I got the highest score! Wait...

[Espy]

Does anyone else get confused by this pinball standard? The highest score isn't actually the highest score, that title is reserved for Grand Champion. When you get the #2 score, often at the end of the game it says "HIGHEST SCORE, ENTER INITIALS", when there is a higher score... it's pretty annoying as you often don't know if it actually is the highest score or not until going back to attract mode.

This isn't a criticism of TPA itself, because they didn't make the machines. Suppose it could equally be in the real pinball forum. Just something bizzarre about pinball in general.

 

[shogun00]

Not really considering that TPA keeps track of the top 5 scores, while many pinball machines from the late 80s and early 90s only keep track of the top 4 scores. Of course, one of those scores from TPA's top 5 list is going to be omitted in that table's ROM.

 

[mpclemens]

I'm usually too excited to care. "Hooray! I don't suck at [insert table here] today!"

 

[norbert26]

solid state tables from early 80s and back only held one high score to date in ROM and you did not enter initials.

 

[Espy]

Lots of responses with not really much relevance to what I said. Did I explain things wrong? I'm talking about how most tables that record high scores call the second highest score the highest score, and the highest score the grand champion. Doesn't make sense at all to call the second top score the highest.

 

[mpclemens]

I understood what you meant. The verbiage doesn't bother me. Given that some of the tables (still?) have a bug that inserts a higher score over your own, I don't find it worth worrying about. Either I ranked or I didn't.

 

[sotie]

Lots of responses with not really much relevance to what I said. Did I explain things wrong? I'm talking about how most tables that record high scores call the second highest score the highest score, and the highest score the grand champion. Doesn't make sense at all to call the second top score the highest.

I understood what you meant. I always get excited and then I realize it's the #2 spot.

 

[TomL]

"Congrats, you got the highest score! Unless you count the Grand Champion. But, nonetheless, you got the highest non-Grand Champion score. At least since high scores were cleared from memory. And we're talking on this machine only. Who knows about other machines. And technically, you can't really compare scores across machines unless they're all on the same ROM version. And machine maintenance makes a difference too. And ROM settings, don't forget those.

But, other than all that, *you* got the highest score! "

All kidding aside, it would be nice if scores were labeled:

GC: JIM 10,000,000
#1: HAL 9,000,000
#2: BOB 7,000,000
#3: WLT 6,000,000
#4: KIM 5,000,000

 

[Roo]

All kidding aside, it would be nice if scores were labeled:

GC: JIM 10,000,000
#1: HAL 9,000,000
#2: BOB 7,000,000
#3: WLT 6,000,000
#4: KIM 5,000,000

I agree with Espy; that's precisely the way it often is and it makes no sense. How can #1 be the second spot? If you want to call the first spot "Grand Champion", fine, but then the next one should be #2.

It would be like calling #1-3 Gold, Silver and Bronze, but then still starting at #1 after that.

 

[Deltaechoe]

Doesn't bother me, I always like it when the enter initials prompts come up, it makes me feel like a pinball wizard. Anyway, if I were to venture a guess, the reason it does that is probably a bug due to oversight (happens all the time) or a quick and dirty fix farsight put in so that the tables and the game can sync up properly (again, things like this happen a lot in the world of programming)

 

[Roo]

Doesn't bother me, I always like it when the enter initials prompts come up, it makes me feel like a pinball wizard. Anyway, if I were to venture a guess, the reason it does that is probably a bug due to oversight (happens all the time) or a quick and dirty fix farsight put in so that the tables and the game can sync up properly (again, things like this happen a lot in the world of programming)

Read the OP...this is not a TPA issue. We are just complaining about how the scoreboards work on many of the real machines.

 

[hawk]

what I find annoying is that it is impossible to correct the last character when you enter the high score