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This might have been a UK-only device, but the Hyperscore (by Hasbro) was a cartridge that you plugged your game in to and then inserted into the Super Nintendo or Mega Drive (Genesis).

You played a game (e.g. Super Mario World) and got a high score. You then took the speaker from the cartridge and, having dialed a phone number, held the speaker to it and it told the computer on the other end of the phone your score via different tones.

All the game scores were then put into a national league and the highest score won a prize. You could check the scores on Teletext.

However for me, it never worked. I have a vivid memory of trying to transmit my SMW score through the phone line and it never getting understood.

So my question is did it ever work? There were score on Teletext but they may have been placeholders.

There is not much information on the internet, surprisingly.

(P.S. Which tags do we use for 'peripherals' on here?)

EDIT: @Mazura's cited source is interesting because it talks as if the device wasn't released, however I can tell you that I did purchase one from an independent store and the phoneline was active. I had the telephone at full stretch up the stairs and the SNES at full stretch from my bedroom to ensure the large plastic round speaker could reach the mouthpiece of the phone. You could adjust the speaker so that the tone noises it made were held for a longer duration... it still didn't work.

I can remember Digitiser had some scores on one of their pages, but I think these were placeholders as they never changed.

EDIT: This guy on the PA forums says pretty much the same thing as the accepted answer and got a boardgame as compensation for the recall. http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/57233/hyperscore-an-ancient-snes-thing-queries

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  • The technology isn't implausible. There were patch-through cartridges like Game Genie or Action Replay which can read and write game memory. Transfering data through audio over a common phone connection was also possible.
    – Philipp
    Aug 12, 2015 at 6:47

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Doubtful.

"It's not yet in the shops, but we've 25 to give away this week..."

enter image description here

source

The peripheral was intended for release in October 1995 for £29.99, but was cancelled. –segaretro.org/Hyperscore

This explains how you had one and why they don't work. I'd bet the independent seller wasn't supposed to be 'selling' you one. It would seem that marketing was way ahead of the rest of the team on this.

GamesMaster TV Series Retrospective, Part 5 (transcript) manic-expression.com:

News: The Hyper Score helps SNES and Mega Drive owners save their high scores, and Earthworm Jim gets his very own Saturday morning cartoon show

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  • I would have to guess it had a limited release to "test the waters" - the phone system was active, if not working for me & others. Digitiser did have scores, I remember checking every day and noticing they did not change.
    – VictorySaber
    Aug 13, 2015 at 8:17
  • I'm happy to mark this as the answer, because I doubt there is any more information out there. Question edited with more info.
    – VictorySaber
    Aug 13, 2015 at 8:20
  • @VictorySaber - This reminds me of the Atari game Laser Blast, where you could send in a picture of your high-enough-score and receive a badge.
    – Mazura
    Aug 13, 2015 at 14:27

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