Up To Eleven / Video Games

• Moore's Law actually facilitates handheld Video Game Systems being more powerful than home systems of the same class (should the game company choose to do so), as long as they come out a few years later.
  • The Game Boy Color has a faster processor and more memory than the NES, especially seen in Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, which looks closer to the MSX games than the NES games.
  • The Game Boy Advance is not only more powerful than the SNES, it's more powerful than the Neo Geo, in everything but screen resolution and color depth. The Castlevania games show this quite well.
  • The DS tops the Nintendo 64, even though its processors are slower. The ARM processors in the DS at the time were more advanced and its RAM is also more efficient, making it more practical than the N64's RAM with the Expansion Pak. Plus, it has plenty of texture memory, which can be seen in comparing the graphics of the original and DS versions of Super Mario 64. The only thing the N64 had over the DS was texture filtering, some advanced lighting features (which may explain why some N64 games appeared on the 3DS instead of the DS), and a higher screen resolution.
  • The PSP has the same processor speed (especially with the CPU cap removed) and memory as the PS2, and it has texture compression which the PS2 lacked (only a few games have truly shown this off though). Unlike the PS2, it also has a proper GPU (one that can process vertices on its own, rather than needing a separate Vector Unit).
  • The Nintendo 3DS had graphics that can match, if not surpass, the Nintendo GameCube, and even though no one outside of Nintendo has had a chance to look under its hood, the mere fact that it has 3D effects obtained without glasses makes it almost certain to surpass the GameCube on a technical level as well.
    • The New 3DS is even more powerful with more memory and CPU power, for which some games take advantage of in order to look and/or play great (like Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS, which takes advantage of it to not only play more smoothly, but also load faster and allow the use of Miiverse^note The ability to access Miiverse during play was disabled so the game could get better performance during the gameplay, and a port of Xenoblade Chronicles 1, made exclusively for the New 3DS, that takes advantage of the extra processing power to look good).
  • The Play Station Vita has graphical capabilities advanced enough to match the PlayStation 3 in terms of fidelity. In fact, a lot of the Vita's early library were ports from the PS3.
  • This can also apply to cell phones and tablets as well. For instance, NVIDIA claimed its K1 system-on-a-chip released in 2014 could produce graphics as good as the Xbox 360 or PS3 in their heydays, which it seems to be able to do (the screenshot is from Need for Speed: No Limits)
• Equipping Demyx with the Ultimate Gear in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days changes his sitar into one named Up to Eleven. A slightly more powerful version called Up to Eleven+ is also obtainable.
• The House of the Dead: OVERKILL has volume dials which can be turned all the way to eleven.
• Rock Band and Guitar Hero are falling into this quite nicely.
  • In a nod to This is Spın̈al Tap, the volume controls go up to eleven in the first two Guitar Hero games. In a direct example of this trope, when Neversoft took over the games for the third game (but not the controllers, which have always been made by Red Octane), the volume controls went up to 12. (Also see Rank Inflation for other examples.)
  • An interesting example of this occurs in Rock Band: Unplugged. The standard multipliers (without Overdrive) go up to 5x. Activating Overdrive doubles the multiplier: 1x becomes 2x, 2x becomes 4x... except when used while the multiplier is at 5x... then, the multiplier becomes 11x. Why? Because, as Harmonix's Alex Navarro said in an interview, "Eleven is better than ten."
  • Guitar Hero 5 matches this by escalating the maximum total band multiplier all the way up to 11x assuming everyone has a good streak and uses star power when a band moment occurs. With the personal score multiplier that's also applied, this pushes the possible score to previously unthinkable amounts.This is also how you're expected to get the diamond-level score on the "God of Rock score attack" challenge (which requires you to score 10 million points - though you only need half of this score to get the gig's unlockable, which requires platinum).
  • Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock (Neversoft's rhythm swan song) had "powers" which could be combined. 36x multipliers and running Star Power for minutes at a time becomes common.
  • Australia's XBOX Magazine gave Guitar Hero II 11 out of ten.
  • Here's the Space Oddity Guitar chart in Rock Band. And here's the Pro Guitar chart for the same song.
• In the free flight simulator of Flightgear, a specific aircraft can go at 112% Maximum Speed in space.
• Some of Ace Combat's superplanes have special weapons which are more or less downgraded versions of the superweapons you destroy on a regular basis.
• Super Minesweeper could be considered this to Minesweeper.
• Every time the Final Fantasy series uses the Job Class system, S-E invokes this trope. In the original Final Fantasy, you chose classes in the beginning and were stuck with them (though each also had its own Prestige Class). In Final Fantasy III, the game gives you several classes that you can switch between anytime you wanted to outide fo battle, with a wide variety of abilities. Final Fantasy V uses a similar system to III, but this time around you can also set a secondary skillset from another class (and in the case of Mime, you have three blank slots to fill as you pleased). Final Fantasy Tactics and its sequels introduces even more classes and not only lets you equip a second skillset, but also gives you a myriad of counterattacks, supportive, and movement abilities. Final Fantasy X-2 has all of the previous and allows characters to switch Job classes mid-battle. Final Fantasy XIII and its sequels has all of that and allows the entire party to switch between different squads in the blink of an eye.
  • In Dissidia Final Fantasy, performing Cloud Of Darkness's EX-Burst perfectly requires you to charge the attack to 120% power.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, the energy bar for the Limit Break depends on various factors: a party of at least four people has a single Limit bar, and a full party of eight has two. At the final boss of a dungeon or raid, an extra bar is added, bringing it up to a maximum of three. The final boss of the post-Shadowbringers patches can also use Limit Breaks, and his ultimate attack uses four bars. It will immediately kill the whole party unless one of the tanks uses a level 3 Limit Break of their own to shield the group, and it still does a lot of damage.
• During target practice in Psychonauts, Razputin is tasked with killing a THOUSAND dummy mooks that pop out of a dispenser. The only way to actually finish the level is to set the dispenser intensity up to eleven (aptly marked with a skull and crossbones) which makes the whole shooting range run amok and force you to fight in near-combat conditions. Which actually was the whole point of the practice from the very beginning.
• In Burnout Paradise, the SFX and music volumes go up to 11.
• 11 is an intentionally recurring number in Kingdom of Loathing. In particular, the Super-Secret Canadian Mind-Control Device goes Up To Eleven, with a reference to This is Spın̈al Tap.
  The device is currently set to level X. Note that the dial goes to 11. Most mind-control devices have dials that go up to 10, but this one goes to 11. It's one higher.
• Games company Team17 were originally known as 17-Bit Software - because they were "that bit better than the rest".
• In Digimon World 3, Imperialdramon Paladin Mode takes digivolving power up to 11 with the following: Heals that do everything but rez KO'ed allies or recover MP, a devastating 3-hit attack technique (and the already crazy physical attack power), a OHKO attack technique that always works in random encounters and has a chance of OHKO'ing the 2nd phase of Galacticmon, the final boss, and his signature technique, Omega Blade, which can OHKO an evil Armageddemon (if you have enough strength) on the Gunslinger satellite.
  • Some Digimon Digivolve beyond Mega, taking them up to eleven. Imperialdramon Paladin Mode, Omnimon, and Susanoomon are prime examples. Diaboromon falls into this category as well. And probably Kimeramon, if he Digivolved from anything at all.
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is Star Wars: Up to Eleven, in that, not only did it have a Mary Sue as the main character, but it also went back and "unleashed" all the symbolic battles that took place in the movies and the sort. The game is just that over-the-top that it destroyed the visual impact of the movies, because suddenly, grabbing a lightsaber from a few feet away using your mind, or pushing a fragile droid over isn't quite as cool as pulling a Star Destroyer out of the sky, or pushing a stormtrooper so hard off his feet that he flies through a titanium sealed door, landing in a bunch of conveniently placed explosives which effectively destroy the enemy base of operations.
  • The enemies in the game also have flesh and bone that is lightsaber and impact resistant. They are just that strong. Not so smart on the field, though.
  • In Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2, Starkiller appears to have taken knowledge from the almighty Yoda, as well as Vader, and goes up against a Rancor probably three times the size of the huge Bull Rancor from the first game. It seems that he has also destroyed the canonical ending of the first game, and eventually got two lightsabers.
• In Borderlands, in the third DLC, they upped the level cap from 50 to 61, explicitly because most games up the cap by 10 at a time.
  • Borderlands 2 has an achievement for reaching level 50 called "Capped Out... For Now" which means they're likely to do the same. Which they did. They literally turned the level cap up by eleven. Twice.
  • The sequel's tagline was actually 87 bazillion guns just got BAZILIONDIER''. Gearbox likes this trope.
  • Borderlands 2 has a more literal example. You can have skill levels up to 5. There are "class modules" equipment that give bonuses to several skills, usually up to 5 bonus. One particular type of class mods give +6 bonus to one skill, rising it up to 11.
  • Borderlands 2 had an even more literal version of this. What happens when the player plays the hard mode? More badasses. What about bosses? Well when you beat it, all bosses become level 50. Anything else? Yeah, when you beat the game all psycho's become level 51 and get armor. Hey, what about Crawmerax bosses? We'll make way more of them, and while they won't become any harder we don't need to worry, they already take more ammo than MOST CHARACTERS COULD EVER POSSIBLY CARRY.
• In [PROTOTYPE], although the game has no predecessor, it is constantly breaking its own boundaries as the game progresses. Such improvements reveal the ability to change course of flight without any leverage whatsoever, running up buildings faster than The Flash can wank, parkouring your way through Manhattan in less than 5 minutes, and the ability to expand and compress your body mass so much that you can both set off a biological bomb inside yourself, and run through practically anything that gets in the way.
  • Despite all this, players feel somewhat underpowered because you can't fly like Superman, run on water like a genetic antichrist, or pick up tanks with your unearthly strength. For some reason, people also want to be able to drive cars. You can run 5 times faster than cars, and turn into a walking tank. You do not need to drive cars in this game.
• [PROTOTYPE 2] is a perfect example of "Everything always gets worse". Everytime you do a Story Mission, they always seems to pull something new. From refighting the Hydra, to fighting the equivalent of a walking bulldozer, to taking on a monster the size of a building that launches itself into the air like an acrobat. Then there's the military soldiers, various weapons they use, the evolved, and your ever expanding arsenal of decimation. If anything, the final boss fight is a bit underwhelming after everything else you go through to get there.
• In God of War, you took on leviathans, warlocks, and medusas, dueling a God at the end. In the sequel, you take on the authorities of Greek Mythology as a whole, so the goal-meter has been heightened quite a bit. And as for the third game...
  • Lets put it this way. If anything was left alive after God of War III, it's because Kratos hasn't killed it yet.
• The Fusion Pins in The World Ends with You. The first is simply the Neku and his partner jumping between the planes attacking with beams. The second adds more character; Shiki's attacks with Mr. Mew, Joshua's summons meteors and Beat's involves riding on chains. Then, the third takes it up to eleven. Shiki's third Fusion is transforming Mr. Mew into Godzilla-like-proportions, Beat's summons a giant wave which squashes the Noise and Joshua's summons the freakin' moon.
• In Star Trek: Bridge Commander, you can boost the power going to your ship systems up to 125%. It's a big help in battles, but order more power drain than the system can handle, and you will be forced to ration power in the middle of a heated firefight.
• Half-Life starts with an experiment at Black Mesa to run the "Antimass Spectrometer" to "one-oh-five percent." Whatever that meant, it didn't turn out well.
  • In Gearbox Software's expansion, Half-Life: Decay, the player character Colette Green was tasked with turning the said Antimass Spectrometer to 105%.
• Pokémon Battle Revolution: "The energy level of the fans has been turned up to 11!"
• The Mass Effect series seems determined to use every single trope in existence. This is not an exaggeration - its pages have gotten so large that they've broken the wiki several times.
• In the case of the Capcom vs. games (this only applies for the five games featuring Marvel Comics characters and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom), the attacks of some Capcom characters become MUCH more flash, powerful, and over-the-top than they actually appear in their series of origin. This is because they'll fit more with the exaggerated and frantic gameplay seen in those games. It's even more noticeable when it comes to the Street Fighter characters. As an example, compare Alex's Hyper Bomb from Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike in this video to the amplified version seen here from Tatsunoko vs Capcom.
• In Beautiful Katamari, of the Katamari Damacy series, your performance on each level is graded out of 100 points. If you do really, really well, you'll get 120 points instead. The King of All Cosmos comments that even he doesn't understand how that works.
• In Rosenkreuzstilette Freudenstachel, legend has it that Schirach Fühler of the Black Cross organization possesses abilities that go FAR BEYOND the simple limitations of standard humans.
• Starcraft II: "Class 12 psionic waveform pattern detected, the Queen of Blades is inbound". The scale usually caps out at 10.
• Fallout: New Vegas: during the Boomer quest Ant Misbehavin', the player is asked by Loyal about what frequency a sonic emitter would need to have to kill mutated ants. There is a Science check dialogue option. With insufficient skill the player can tell him to "turn it up to eleven".
• Fallout 4:
  • They put the "power" back in Powered Armor. How? Aside from the sweet new HUD, through-the-roof rad shielding, and immunity to Falling Damage, it now literally boosts your Strength up to eleven, despite the maximum level for stats being ten.
  • When you've maxxed out a S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Stat to the maximum of 10 through either leveling or speccing your stats like that in the first place, collecting one of the seven S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Vault-Tec Bobbleheads scattered throughout the Commonwealth will bring that stat up to 11.
  • The Big Boy MIRV is the answer of what would happen if one decided to combine Macross Missile Massacre with a Fat Man: it fires 12 Mini-Nukes at once.
• Mohawk and Headphone Jack has an option where you can turn the volume up to 11. Of course, the Mode 7 is also turned up to 11, and unlike the sound, by default! Unfortunately for those with weak stomachs, there is no way to turn that setting down.
• In Ghostbusters: The Video Game, at one point Egon quips while tracking ghosts in the Library:
  Egon: These readings are off the charts!... Now I'll have to make new charts.
• Meta Knight in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. So overpowered he has an ENTIRE TIER to himself. There's a reason he was later banned from tournaments. (He was only unbanned when the group that officially banned him in the first place disbanded). And even then, he can still be banned depending on the tournament's rules. Meta Knight does well against almost every character in Brawl. The only ones able to win against skilled Meta Knight players are other skilled Meta Knight players or people who main the characters in the tier below him that have mastered the needed techniques to even counter any Meta Knight.
• The Saints Row franchise has become a regular exercise in one-upping the previous installment's JustForFun.Holy Shit Quotient. From being a random nobody who joins a gang, to crime boss who turns that gang into a criminal empire, to pop culture icon who turns a criminal empire into a multi-media powerhouse, to the fucking president of the United States who fights aliens in the matrix with superpowers. Talk about Sequel Escalation.
• The Chua of WildStar keep topping their own destructive weapons, gadgets, and experiments. Mondo Zax, their leader, has a dial that literally turns to 11.
• In Civilization V, each leader has a certain disposition towards certain tactics, i.e. Catherine of Russia likes to focus on science. Each disposition is rated on a scale of one to ten, and can vary slightly per session. Gandhi has a rating locked at twelve for "Use of nukes", in a Continuity Nod to Civilization I's Gandhi turning into a bloodthirsty psychopath as soon as he researched Democracy (about the same time he discovers nukes) due to his "Aggressiveness" dropping into negative numbers (from unlocking Democracy), causing it to rise from "2" to "255" on a scale of ten
• Inazuma Eleven goes further and further with anything regarding its premise of "Super Dimensional Soccer". At first, the heroes are just a group of Ragtag Bunch of Misfits struggling to prevent a rundown sport club from being disbanded. Then the cast evolves from losers to champions who can summon monsters, elemental powers, magic armors, and reality-warping abilities just to play soccer. And as far as the plots of the sequel series concern, Soccer is a goddamned serious business, and everybody plays it - even aliens outside the solar system.
• One of the guitar powerups in Wayne's World for the SNES is a number 11.
• In the Skylanders games, Deja Vu's backstory explains that she obtained her powers by turning the hands on her time-boring machine's clock to 13, causing it to overload.
• Later DanceDanceRevolution games have a Groove Radar (a radar chart of a song's attributes, like jumps and offbeat notes) that rank attributes on a scale of 1 to 200, usually scaling songs with the highest attributes down when a new version comes out to avoid going over 200. The latest game has decided to throw that out the window and includes a song where one attribute is at 270◊. As for the 1-10 difficulty scale, the DDR Extreme boss songs "The Legend of MAX" and "Paranoia Survivor MAX" had flashing difficulty ratings, indicating that they were "beyond 10". Starting with DDR X, the scale was revised to be from 1 to 20.
• In the Groove has a standard difficulty scale from 1 to 12, but the boss songs, "Pandemonium" and "Vertex^2", go up to 13.
• Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn lets wizard characters, including playable ones, to use up to 9th-level spells — the normal maximum for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition which its rules are based on. The expansion pack Throne of Bhaal introduces 10th-level spells. The same thing but with less obvious numbers goes for priests' maximum level 7 spells and then "Quest" level in the expansion.
• Although the video game ratings in Greenheart Games' Game Dev Tycoon normally only go up to 10 (and then only if you're very skilled/lucky), one of the Easter Eggs is to get a score of 11/10, and there's even an achievement for doing this.
• In Undertale, if you died from Sans for more than 11 times in a row, he stops counting how many times you died.
• In Deemo, the hardest songs (which are, without exception, finger-blisteringly hard) are given a difficulty rating of 10. Then along comes "Myosotis", which unlocks after you've cleared the rest of the main game. Its difficulty rating? 11.
• For Ikemen Sengoku, the English translators release notes just before the release of each new romance route with ratings of 1-10 for Drama, Romance, and Sexiness. After giving Hideyoshi's route the maximum 10 for Drama, they gave Shingen's route an 11 for Drama — and then, after they finished translating Kenshin's route, they apologized for giving Shingen the Drama rating of 11 because Kenshin's route was even more drama/angst-filled and deserving of an 11+.
• The Elder Scrolls Online: Khajiit often refer to someone/something good as "five-claw(ed)". The bard song about Khunzar-ri insists that he wasn't just a five-claw, but a ten.
• In The Sims 4 all careers (except Freelancer, which doesn't have ranks) have ranks from 1 to 10. However, if you take the Villain branch of the Secret Agent career, you can reach the job "Triple Agent" at rank 11. But for all careers, you get an achievement for completing the career at rank 10, including the Secret Agent Villain branch.
• Friday Night Funkin': The first 3 Weeks took place in relatively normal locations, such as a theater, a haunted house, and beside a railroad. Week 4 has you and your girlfriend's mother rapping on top of moving limousines driving down a highway. The Mother even has backup dancers riding their own limo!
• DC Universe Online:
  • During the villain version of the storyline to halt Bane's Venom distribution, Joker suggests turning Bane's henchmen's Venom injectors up to 11, which gives them a fatal overdose.
  • One of the candy items you can get during the Halloween event is a "Very, Very Dark Chocolate Bat" that, according to its description, is somehow 110% cacao.

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