Built-in within N is a highscore section, which aim is to provide a solid platform for all players to compete with each other, trying to complete the levels and episodes with the most amount of time left as possible. That means, going as fast as possible and taking all worthwhile pieces of gold. If each piece of gold takes more than a 2 second detour per piece to get, then it's generally considered not worthwhile to collect. If you have done well enough, you can submit the run onto the top-20 boards. Each level and episode has its own top-20 board, and this in itself is already a challenge for new players, as these days, it requires a high level of skill just to place in the top 20 places. If you are the fastest player to complete a level or episode, you'll appear at the top of the list, this is called a 0th, since the top position is marked as 0. The reason the best rank is called "0th" is because eveything in N starts with 0 instead of 1. With the passing of time, the boards have become harder and harder, and therefore taking a 0th requires supreme of skill.
In this section you can not only compete with the rest of the players, but also watch their runs. Aside from the entertainment factor, these demos are particularly useful in case you are stuck or don't remember the route either as a casual player or a highscorer. You can also watch all your demos via this section. Using software specially developed for the highscores community by jg9000, called NHigh, one can download all of the scores from the boards and create rankings, to show who has the most 0ths, the most top-20 scores, etc.
The player with the most 0ths overall is called the grandmaster. As of 30 March 2013, the current grandmaster is the Spanish player, EddyMataGallos.
Highscore Rankings
The highscore rankings without filtering can become quite polluted, because of the lack of an anti-cheating system to prevent cheaters and hackers compromising the integity of the boards; such a system is hoped to be introduced in N 1.5[1]. A speedhack detection countermeasure has already seen great success in NReality, proving the legitimacy of many players including xaelar, Mr_Lim, lookatthis, Ben_Schultz_11, vankusss, EddyMataGallos, Kool-Aid, eru_bahagon, golfkid, macrohenry as well as kryX's speedruns to name a few. This has helped a lot in order to ensure only fair runs are submitted, creating clean rankings; without fake scores and cheated runs. All known hackers and cheaters have been omitted from the following lists.
The Highscores Rankings as of 13 March 2014
- Includes tied 0ths
Total 0ths Ranking
0 EddyMataGallos - 263 1 macrohenry - 152 2 xaelar - 46 - vankusss - 46 4 Kool-aid - 31 5 Ben_Schultz_11 - 22 6 eru_bahagon - 13 7 Jp27ace - 12 8 golfkid - 9 - swipenet - 9 - Raif - 9 11 Seifer - 4 - nadroj347 - 4 13 Wolfos - 3 - Izzy - 3 15 clux - 2 - ToeFaceKiller - 2 - Gutland - 2
Total Top-20s Ranking
0 EddyMataGallos - 599 - macrohenry - 599 2 golfkid - 598 3 eru_bahagon - 584 4 lookatthis - 564 5 xaelar - 552 6 Mr_Lim - 528 7 Hendor - 500 8 Ben_Schultz_11 - 455 9 vankusss - 414 10 glib_jase - 403 11 ToeFaceKiller - 361 12 Analu - 325 13 Johnny_faneca - 272 14 Darkshadow1416 - 213 15 swipenet - 185 16 Chouse - 164 17 Izzy - 152 18 trib4lmaniac - 150 19 zapkt - 125
Total Game Score Ranking
The total game score table for players can be found here.
Point Ranking
The point ranking tables for players can be found here.
Cheating
Since the infamous appearance of naem, some highscorers began to be distrusted by the main forum body, as a number of their scores have appeared to be made illegitimately. Legit highscorers were always frustrated with this topic (see johnny_faneca for more info).
kryX-orange, who had an alter ego called ANGERFIST, admitted that he cheated all of his metanet runs by slowing the game down[2], and consequently, his scores are not counted as legitimate runs, as have a few other cheaters including crappitrash, L3X, naem, Goo, Bonzai, pokemaniac1342 and Sp33dy. Hacking was also rife within the highscores charts, as some people hack their .sols to submit fake scores to an extent where at one point, every level contained at least one hacked score. Fortunately, on November 10th 2011, Mare, with the help of a few others in the community eradicated most of these hacked scores and any subsequent hacked runs can easily be ignored by using the 'ignore' feature on NHigh until they are vanquished yet again by Mare. NReality prevents the use of speedhacking, sol hacking and any other illegal method. There's no tolerance with any cheater or any cheated score in the community unless it is declared as such and posted somewhere other than the built in highscores boards. Such places include underclock mode, or on the forums. Therefore, the current rankings created at the community are completely clear of hackers/cheaters and we now have a fair system that many highscorers from the past desired, so if you're one of those and are reading this, you can gladly come back and be assured you are competing with legitimate competition.
Removal of the hacked scores
During November 2011, a cleansing campaign spearheaded by Mare finally began with a two phase removal of the hacked scores, which filled up to about 30% of all available spots. After some additional help from 999_Springs, Izzy and EddyMataGallos, all the hacked scores were completely removed (barring the exception of speedhacked runs by cheaters (which are ignored on the official rankings), which the majority of the community sees as a tolerable compromise for now). This sparked a notable increase in highscoring activity by jubilant highscorers. It has also been revealed that every highscore run submitted is saved on the Metanet database - not only the first 20 or 40 scores. The highscorers were finally able to see the (almost legitimate) top-20 board of episode 00 for the first time in many years.