of World Records. In  fact, separate scorekeeping communities were  founded around the world,  most notably in various European countries: e.g. England and Italy.  Japan also had its own scorekeeping community. The scoreboards of these  countries likewise appeared in monthly published video game magazines,  many of which would later on not only collect scores for arcade games,  but also other console games.

The  first Japanese video game  magazine to record high scores from arcades  all around the country was  AM LIFE. This typical youth-oriented  magazine reported about various  topics such as theme parks, movies,  fishing, and also video games. It  was published between 1983 to 1984,  with the beginning of the fourth  issue asking for readers to send in  their high scores from the arcades.  Scores of any skill would be  published and grouped depending on the game  center they were achieved  in. This format would turn out to be the norm  for the following decades  to come. The strict focus on only the top  score happened much later  on.

The next influential  publication was MyCom BASIC Magazine. The scores were published from  January 1984 to March 1999. This means that the magazine started later  than Twin Galaxies,  but was still actively publishing scores long after  TG had already  vanished into obscurity during the late 80s. With  console gaming on the  rise, arcades died in the West and people  generally lost interest in  competing for high scores. In contrast to  this, the situation in Japan  was very different. New arcade games  continued to be produced alongside  the home market releases, which kept  the arcade alive. Scoring systems  became increasingly more complex,  continuously making competitive high  score play an interesting  endeavor. Some of the most appreciated titles  of the genre, such as  Dodonpachi and Battle Garegga,  came out in the mid to late 90s and  never found their way out of Japan.  Therefore, when these games were  ported to home consoles, they would  regularly be released exclusively  in Japan, alienating the shmup genre  even more from the West. Due to  this situation, Japan was the only  country with a strong community  chasing high scores, while the rest of  the world had mostly lost  interest. This is the reason why we can  consider the top scores  submitted to these magazines as world records.  Interestingly enough,  unlike Twin Galaxies, the Japanese magazines never considered their  scores to be world records, but consistently called them nationwide  records.

In April of 1986, the  first issue of  GAMEST magazine came out, which would constitute the  foundation of the  modern scorekeeping community in Japan. GAMEST  existed alongside MyCom  BASIC and maintained their own independent  leaderboards for each game.  Some players were only submitting their  scores to one of the two  magazines, others to both simultaneously.  Looking at the two magazines  in retrospect today, we can generally say  that, in most cases,  the scores found in GAMEST were higher than the  ones recorded in MyCom  BASIC. Shortly after the leaderboards published  in MyCom BASIC came to a  halt, GAMEST was likewise discontinued in  September 1999.

However, a few  months after in  December 1999, ARCADIA magazine came out. ARCADIA  magazine was a  collaborative effort of a number of writers from GAMEST  and NEO GEO  FREAK; published 1995–2000) – a magazine focused  exclusively on Neo Geo,  which maintained a small number of scoreboards,  but was  chiefly concerned with fighting games instead. The  leaderboards  published in ARCADIA were an immediate continuation of the  GAMEST  leaderboards, whereas the MyCom BASIC leaderboards had no such   successor. Just like its predecessor GAMEST, ARCADIA was a magazine   focusing only on arcade games and was fully accepted as the go-to place   for top scores. All in all, 168 issues were published until April of   2015. What followed afterwards was almost a year of silence before the   Japan High Score Association (or JHA, for short) was finally founded in  March 2016 by former writers of ARCADIA.JHA  is the first exclusively  digital installment, collecting and publishing  top scores on a monthly  basis just like GAMEST and ARCADIA did before.  For this reason, we can  speak of one continuous leaderboard from 1986 to  the present. JHA still  makes no claim over the term “world record” and  continues to merely  speak of nationwide records. Unfortunately, their  digital leaderboards  only  show the scores submitted to them directly from 2016 onward – the  old  top scores from ARCADIA and GAMEST cannot be retrieved from their   website, although JHA will only accept new scores higher than these old   scores. So how do we find out about these old scores when we do not  have  a complete collection of all GAMEST and ARCADIA magazines at home?   There are several possibilities, each with its advantages and   disadvantages.

1. Nonkiya website: http://mtlayk.web.fc2.com/Top/TopFr.htm

Collection  of the final top scores  from MyCom BASIC, GAMEST, and ARCADIA.  Unfortunately, the list is only  available in Japanese and some games  are missing. A number of mistakes have also been reported. The page is  no longer updated with the new scores from JHA but is a historical  resource only.

1. STG Hall of Records:   https://shmups.wiki/library/STG_Hall_of_Records

Compiled  on the shmups forum by the user NTSC-J. This page  shows a complete  listing of all top scores for every shmup (no other  genres) in English.  The list is still updated with the newest scores  submitted to JHA.  Perhaps the biggest issue is that it lists proven  scores, but also  unofficial ones (e.g. found on Twitter), and  mixes them all together  without giving a source. Therefore, it contains  a number of erroneous  scores. If available, it also provides video  links.

1. Project ARCA:  https://www.mameretroavengers.com/documenti/arca-general-dei-record-arcade/

An  ambitious project by Marco  “Gemant” Frattino, which selects 600 arcade  games (all genres) and lists  not only the top scores but also gives a  countless number of valuable insights to the games’  scoring systems.  The project includes all top scores currently known  and specifies the  source. Under certain circumstances, more than one  score is given.  Regrettably, the document is primarily in Italian only.  The project is  in an unfinished state as of now and given the file  format, it is not  clear whether this document will ever receive regular  updates.

With  these three websites it is  possible to retrieve the world records for  each arcade shmup. The  aforementioned Twin Galaxies site is practically  useless for shmup world  records and only holds some value for games  from the so-called Golden  Era of arcade games, i.e. up to the mid-80s,  so anything preceding the  Japanese leaderboards.

To  sum up, here is an overview of the  Japanese scorekeeping magazines and  leaderboards discussed above. The  dates given refer to the time span  in which they were publishing  leaderboards.

1. Verification methods and legitimacy of high scores

In  the days of speedrunning, in the days of “no vid, no did,” how can we  accept a myriad of alleged world records that do not have any video  proof, not even picture  proof along with them? From the very beginnings  of scorekeeping, people  quickly realized that a strict verification  policy is the only way to  sustain a fair competition for everyone. To  submit scores to video game magazines  it appeared necessary to demand  at least a picture of the achievement.  But pictures can be manipulated,  which is the main reason why so many  console leaderboard records from  old magazines cannot always be  considered trustworthy. To claim  legitimacy, the Japanese arcade scene  introduced what is probably one  of the strictest proof policies there  is. The verification process has  slowly developed over time and looks like the following today:

• Every credit has to be played at a public arcade during working hours.
• Only verified arcades are eligible to state if a score was legitimately achieved.
• The  player has to contact the staff  after his achievement. The staff then  has to double check the score and  the machine settings. The player  fills out a form, which is signed and  stamped by the arcade staff.
• The player sends in the signed form to the magazine.

With  this verification process, the  scores from the Japanese leaderboards  can be considered to be extremely  trustworthy. Cheating is virtually  impossible. However, since no video  proof is needed, it is not always  easy to understand how these scores  were achieved. Recording gameplay  from arcade machines is still a  cumbersome undertaking but has been  even more difficult in the past.  Nonetheless, so-called superplays were  sold on VHS tapes from the  late-80s onward. These superplay tapes were  sometimes collaborations of  GAMEST magazine and the top players, or  were directly produced by the game developer. With the late-90s, we also  see privately recorded superplay tapes for sale. Generally speaking,  only a small fraction of all top scores were recorded on tape, even  during the 90s. With the advent of readily available recording and  capture equipment,  we witness a boom of replays during the late 90s.  Succeeding the VHS  format, several official superplay DVDs were also  produced and sold  commercially during the coming years.

Although  the internet and accessible  video websites nowadays make it  significantly easier to capture and  upload gameplay for the world to  see, the general verification method of  arcade scores stays the same in  Japan. The immense history of over 30  years of competitive gaming has  the drawback to have created an  incredibly conservative system that is  almost immune to change in this  regard. Now, we understand that videos  are not needed as a proof,  but why does not the player himself record  footage of his achievements  and uploads it for everyone to see? In  fact, a number of world records  indeed do get uploaded – but why not  all of them? There are several  reasons for this.

As  the verification policy demands  the credit to be played at a public  arcade, it is not always possible to  capture gameplay. However, arcades  dedicated to competitive play often  provide recording equipment for  selected cabinets. In this case, the  player can simply copy the files  to a USB stick and take them home. This  service is generally free to  use for all customers. In other cases,  cabinets are sometimes streamed  online. While we can say for sure that  most of the world record scores  are recorded nowadays, many runs are  never uploaded to video websites  and are only shared privately in Japan.  The motivations behind this can  be very diverse. From my own  experience, I have seen the following  arguments.

• Japanese  copyright laws are  incredibly strict. It is not entirely clear how  uploaded gameplay is  affected by this. In a rush of pre-emptive  subservience, some arcade  owners do not allow the footage recorded at  their arcade to be uploaded  anywhere. Players also feel insecure about  this situation and decide to  not upload their runs to widely prevent  any potential complications.
• Players  generally feel less need to record their runs because they  can simply  show strategies to their peers next time they all meet up at  the  arcade. Likewise, if you are interested in certain strategies, you  just  head over to the next arcade and check out the top players there. A   good percentage of the community operates offline.
• Some  perfectionist players are  unsatisfied with their scores and do not  want to upload what they  consider to be unfinished business, even in  the case of world records.
• Other  players share their  achievements only privately because they do not  think that there is any  interest for their gameplay outside of their  own small circles. Many  Japanese people have no connection to the  international anglophone  shmups scene. The language barrier is still a  great obstacle for many  players that they have yet to overcome.
• A  small number of people  specifically want their strategies to be kept  secret and only share them  with their close friends. If one of these  friends happens to beat the  score using these unpublished strategies,  he also feels obliged to keep  these strategies secret — even if he  would have otherwise shared them if  he would have found out these  strategies on his own. The cycle  continues.

1. A closer look on the Japanese leaderboards

While  JHA is widely accepted as the  definitive place for arcade world  records, it is not without its  problems. At times, it feels arbitrary  how the categories for a game  have been decided. For example, while  Raiden Fighters and Raiden  Fighters 2 both have categories for each of  the different ships (8 and  11 categories respectively), Raiden Fighters  Jet only has one single  category, even though the game features 14  ships to select from. As a  general rule, subtypes of ships are lumped  together into a single  category notwithstanding their potentially very  different score  ceilings. This way, there is no distinction between  Shot and Laser types  in Dodonpachi. Only very recently, JHA has decided  to create a small  number of new categories.

Under  certain circumstances,  categories are sometimes also closed for  competition. This typically  happens when an infinite pattern is  discovered, for instance by abusing a  checkpoint or a boss fight with  no timer (e.g. Battle Garegga or  Daioh). It is sufficient if the  infinite pattern is demonstrated to work  in theory. Another reason for  scoreboards to be closed is when an  invincibility glitch is found (e.g.  Darius Gaiden or Gradius III). Other  score glitches (e.g. Dodonpachi  Saidaioujou) or extend glitches (e.g.  Pink Sweets) are generally  allowed to be abused for scoring purposes.  Possibly the most popular  reason for the closure of a game is a  counterstop of the score. (e.g.  Batsugun Special or Mushihimesama  Futari, Ultra mode).

Related  to this are games that could potentially be played in a marathon  fashion, but that fall under the special “+α rule”. For example,  Hishouzame, aka Flying Shark,  has a counterstop at exactly 100 million  points, which would take a  player approximately 43 hours of continuous  play to achieve. Due to the  constraint that world records have to be  achieved during working hours  of an arcade, the leaderboards have set  an arbitrary threshold of 10  million points for this game. The first  person who achieved this goal  remains as the top score and the  scoreboard for this game is closed. The  submission is marked as  “10,000,000+α” to indicate that the score  counter broke at least 10  million points. These special +α rules were  mainly set for a number of  older titles and are not common anymore. This  stays in stark contrast  to the leaderboards of Twin Galaxies under  which ruleset no arbitrary  thresholds are set, allowing for long  marathon sessions sometimes  spanning over several days, for example the  world records for Missile  Command (71 hours) or Q*Bert (84 hours).

While  the vast majority of world  records achieved in Japan is nowadays  recorded in the leaderboards of  JHA, a small number of scores are not  recognized. Some players play on  original hardware or emulator at home  and cannot officially send their  scores in. Other players play under  official settings in an arcade but  simply do not care about submitting  their scores in an official fashion.  In this case, we sometimes only  read about these achievements on social  media such as Twitter.

1. Quo vadis? or, What about us?

The  competition for high scores in  arcade games has an incredibly rich  history. However, due to the lack of  arcades worldwide, the competition  appeared to be confined to Japan up  to the second half of the 2000s,   when an interest for modern shmups slowly began to emerge on a global   scale. With the advent of speedrunning, we can observe a newly sparked   interest towards single player games as competitive video games  again.  During the past two decades, a small number of world records  were  achieved outside of Japan. Most notably, comparatively strong   communities have built around arcades in China and South Korea – two   countries that cannot submit their scores to JHA. Therefore, a globally   accessible leaderboard appears to become even more desired. In the  past,  a prototype was launched by Nakano Ryūzō. A global leaderboard  was  opened on his website (active ca. 2008–2014) for which it was  possible  to submit scores even outside of Japan. Unfortunately,  the  submission of scores was still only limited to public arcades,  meaning  the anglophone world was largely excluded again.

As  for the western world, several  digital projects to keep track of high  scores for shmups have been  started over the years. Let’s take a brief  look at a few of them.

1. Restart Syndrome:       https://www.restartsyndrome.com/%C2%A0

Largely  centered around players of the long-standing shmups forum,the  user  CStarFlare initiated this global leaderboard in 2012. The project  is  still active today and keeps track of shmup high scores not limited  to  arcade games,  but also encouraging score submissions for console and  doujin games.  The scoreboards are based on trust and generally lack any  verification  process.

1. Shmup Highscores:      http://hiscores.shmup.com/%C2%A0

General  leaderboard of the French  community. The project emerged from the  French shmup forum and the score  submission format is still directly  tied to the forum.Just like Restart Syndrome, the leaderboards are not  limited to arcade shmups and there is no actively pursued verification  policy.

1. MAME Action Replay Page (or MARP):  http://replay.marpirc.net/%C2%A0

The  leaderboards on this site already  started in 1999 and the submitted  scores are immediately based on  replays recorded on MAME. For this  reason, the site has a great history  to look back to and features a  strict verification policy, making video  proof essential to any score  submission. For obvious reasons, the  leaderboards are limited to arcade  games, but also include other genres.

As mentioned before, when it comes to arcade shmups from the first half of the 80s, Twin Galaxies might also be worth a visit.

Endnotes:

1. Official website: https://www.twingalaxies.com

2. A complete database of all submitted scores can be found here: http://www.north-wind.ne.jp/~yoshino/challehigh/

3. Official website: http://www.jha-arcade.com/

4. Official website: https://wiki.denfaminicogamer.jp/highscore/

5. Now defunct website: http://www9.plala.or.jp/nakanoryuzo/HS/Front.html

6. Official website: https://shmups.system11.org/

7. Official website: http://forum.shmup.com/

*Thank you very much for reading and 600 million thank you’s to Plasmo for writing this awesome article!*

Cheers!

Mark MSX