.

[Luke]

A lot of games kill you if your isn't high enough, by proxy. Missile Command comes to mind. If you don't get a certain score by blasting the incoming missiles, you die.

[dunpeal2064]

That would be awesome, though. A game where hitting certain scores (e.g. any score that ends in a certain number, any score that fails to meet some minimum level passage requirement, any score that ties an existing high score, etc.) would kill you or make you lose the game would be a pretty interesting (and potentially frustrating, obviously) mechanic. You'd have to concern yourself constantly with what your score was, in addition to navigating the gameworld itself...

^ That would be awesome. Stuff like Ketsui is coming to mind, where your score determains whether you will enter a second loop, and what version of that loop you will enter. A game that used this throughout, and not just at the end of a loop, would be really cool.

Actually, Triggerheart Exelica has a boss on the 1st, 3rd, and 5th stages that will only come out of you have collected enough multiplier items, so thats pretty close.

[dunpeal2064]

A lot of games kill you if your isn't high enough, by proxy. Missile Command comes to mind. If you don't get a certain score by blasting the incoming missiles, you die.

But is this related directly to the score, or is it just that you didn't kill enough stuff to live, which would be visible via your score? I think those are different things.

[Ivo]

This is very different from a high score, as I can't think of ANY game that kills you based on score. Score is only to show your progress on one credit.

That would be awesome, though. A game where hitting certain scores (e.g. any score that ends in a certain number, any score that fails to meet some minimum level passage requirement, any score that ties an existing high score, etc.) would kill you or make you lose the game would be a pretty interesting (and potentially frustrating, obviously) mechanic. You'd have to concern yourself constantly with what your score was, in addition to navigating the gameworld itself...

I only gave it a couple of minutes though, but I'm fairly sure it would not be a fun mechanic. It would seriously constrain the design of the scoring mechanism and even the game itself - if the game is too fast paced you can't reasonably do the math to know how you should act, which would make the game too random. Being dependent on previous scores is also not a quality in my opinion as it involves metagaming directly into the game (e.g. in order to have the best chances at a score you may want to do it either with reset scores, or with some previous prepared runs to set the high-score table in a less risky way).

If it has scoring items or different scores for eliminating enemies, you then add a lot of memorisation. Lots of memorisation + intensive amounts of math sounds more like (certain types of) work than like an awesome game.

[dunpeal2064]

Lots of memorisation + intensive amounts of math sounds more like (certain types of) work than like an awesome game.

This sounds like a shmupper's wet dream.

[Retrodude]

That would be awesome, though. A game where hitting certain scores (e.g. any score that ends in a certain number, any score that fails to meet some minimum level passage requirement, any score that ties an existing high score, etc.) would kill you or make you lose the game would be a pretty interesting (and potentially frustrating, obviously) mechanic. You'd have to concern yourself constantly with what your score was, in addition to navigating the gameworld itself...

Speed: The Game

If your score goes below 55, BOOM!!!

[Hobie-wan]

A specific example for passwords keeping score is Devil Crash

Ah yes, forgot about that one as I just play a new game each time. Still a rare occurrence though.

[Luke]

If your score isn't high enough at the end of each level in Sewer Shark, Game Over.

[ZeoDefender]

I hate score and this is coming from a shmup fan. Most useless gameplay element since the weapon in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

[dunpeal2064]

I hate score and this is coming from a shmup fan. Most useless gameplay element since the weapon in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

What about Radiant Silvergun, which levels your weapons based on scoring? That is definitely not a useless gameplay element.