Favorite High Score Games?

[chuckster]

After about a week of work I finally broke the 150k mark, actually doing a lot better than I thought with 236k on Wave 10, then I promptly hit Start and didn't save the score.

Oh well, I'm at least able to get 100k pretty consistently now, before I couldn't even get to 50k half the time., and my next goal is 250k, then 500k, and if I ever get 1m I'll consider it done. Those tank waves obliterate me. I lose at least 2-3 lives every time and it seems like all the humans are killed instantly.

I've switched to the Arcade Treasures collection on GC (Default Difficulty 5) and I'm using an Arcade stick through Nintendont on the Wii, it feels much better even without a second stick.

I definitely enjoy some good ol' score chasing.

Obligatory shmups mention, since I play all of them with score in mind. For pure scoring bliss, I lean towards Mushihimesama Futari and Muchi Muchi Pork nowadays.

I also love Geometry Wars. Anytime I turn on my 360 to play something, I end up spending a good 30-60 minutes just playing this. Recently played Super Smash TV for the first time, and also loved that. I need to dig into Robotron, only played it once on a cab, and it was overwhelming!

That's a good word to describe Robotron. It seems absolutely impossible to get anywhere at first, then you slowly start to knock out waves and hear the sweet, sweet extra life sound, and it's transcendental.

I'm absolutely horrible at Shmups (but hey, that's not stopping me with twin-stick shooters), but I really want to get into them. Maybe this is my gateway into the genre. I'll check out Muchi Muchi Pork just for the name!

Robotron 2084 is undoubtedly a great score chaser. My favorite of the era, however, is probably Kaboom! for the 2600.

I've seen a few streams of this, I want to play it so bad but I figure without a paddle it's just not going to be that great.

[nullPointer]

So this is sort of cheating because I'm not sure it's true to the intent of the question, but currently my favorite high score game Rocksmith 2014. While on one hand it is a learning tool in which the intent is to 'be a better guitarist/bassist', the score attack mode is tons of fun and does well at capturing that 'classic arcade feeling' of chasing an ever elusive perfect game with 'just one more playthrough'. And at it's core it's not that much different from high score arcade games. I enter a set of inputs; the better and/or more precisely I'm able to enter those inputs the higher my score will be. It's just that in this instance my controller is a guitar/bass, lol. It's probably the most effective tool for the 'gamification of non-gaming activities' that I've seen.

Now if I'm staying true to the real intent of the question, I'm afraid I'm going to be a bit of a bore. Original Tetris on the NES (Nintendo version) is my jam. Very few games so effectively capture that high risk/high reward mechanic quite as effectively as good ol' plain vanilla Tetris.

[chuckster]

So this is sort of cheating because I'm not sure it's true to the intent of the question, but currently my favorite high score game Rocksmith 2014.

No worries, if you play the game primarily or in large part because you want to go for a higher/better score, let us know about it!

Now if I'm staying true to the real intent of the question, I'm afraid I'm going to be a bit of a bore. Original Tetris on the NES (Nintendo version) is my jam. Very few games so effectively capture that high risk/high reward mechanic quite as effectively as good ol' plain vanilla Tetris.

Tetris is one of those games that as a kid I thought I was good, and then my grandma would grab the GB and show me that I was a lowly, lowly scrub. Such fond memories.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Robotron 2084 is undoubtedly a great score chaser. My favorite of the era, however, is probably Kaboom! for the 2600.

I've seen a few streams of this, I want to play it so bad but I figure without a paddle it's just not going to be that great.

Yeah. It definitely doesn’t work without the paddle. Touch controls would probably be OK, though. It gets insane really, really fast, and some of the videos of people maxing out the score blow my mind. (I can’t even get to 3000 points, much less 999,999.)