Video game terms

Common video game terms.

Boss
A boss is an enemy from the game that is stronger than the enemies faced before him. Bosses are faced by the player in the end of stages or certain parts of the story, and a final boss must be defeated in the end of the game. Some games contain optional bosses that the player don't need to defeat to proceed in the game, like PharaohMan.EXE in the first two games from the Mega Man Battle Network series. Some bosses from the series were created in Boss character contest.

Some games also contain a sub-boss (also known as miniboss and midboss), a boss that is usually weaker than the main boss of the area or a normal boss that add an extra challenge, like Proto Man in Mega Man 3 and Vile in Mega Man X8.

Checkpoint
Checkpoint is the local where the player begins the stage when a life is lost, so the player doesn't have to restart the stage. In the Mega Man games, the hallway before a boss room is a common checkpoint area.

Currency
A fictional currency is used for several purposes, such as buy, trade and sell items. Zenny is the currency from the Mega Man games, but P Chips, Screws, Energy Crystals, Refractors and Bug Frags also serve a similar role.

Enemy
An enemy is a character from a game who is designed to cause damage or hinder the player character in some other way, such as restricting their movement or causing the area to go dark. Most of them can be killed by one of the player's weapons, but others must simply be avoided.

Game Over
Game Over is a message that appears when the game ends with a negative outcome, usually when the player's character lost all lives and died.

Continue
When the player's character dies, some games allows to Continue the game from a certain point.

In Super Adventure Rockman, the player can only continue when defeated by some bosses, resulting in a cutscene where Mega Man is rescued (or challenged to continue in the battle against Quick Man) and can try again to face the boss again. The exception is Shadow Man, who destroys Mega Man. Curiously, Ra Thor and the New Yellow Devil also destroy Mega Man, but the player can continue against them, possibly due to them being the final bosses.

Head-up display
Head-up display, HUD for short, is the interface method by which some of the game's informations can be seen by the player during the game, the most common being the character's health.

Item
An item is a game object designed to produce an effect when picked up or activated by the player. Most are beneficial, like recovering health and energy, although "power-downs" exist in some games, such as Poison Mushrooms from the Mario series and Eggman items from Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

Non-player character
Non-player character, NPC for short, is a character from the game that can't be controlled by the player.

Save and load
Long games have a save feature to allow the player to stop and continue later by loading the saved game data.

Password
In early Mega Man games, a password is given to continue the game. If you put in when you want to start your previous game, you can start the previous game if you put the balls in the right spots.