PresetError
Neophyte
In Spain game levels were called "pantallas" back in the day which means "screens". Maybe it's a similar thing.
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If You Grew Up With the NES: Why Were Levels Called Boards?
- Thread starter Omnipunctual Godot
- Start date
_Spr_Drnk
Banned
Sheets was only used in the 80's early days, IIRC. I'm not claiming to be 100% factually correct.
Miyazaki’s Slave
Gold Member
My older siblings called them “paddles” which was, for them, a hold over from the Atari paddles (used for a bunch of games like Warlords),the Odyssey 16, and the intelvision.
I Love Rock 'n' Roll
Member
I had an Intelvision with Donkey Kong and Zaxxon. Both were so good.
JonnyMP3
Member
There's a part of me that needs the even older gaffers to confirm the possible etymology but some early arcade machines had a system where you could connect a second circuit board that had the extra levels as a way of keeping some older arcade machines and games played more again.
Think Pac-Man had this in later editions to add literally more 'boards' physically to the cabinet to obtain the extra mazes.
Think Pac-Man had this in later editions to add literally more 'boards' physically to the cabinet to obtain the extra mazes.
kurisu_1974
is on perm warning for being a low level troll
Just like pantallas is what I call trousers.
Knightime_X
Member
Literally never heard anyone call them a "board".
They were called stages.
1st stage, 2nd stage, Last stage etc.
That's about as triggering as calling your character a toon.
That deserves a free punch to the dick.
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mcjmetroid
Member
It was ways level or stage I suppose way back in the day screens in Ireland
butane bob
Member
Grew up with it, never heard of "boards". Only "level" or "stage".
Iced Arcade
Member
Canada here. Was always stages or levels. Never heard boards
Ailike
Member
My family called them boards in the Atari 2600 period. Like it was speculated, it grew out of board games and their static levels, esp in the case of something like Pacman. That died down once the NES hit, and things were refered to as levels or worlds, mostly in game even. And while I never personally called them Atari or NES tapes, I was regularly around people who did. Take a look at an 8track tape and its easy to make the comparison, especially in 2600 times.
GeorgPrime
Banned
Never heard boards. Only levels
a multicultural team of v
Member
Definitely heard the term used very often (same with tapes), but I don't think I ever used it myself.
Not even Boards of Canada?
BusierDonkey
Member
Growing up a few kids I knew had PCs that played games off cassettes like the Coleco and Comodore. When they eventually got a NES they still called the cartridges tapes. I'm in Canada. Older kids, or kids whose parents played games in the 70's called the controllers paddles. It's something that came from older video game systems that ran Pong-style game that used a dial controllers to move the paddles up and down, eventually they were just called paddles. I've also heard a few kids in the 80's calling the NES controller a remote.
I've never heard of levels being called boards though, the only time I ever heard that was one of the guys in Game Grumps who still refers to game levels as boards. We've always called them levels up here. Stages I think got their start with Mario Bros. 3, where the entire game was actually taking place on an actual set with visible mounts for various items in the game (you could walk behind the set if you held down on the white blocks, all levels end with you exiting stage right, etc)
nush
Member
They were called boards by some people way back in the day because games were single screen without scrolling.
So think about Pac man, you clear a board, then you are given the next board. It was a reference to board games.
Once you get to games with scrolling like Super Mario Bros the term no longer makes sense.
So think about Pac man, you clear a board, then you are given the next board. It was a reference to board games.
Once you get to games with scrolling like Super Mario Bros the term no longer makes sense.
93xfan
Banned
it wasn’t. They were called “levels” by me and everyone I knew. I’m in the US
polybius80
Member
never hear of "boards" but I think is for the same reason of calling levels "screens" is that games used to not have scroll so most of the time you play on a scene as big as the screen and bigger games with various levels had various "screens"
Darklor01
Might need to stop sniffing glue
Some people in New York certainly called levels boards. But, then, we didn’t know why. We didn’t call them stages here though.
It was a strange time. Some people around here were calling cartridges, tapes. Mostly clueless parents though. “Did you return that Nintendo tape to Blockbuster Video?”
It was a strange time. Some people around here were calling cartridges, tapes. Mostly clueless parents though. “Did you return that Nintendo tape to Blockbuster Video?”
sw0mp_d0nk3y
Member
A bunch of people answered correctly already. Boards were from single screen games, which applied to most arcade games and Atari games from the late 70's and early 80's . Paddles were used on the Atari and Coleco Vision, and some arcade games. People who started with NES probably didn't hear or use any of these terms as much as those of us who grew up with Arcade and Atari, and then kept using some antiquated language for games when it didn't still make sense. People definitely called cartridges "tapes" as well, they looked very similar to 8-track tapes from that time period, and some systems like the Commodore Vic 20 literally had games on tape.
anthraticus
Banned
In NY we use to call them boards too. (grew up in the Intellivision/Atari era)
MISTER INVEIGLER
Member
I remember calling them boards back in the day too. It was quite common where I grew up.(East Coast US)
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Omnipunctual Godot
Gold Member
Yeah, I remember this. "Nintendo tapes," lol. I guess because they were vaguely of similar to VHS or cassette tapes.
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Agent X
Gold Member
I think
Ailike
and
sw0mp_d0nk3y
explained it really well above."Boards" was a term that was often used in the early 80s. It was often use to distinguish different games that had distinct playfield designs. For example, someone would say that the arcade game Donkey Kong had four boards, and Miner 2049er had 10 boards. Someone who has completed one of these playfields would be said to have "cleared the board".
Sometimes it would also be used on games that only had a single playfield design, such as the original Pac-Man. You could boast about your score, but it was also worth bragging about how many boards you cleared.
By the mid 80s, "boards" was rarely used in this context. Most games had detailed level designs, and these were usually referred to by gamers as "levels", or "stages", or occasionally even "worlds" (thanks to the popularity of Super Mario Bros.)
Yeah, "tapes" was often used to refer to cartridges for early 80s systems, especially Atari 2600 cartridges which (as both of you said) resembled 8-track tapes.
Early Atari 2600 cartridges had their contacts covered by a protective shield, which retracted when the cartridge was inserted into the console. Concepts such as circuit boards and microchips were still foreign to a lot of people, but they knew what tapes were from the music industry, so people thought that cartridges contained magnetic tape like 8-track tapes or audio cassettes. (As
sw0mp_d0nk3y
pointed out, some systems did use cassette tapes--mostly computers, but occasionally on video game consoles too.)By the mid 80s, 8-track tapes were obsolete. NES/SMS cartridges didn't resemble any kind of audio tapes, and the 2600 and 7800 cartridges at that time eliminated the protective shield and had exposed contacts, so the reference to "tape" faded away.
Omnipunctual Godot
Gold Member
I think Dan is like 40, so that checks out.
Joe T.
Member
I'm not sure I ever called them boards myself, but some of my friends/relatives did and it made sense at the time. We all played the previous generation of consoles/arcades where more of the popular games had static stages and everyone was familiar with board games so it was easy to see how they were viewed that way. No one I knew ever really gave anyone grief over it. Actually, I take that back, I remember a class bully giving one of the nerds a really hard time over it once in elementary school, but he was a bit of a Cartman/South Park type. The term was mostly phased out around here by the time the SNES/Genesis were in everyone's home.
This thread warped me back to the early 80's. Now I wish major developers went back to doing more with less (money). Keep pushing the boundaries with high budget games, but stick a few talented people on creative low/mid-budget games, too - low risk, high reward material.
This thread warped me back to the early 80's. Now I wish major developers went back to doing more with less (money). Keep pushing the boundaries with high budget games, but stick a few talented people on creative low/mid-budget games, too - low risk, high reward material.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Yup, my brothers and I called levels boards too. This was back in the 80s.
myfriendtim
Member
For sure, it's actually pre-NES because it was pre screen-scrolling. Without scrolling each screen was static like a board. When the level changed, the screen changed as if you had swapped out boards. As with anything else, the term stuck long past its relevance.
zaanan
Banned
We said we “flipped” the game
MrFunSocks
Banned
Never heard of them being called boards.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Nicely said. I was going to edit my post and say what you did.