Scratchenstein creations: Score Part #2

Hello, its blogging time again and its Valentines Day again. For the celebratory blog today, Im once again returning to Scratch to attempt to recreate a lost game I discussed previously, Exidy's Score. 

The Score arcade cabinet

Released in 1977, It was the first video game you could play as a female character. Ive mentioned the game before but for refreshers, a quick recap. In 1974, a former Engineer for Monitor and arcade game company RamTek named Pete Kaufmann left the company to form Excellence In Dynamics, or Exidy. Their first games started shipping out at the end of 1974 and in 1975, their games TV Pinball, Table Pinball (the cocktail version of TV Pinball), Table Foosballer, and Destruction Derby were demonstrated at the 1975 MOA Show in Chicago, with Destruction Derby being the popular winner.

Flyer for Exidy's newest titles in 1975

The demand for Destruction Derby was so great that since Exidy was so small, they had to devote their entire production line just to make Destruction Derby. To free up production, they licensed the game to another company called Chicago Coin who produced the game as Demolition Derby.

A flyer for Chicago Coin's Demolition Derby

The only problem was that Chicago Coin was going out of business. So to recoup their investment and to provide a filler game till their next game Car Polo was released, Designer Howell Ivy redesigned the game adding operator-adjustable maximum time-limit of 99 seconds and changed the cars to people and hitting these stick figures the machine would emit a scream sound. 

Death Race Gameplay

The game shipped in January 1976, and 7 months later,  Seattle Associated Press reporter Wendy Walker noticed the game at a local shopping mall arcade. She wrote an article in the paper discussing the games graphic content and pretty soon news outlets in the US, Canada and the UK were covering the game. Even Exidy's assertion that you weren't running over people but rather "gremlins" didn't stop the controversy.

The first article discussing Death Race from the July 3, 1976 of the Daily Oregonian

However, the controversy actually had a complete opposite effect on the game as Exidy went from selling only 200 units to around 3000 units. What was meant to be a filler game sparked the very first controversy involving video games and Exidy became the first video game company to use shock value as a selling point. 

In 1977, Exidy rereleased the game as Score, instead of smashing cars or running over "gremlins", In this game you and or a second player controlled a male or female bar patron with the goal being to hook up with (or "score") with as many singles as you can.

The cabinet was changed too, as they replaced the steering wheels, gear shifts, and gas petals for joysticks and a small switch above to allow you to select between male and female genders. It also had a an optional dispenser that could be attached to the game and reward players with tokens for their high “score”s.

The flyer for Score (1977) 

It can be assumed that Exidy made the game to lighten their image a little bit after the publicity of Death Race, but this is unconfirmed. However despite it's innovations, the game sold poorly, Likely because since many arcade games like Score ended up going into places like bars and bowling alleys (places were people would try to date anyway), most people would prefer to try and hook up for real. As a result the game sold very few units and are extremely rare to find today.

Last year I made an attempt to recreate it in Scratch after attempting to recreate Death Race for a previous entry, since both games are essentially the same, It would be easy to recreate.  

Unfortunately time and work got in the way once again, and I even partially forgot about the project, But I have made some considerable improvements since last year. First of all, the controls are fully working now, and the second is the walking animation is fully implemented. 

I'm making some progress!

So there it is, Again, Its not perfect but playable. It's still not quite up to par with a full port. Though its still not far off, all I need to do is:

1. Add gender switch
2. Refine the AI
3. Add sounds
4. add the "Scoreing" animation
5. fix any remaining bugs

Once Again, I am by no means done with this yet, but I am getting closer! I will continue to mess around with it and hopefully I can get a proper version of the game sometime in the near future. But until then, Happy Valentines Day, and ill see you next time!