Anatomy of Arcade High Score Tables
The arcade high score table. A chance to get your name in print on a CRT screen of your local arcade. For those of us fortunate enough to frequent the arcades during the Golden Age of arcade video games, it was an opportunity to establish early bragging rights in the arcades of the early eighties.
For designers of the pioneering arcade titles of the day, the high score table served a couple of purposes. Not only was it a thrill to see yourself as a player on top of the world (well, the mini universe of your local arcade at least) – which of course is what the entire industry was based on – but it also gave arcade goers a reason to return to any particular game, check the scoreboards, and attempt to reclaim (or further cement) their status as a high scorer.
For some gamers, the glory would only last for the day, with a game’s high scores being wiped back to default at the end of the day when everything was powered off. For others, scores would be held in CMOS for example, powered by an onboard battery and would remain on the machine for much longer periods of time. (CMOS, short for “complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor” is a term used to describe a small amount of memory on an arcade PCB capable of storing data even after the main power to it is shut off).
