# What's the highest video game score? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [September 3, 2009, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-highest-video-game-score/508731 "2009-09-03T10:43:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2009, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-highest-video-game-score/508731/1 "2009-09-03T10:43:15Z")
Some games, like [Pac-Man](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man) have some sort of end point, and a maximum possible score (3,333,360). Some games have no points at all (FPS, racing games). But which game has the highest ever score? Doesn’t matter if it’s an actual score, the number of XP your Cleric has, I’m just after the biggest number. ---
**Author:** ![Palooka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/palooka/32/2902_2.png) [@Palooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palooka)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2009, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-highest-video-game-score/508731/2 "2009-09-03T12:04:54Z")
Probably the 32bit integer limit: 4,294,967,295. So any game using a long integer to hold its score. I don’t know what game lets you reach this number the quickest though. ---
**Author:** ![Mekhazzio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b38774/32.png) [@Mekhazzio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mekhazzio)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2009, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-highest-video-game-score/508731/3 "2009-09-03T13:05:28Z")
The game with the most inflated scoring that I’ve played is Giga Wing. My [personal best](http://members.iglou.com/mekh/gwing69665.png) is 6,966,556,175,110 but, of course, the serious fans of the game get many times higher than that. Of particular amusement is the way they color-code the score display - it effectively **begins** with the hundred-millions digit 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ad7895/32.png) [@Just\_Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2009, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-highest-video-game-score/508731/4 "2009-09-03T13:59:09Z")
> [@Mekhazzio](#): > > The game with the most inflated scoring that I’ve played is Giga Wing. My [personal best](http://members.iglou.com/mekh/gwing69665.png) is 6,966,556,175,110 but, of course, the serious fans of the game get many times higher than that. Of particular amusement is the way they color-code the score display - it effectively **begins** with the hundred-millions digit 😃 Pinball machines from about 1985 on are often the same way with their scores. Most of them might as well be incrementing in 100 million point steps. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2009, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-highest-video-game-score/508731/5 "2009-09-03T15:19:48Z")
> [@Just\_Some\_Guy](#): > > Pinball machines from about 1985 on are often the same way with their scores. Most of them might as well be incrementing in 100 million point steps. I hear you. In college, we used to measure our manhood on RoGo at 10,000 points to the inch. Now you get 100 million points just for pulling the freaking plunger. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2009, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-highest-video-game-score/508731/6 "2009-09-03T16:00:08Z")
> [@](#): > > Probably the 32bit integer limit: 4,294,967,295. I once got the population of a city so high in Civ 3 that it wrapped around this value several times. It’s a bit amusing, because “legitimate” city populations are always a multiple of 1000, so they could have just kept a count of the thousands, hard-coded those last three zeroes, and had a limit a thousand times greater, but they didn’t. Then again, since it requires not-quite-cheating-but-definitely-an-exploit to get population up that high, it’s not too big a deal. I’m not sure this would count for the OP, though, since the only measure of in-game significance is population points, not actual population, which is much lower (i.e., you’d say “I have a city of size 20”, not “I have a city of population 3 million”). ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2009, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-highest-video-game-score/508731/7 "2009-09-03T17:37:32Z")
The important metric is probably “number of significan’t digits” - who cares if the score is in quadrillions if the lowest possible score (other than 0) is 100million? (some old pinball games juats the trailing zeros painted on) Lookslike Giga wing at least uses the 10s digit for at least 12 significant digits. Brian ---
**Author:** ![Peanut\_Gallery](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/838e76/32.png) [@Peanut\_Gallery](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peanut_Gallery)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2009, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-highest-video-game-score/508731/8 "2009-09-05T02:05:13Z")
An old MMORPG called Asheron’s Call has an xp scale that goes to [98,081,682,817](http://acvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Guidebooks.Detail&id=44&category_select_id=2) to reach level 240, and it looks like it really goes up to at least level 275. It almost doesn’t count though because the game became a contest of who could write the best macro to level their characters while they slept. There are tons of maxed out characters, but nobody really earned that score. ETA: You also gain tons of free xp from other people in your guild