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[StreetsofBeige]

We said we “flipped” the game

For lots of old games, once you beat it, you kept going starting at the first board again.

Never heard flipped over. The older kids and siblings called it "rolled over" where we lived.

Mark rolled it over three times.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Never heard boards before...

 

[ChazAshley]

Grew up in Northern VA in the 90s, always called them stages or levels. Probably because I read a lot of Nintendo Power. But I still remember two neighborhood kids called them boards (smb3 and mm3)

Additionally, I called MegaMan robot 'bosses' but they called them masters. Wasn't there a Nintendo power contest that called them robot masters too?

Thanks for making me feel old btw OP

 

[JaseMath]

I grew up playing NES and I never once heard anyone call a level a "board". That's an arcade term.

 

[Rentahamster]

Omnipunctual Godot

 

[GreetingsMortal]

I grew up with NES in Canada but never heard them referred to as boards here. They were always levels or stages

 

[ReBurn]

They weren't called boards because of the NES. They were called boards because of older arcade games Like Pac-Man where you zipped around a single screen to clear it. The single screen was often referred to as a board because it resembled a board game. It's a name that just stuck with some people.

 

[Codes 208]

I think Dan is like 40, so that checks out.

Exactly, he’s in his 40’s and Arin is just barely 30, goes to show how the age difference demonstrates a change in their usage of gaming terms.

 

[SaucyJack]

They weren’t. Mainly stages or levels.

Boards cames from the old arcade and Atari years when games were just static screens that just got harder with different layouts much like playing table top games of the time. You rearranged the “ board “

This.

I remember it being used for arcade Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Missile Command, etc.

 

[zombrex]

semi related:
I remember in the 90's when people finished a game they said they "clocked it" here in Australia.
"Did you clock Zelda yet?." "I clocked it last week."
Even though pretty much none of the games of that era had an in game time.

So the terminology from previous systems often sticks even when it no longer makes sense.

 

[trikster40]

Same reason people say they “conquered” games rather than beat them. We were kids.

 

[dan76]

I'm in the UK and I've heard of boards. It wasn't too common though. Hanging around arcades in the early / mid 80's (I'm old, damn, but at least I got the whole arcade thing..) everyone called single screen games sheets. Pacman, Amidar, Mr Do!, all sheets. Gauntlet was levels because it actually said levels and scrolling games like Commando were stages. Pacland and Yie Ar Kung Fu also had stages. I think as games evolved so did the terms.

Boards seems really old school and cool. I'm going to start dropping it into polite conversation.

 

[DrumNBassDanTTV]

Grew up on the nes and never heard the term "boards"

 

[bellome]

Back in the day here in Italy we often used the word "quadro" (scene) instead of "livello" (level/stage) even if I have never seen the word scene in any NES game I remember.

 

[Pantz]

I think I heard it in Counter-Strike, maybe even Halo and Call of Duty. Calling them boards instead of maps.

 

[iconmaster]

They were certainly called “boards” more commonly at one point, somewhere. I remember it as a less frequent but still accepted term, and Wikipedia acknowledges it as well.

I don’t know the etymology unfortunately. The single-screen arcade theory is appealing though – think of Pac-Man here.

 

[daffyduck]

Ok boomer.

Never known boomers to care much about video games, except the odd one who plays simulations.

But, OK... Fartnite player??

 

[SF Kosmo]

This is actually a throwback to the pre-NES arcade era, where games had a handful of rotating layouts. These didn't necessarily correspond to the level number, because they would repeat. So for example Donkey Kong had four "boards" (referred to as "bent girders, or long fall, or whatever informal names) but 256 "levels." So level and board weren't actually synonymous.

The term kind of carried over past that era a little bit but I think by the late 80s no one really said that anymore. It was very much an early 80s arcade/Atari era thing.

 

[ReBurn]

Grew up in Northern VA in the 90s, always called them stages or levels. Probably because I read a lot of Nintendo Power. But I still remember two neighborhood kids called them boards (smb3 and mm3)

Additionally, I called MegaMan robot 'bosses' but they called them masters. Wasn't there a Nintendo power contest that called them robot masters too?

Thanks for making me feel old btw OP

Don't feel old. People were calling them boards in the 70s. It was long before your time.

 

[DrJohnGalt]

In my area levels, stages, boards, etc were all interchangeable for the most part. My young gamer self only used boards if the game moved scenes when you hit the edge of that particular board (as opposed to a side-scroller that follows the character) or when levels were divided up into smaller encounters that might pop up one one of several "boards" or backgrounds.

 

[Thavash]

I always called it stages , but remember , the NES had its own “first generation” from 84 to 88 where many of the early games hardly scrolled , so perhaps that’s why.

 

[WindomURL]

We used to call the bosses "guys" in the early years.

The final boss was "the guy of the game."

 

[cireza]

First time I hear about this.

 

[Naked Lunch]

I still call them boards - usually when talking NES era games.
Its a board game reference.
Fireball Island, Fantasy Forest, and Mad Magazine the Game for life.

 

[Iorv3th]

I grew up with the NES and they were levels to me and my friends and family. Nobody said boards.

 

[NecrosaroIII]

Never heard them called boards before

 

[Fuz]

I never heard that, but in the city where I went to high school (=ditched mostly to go to the arcade) they used to call levels "walls".


Fucking hated it.

 

[Agent X]

We said we “flipped” the game

Never heard flipped over. The older kids and siblings called it "rolled over" where we lived.

Mark rolled it over three times.

From my experiences, "flipped" or "rolled over" referred to games where the score counter was limited to a certain number of digits. For example, a game might have a 5-digit score counter, so it could display scores up to 99,999 points. If a player was good enough to exceed that, then at 100,000 points, the counter would "roll over" to 0, like the odometer of a car. A final score of 145,670 would appear on the screen as 45,670.

Most early games kept repeating levels (usually increasing difficulty along the way) until the player ran out of turns or "lives". More complex games were made with distinct levels with progression and a defined end point, so you could play all the way through to completion and see the ending sequence. Usually this was simply referred to as "completing" or "finishing" the game, but one bit of lingo I often heard among my circle of friends was "solving" the game.

 

[anothertech]

TIL levels were called boards

It was always levels/stages for me and mine

 

[Kokoloko85]

Uk here and we just used the term level or stage

 

[Schrade]

Hmm. I see a lot of people referring to "Board Games" but really, isn't the term "Board" from Pinball Machines? i.e. a Pineball Board is the playfield? And perhaps that is why it was pulled over into video games. Pinball Machines were the original arcade games.

 

[orborborb]

Marketing of games definitely referred to how many "screens" of action a game had before scrolling games were the norm.

 

[PropellerEar]

Grew up with NES, levels have always been levels to me.
Cassette and cartridge can have same meaning in my native language, never called them tapes.
You beat or cleared the game or played through it.

 

[dcx4610]

I always called them levels. I think boards came from the previous generation that played classic arcade games and came from board games. Each stage was a new "board". An example would be something like Berserk.

 

[Bog]

My buddy called them racks.

 

[Virex]

Never heard anyone call levels boards here in PAL land. We usually just say stages / levels.

 

[CC-Tron]

The term "boards" predates the NES. It goes back at least to early 80's arcade games or earlier. I remember beating arcade games back then was called "turning over the game". There were no endings; it would just restart from the beginning at higher difficulty.

 

[Spukc]

Never known boomers to care much about video games, except the odd one who plays simulations.

But, OK... Fartnite player??

It’s called fortnite.