Mechanic · structure & scoring

Heads-up display

The numbers and gauges a game keeps on screen during play, such as score, lives, time, and health.

stubAlso: HUD, status bar, status display, score displayUpdated 2026-10-23

A heads-up display (HUD) keeps the player’s state in view. On consoles with one background layer it is often a bar the game holds still with a status bar split, or a few sprites.

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Games

Every claim about this mechanic, by game (1)
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels 1986The score numbers, the screen setup tasks, the status bar and the game's text (FloateyNumbersRoutine through ResetScreenTimer) are Super Mario Bros.'s with these changes: GetPlayerColors no longer picks a palette row by CurrentPlayer (Super Mario Bros.'s table has a row for Luigi); WriteBottomStatusLine goes through a new GetWorldNumForDisplay, which shows worlds A to D as letters; DisplayIntermediate blanks the screen after the world and lives screen in world 9, and DisplayTimeUp writes its text and resets the screen timer itself where Super Mario Bros. jumps into DisplayIntermediate; ClearBuffersDrawIcon's title-screen part moves to the title code; the screen task list gains DemoReset; GameText drops the two-player and Luigi texts and adds CONTINUE and RETRY to the game-over screen. InitScreen, SetupIntermediate, GetAreaPalette, GetAlternatePalette1, WriteTopStatusLine, AreaParserTaskControl and ResetScreenTimer keep every instruction, with only addresses changed.Code