Talk:1-up

1-up
"Player 1's turn." Whoever added this must have been referring to the fact that some games announce "1UP" when it's player 1's turn to take the controls (and "2UP", etc. for other players). But "1UP" does not refer to the turn, as defined here: it refers to the player himself. It's as if it was Joe's turn, and the game announced "JOE" on screen: that doesn't make Joe mean a turn. You also see forms like 1UP START and GAME OVER 1UP. Equinox ◑ 14:57, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
 * From my Nintendo days, I remember when playing Super-Mario in two player mode, the 1UP was directly above Mario's head and 2UP above Luigi's head indicating which player the character belonged to. I would therefore define this as the character controlled by player 1. Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 21:54, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Here's one:
 * Harlington Wood, Jr., Atari v. North American Philips Consumer Electronics Corp., 672 F.2d 607, n. 2 (7th Cir. 1982):
 * Before any player registers points, the PAC-MAN scoring table displays in white "1 UP" and "2 UP" where the scores will appear.
 * See also this faithful reproduction of the Frogger 1998 - Walkthrough:

(continued after break)

++ |       | |        | | 1-UP   | This is the players turn (1-up or 2-up) | 00000 | This is the players points |       | |        | | xxx    | These are how many lives you have |       | | O      | This is the level you are on o=1 oo=2 ooo=3 ETC |       | | ______ | ||______|| This is your time meter - it will slowly run down | __    |  ||__|TIME| |       | ++

(continued)
 * See also w:File:Frogger game arcade.png, w:File:Galaga.png, w:File:Astro Invader.png, w:File:Zaxxon.png, w:File:Main Event Arcade.png.
 * Cheers! bd2412 T 00:19, 1 August 2013 (UTC)


 * In all of those screenshots, and in Jamesjiao's example, 1UP could simply mean "player one" &mdash; not "player one's turn" or "the character controlled by player one". After all, in a textbook diagram, we would label the lung as "lung" and not as "the thing denoted by lung". Equinox ◑ 11:32, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
 * If so, then the definition needs to be changed, but is still a sense distinct from "an extra life". bd2412 T 14:16, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think it means any of those things. It is comparable to next up.  If it simply meant "player 1" then we might expect game instructions and rules to commonly use the term interchangeably, but they do not.  It explicitly means player 1's turn and is mostly seen in real time during gameplay for that reason.  This is also the reason we are struggling to find cites. Spinning Spark  16:39, 11 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Bear in mind that early Japanese arcade games (where this apparently originated) did not usually come with (English) instructions; in fact some are notorious for their confusing "Janglish". 1UP seems to be something used on screen rather than in text. If it means "Player 1's turn" then why would (as Jamesjiao says) one game show 1UP and 2UP simultaneously on screen and immediately above the heads of those two players? Surely there it has the function of indicating player 1 and 2, not their turns. Also, since it's often shown beside a score ("1UP: 1000, 2UP: 1050") then how is that a turn? You might as well argue that it means "player 1's score". But no: other games would show "Player 1: 1000, Player 2: 1050". Equinox ◑ 16:47, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Looking at the Frogger, Galaga, and Zaxxon screens, each only shows 1UP or 1-UP. For Astro Invader, one is in yellow and the other is in red, which might indicate that one is an "active" color and the other is a "not your turn" color. For The Main Event, 1UP has a pink bar showing the players "energy" number, while 2UP, 3UP, and 4UP all have a blue bar reading "insert coin", which suggests that player 1 is the active player, and other players must wait for player one to finish his turn (unless their is an option for two players to play against each other, in which case it may be possible to have, say, 1UP and 4UP at the same time). Other examples of video game screen-shots showing only 1UP on the screen include BreakThru, Bubble Symphony, and Dig Dug. See also Chopper I, showing only 2-UP on the screen. bd2412 T 20:06, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

I have amended the definition to: "An indicator or identifier in a game with multiple players identified by number that shows that it is player 1's turn, or that player 1 is active". I believe that this matches the evidence from the citations and screenshots. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:41, 22 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I still don't agree with this but there's nothing I can say that I haven't already pointed out above. Equinox ◑ 22:41, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not clear on what you disagree with; I modified the definition so that it no longer exclusively reflects the player's "turn". You cannot possibly think that the citations and images provided indicate "an extra life", which means that a second definition is needed to explain them, so how would you define "1-up" as it appears in those citations and images? bd2412 T 22:46, 22 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I would define it as simply "player 1". Not player 1's turn, or score, or move. Just player 1 &mdash; sometimes used as a label. Equinox ◑ 05:39, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I changed the definition to: "In a game with multiple players, an indicator or identifier of player 1". Kosher? bd2412 T 02:03, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Striking as verified as redefined. Any further issues with this sense are a matter of tweaking the definition, not an RfV matter. bd2412 T 02:06, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

RFM discussion: March 2017–May 2020
Nominated for merger into one-up by User:Ultimateria. I oppose this proposed merge, because I believe that the primary use of "one-up" is with respect to the concept of one-upmanship (which never uses the number "1"), while the primary means of referring to the video-game usage is with the number, not the letter. I see no advantage to merging if that leads to conflation of meanings, or leads to the lesser-used variation housing the meaning of a particular definition. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 02:57, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
 * You're right, but I nominated it because I saw the same sense across two entries. The translations need to be merged, and one has to be established as the alt spelling. Have I been using this category wrong? Ultimateria (talk) 10:16, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I've merged the video game senses into 1-up. Ultimateria (talk) 21:57, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Who's "up next", i.e. the next person to play? 1UP = player 1's turn
See. This is what I argued long ago, and this article supports it, and goes back to the 1960s, way before Mario Bros. So I have changed the etymology. It's easy for modern gamers to assume that the "up" means an increase or gain, because "1up" may mean an extra life, but that's not the original sense. It's like "we're playing snooker, and after my turn, John is up next" i.e. the next player in sequence. Equinox ◑ 08:56, 1 August 2022 (UTC)