A recent reshuffling of personnel sees me dealing with and indeed taking care of unwell people. Gladly, for many of my patients a recovery of sorts is made, but for others death is an inevitable outcome. Imagine if I could provide these individuals with a spotted, green 1-up mushroom, allowing them one more attempt at life…

Picture what games would be like with only one life. Every time Master Chief takes a Brute Shot to the face, his brain would melt through his fractured and ruined skull. Every head-on collision in Forza would result in the driver being instantly killed, either thrown through the shattered windscreen or crushed in their seat. No more ten-second respawns or the option to view your team in action; just a black ‘game over’ screen. Death. We’d be forced to become a little less gung-ho. We’d all think twice before attempting that ludicrous jump. And the brake pedal would see a lot more action as drivers are forced to throttle back significantly. Even the likes of Mario Kart would go from an entertaining joyride to serious competition. I don’t even think we can envisage how it would recarve the face of the online environment!

Strangely, the origins of the 1-up are not well known. A discussion with my colleagues, Prof Google and Dr Wiki, suggested that the 1-up harks back to the era of the American pinball machines that asked players to ‘step up’ to take their turn. Over time this became abbreviated to 1-up for player one’s turn and 2-up for player two’s, and so on. The term soon became applied to extra turns in both pinball and the emerging videogame arcades of the Eighties.

For those of you wrinkled enough to remember what videogame arcades were like before home entertainment systems became readily available, you’ll know  how much harder games were back then. Progressing through levels was as much about skill as about how much loose change you had in your pocket. It made sense for arcade owners to offer additional turns for additional money. But do these values make sense in 2009? Checkpoints have replaced lives in many games today, allowing players to continue from a set point when they meet an untimely demise. But some games, particularly platformers, still allocate players a number of ‘lives’, allowing progress through levels through a series of checkpoints that reset when you run out.  

Gaming is an entertainment business, and the ‘game  over’ screen isn’t entertaining for anyone. For this  reason instant respawns and checkpoints are going to become increasingly common. In an age where  games are appealing to wider audiences,  difficulty and challenge are finding  themselves on the back burner.  Does this mean the end for the  1-up? Well, I very much doubt it, and I’m sure we’ll continue to collect  1-ups for a very long time to come. And for those of us seeking more of a challenge, developers will have to continue to offer extreme difficulty modes and insane online battlefields to test our mettle.

The Professor: X360 Magazine