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I decided to be bold and rework this article. I deleted a lot of unnecessary information (like where a certain 1-up was found in Super Mario Sunshine). I also tried to separate what is historical information with what a 1-up is today. I noticed on the talk page that some here feel that the term has evolved over time, and I included that in the "history" section. Also, there seemed to be a lot of redundant and/or wordy things, and I tried to streamline those into one, easily digestible paragraph. I also put the "original research" tag on this article. If anyone has any problems with what I did, please let me know either by replying here or on my talk page.

I'd also like to make a suggestion. I think "extra life" should be an article to itself, while the "1-up" should refer to the phenomena that is the "1-up" (for example, certain items that are actually called 1-ups, and uses in popular culture.) I think that the 1-up article should be somehow incorporated into the "extra life" article. Does anyone else think this is a good idea?--Hazillow (talk) 19:41, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the last comment. The extra life meaning is anecdotical. The true meaning is hidden in the "history" section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.167.218.161 (talk) 07:10, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

While I don't doubt the videogame useage originates from the Japanese use, it may be worth noting that the similar phrase "one up" (to jump ahead of a competitor) has been widely in use in English since the 1950s after being popularised by Stephen Potter in One-upmanship. - Zoganes

There's a more valid explanation for the 1-up terminology.

Older arcade games, going back to the old multiplayer pinball games, would have separate score tabulations for each player. A four-player-max pinball game would show a lit section on the back screen showing which player's turn it was, i.e., who was "up". Player 1 UP, Player 2 up, Player 3 up, etc.

Early two player arcade games would show 1up score and 2up scores... and then the number of lives remaining.

I second this. I remember the '1UP', '2UP' notation on the score lines of 80s arcade games. An extra life then was always just called a bonus life or extra life. The definition of '1UP' as extra life is a very strange terminology to me and I don't think it should be listed as the primary meaning of this term. Maybe the term has drifted over the years, but the current meaning certainly wasn't original.

Can someone find a MAME screenshot showing '1UP' and '2UP' in its original meaning?

--Natecull 07:09, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I know this comment is old, but you can see 1UP and 2UP in the Pac Man wiki screenshots. Xot (talk) 07:28, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Does the original 1UP stand for "1st user player", perhaps? 24.199.116.254 10:33, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's what I thought, although on reflection I've only really thought that recently and back in the 80s and early 90s would never have refered to "user" in the context of computer games so I'm not sure when it first occurred to me but I suspect it's a backronym. I do remember wondering exactly what it was supposed to stand for, when I was a kid. --JamesTheNumberless 14:09, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Programmers almost definitely used "user" to refer to a human operator. The alternative is a computer operator. Sometimes abbreviated with just COM. 1UP is sometimes 1P. Meaning port 1. Computer opponents (AI) are not assigned numbers since they don't have controllers or whatever. Programmers are fond of puns (like everyone else) so "first up" and "second up" is surely not lost on anyone. But UP is an acronym. --184.21.215.174 (talk) 02:41, 16 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The 1-Up Mushroom picture is just an edited version of the Mario Kart: Double Dash!! concept art for the Super Mushroom, as seen here:

• Image:Mushroom.jpg
• Image:1upMushroom3d.jpg

Can someone get a real picture? RememberMe? 02:11, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How is this? 1-up mushroom in Super Mario Bros.gif ... I've added it above 1upMushroom3d.jpg (which appears to be using an improper license, you can't just slighty change the colors with photoshop a picture and then claim it is public domain). --Splarka (rant) 23:19, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can take a CC-BY-SA photo, shop it, and release the result as CC-BY-SA, as in File:Amanita muscaria (green).JPG. But Hq3473 (talk) keeps reverting, claiming that it's too random. Hq's suggested alternative (File:H psittacina Rosemary Winnall.JPG) 1. doesn't have the dots shopped in as the caption would suggest, 2. isn't nearly as distinct at low resolutions, and 3. isn't an obvious recolor of a fly agaric like the one in the game. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 17:36, 8 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You say it's "an obvious recolor of a fly agaric" i say its an obvious Hygrocybe psittacina (a distinct green mushroom). Do you have any sources to back up your statement? Hq3473 (talk) 18:53, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the game, the green mushroom is a palette swap of the red mushroom; my sources for this are the manuals of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. But you're right that there isn't much of a source for the red mushroom resembling A. muscaria; MarioWiki isn't reliable. One option is to shop dots onto a photo of H. psittacina and make it more bright green and less brownish-camouflage green. The other is to file a straw deletion request to establish that File:Mario-mushroom.svg isn't a prohibited derivative work of the games (the hard part) and then shop that to be green (the easy part, because it's SVG). --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 18:15, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You know, there is a Homestar Runner character called 1-up. Can we have an article about him? --138.130.37.208 07:25, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can't think of a single title that does this. If someone can think of few examples it ought to stay, but otherwise it can't be called standard practice and should remain removed. Mr.bonus 17:23, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

MediEvil jumps to mind. It's pretty standard if you consider an extra life to be a full health bar. Still I am in the 1-Up equals extra life is just a Super Mario Bros. thing camp. --184.21.215.174 (talk) 02:28, 16 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It says that 2UP can also refer to "2 Universe Problem" in software debugging. If anyone knows any more detailed information about this, please create an article or stub about it, or provide a link that contains more informations.85.1.223.60 00:20, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seconded. I can't find any information of this supposed problem at all. The only thing google gives me are links back to wiki. Aaronstj 18:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I thought 1UP also meant "1st User Player" but I think I just made that up. In Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, on the character selection screen, the cursors say "1UP" and "2UP". --Addict 2006 21:30, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Can anyone find information on how saying "one up" means to outdo someone in competition just for the sake of beating them? That's how it's used where I live, don't know if it applies world wide or not. 24.5.246.233 (talk) 18:28, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So "1UP" once meant "player 1". More recently, it means "extra life". No comment on how this change of meaning happened.

Thinking about it now, I can imagine it being something like this: It first meant "player 1, step up", indicating that it is now player 1's turn. This was later interpreted as simply "player 1", leading to its use to distinguish the two (or more) players in the score display. Then somebody had the idea that, when a player gains an extra life, it should display this fact similarly to how it displays the score gained from an in-game event such as collecting an item or defeating an enemy. But a notation was needed. So whoever it was had the idea that, since an extra life is a gained instance of the character being played, and this was best identified by the player controlling it, "1UP", meaning "player 1", seemed a convenient notation.

But there seems to be a step missing. The article at the moment claims Super Mario Bros. as the origin of the "extra life" meaning. But in that case, it would say "2UP" instead when player 2 gains an extra life. I'm sure I would remember if this were the case when Luigi picks up a green mushroom in SMB.

Moreover, who changed the "1" from identifying the player to identifying the number of lives gained? Nintendo has certainly used it to mean both - for instance, some early editions of Donkey Kong used the player number meaning, whereas Super Mario Land 2 has such notation as "3UP" for gaining multiple extra lives at once. It seems strange that one company would create such a breaking change in the term's meaning like this.

Moreover, by my recollection the statement on when "1UP" appears in SMB is wrong. Unless it varies from edition to edition. From what I recall, at least of the NES version, it appears when you collect a green mushroom or shell enough enemies in one go to gain an extra life, but not when you collect 100 coins (when it would just play the extra life sound effect and increment the life counter behind the scenes, but give no visual feedback other than the coin counter cycling back to 0).

Of course, my suggestion of how the term has drifted in meaning is just speculation. But it would be useful to find some etymological information on the history of the term's meaning to add here. — Smjg (talk) 22:01, 15 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Here's my understanding about the transition of UP meaning "you're up" (e.g. "you're next") to extra life. I have heard that the english word "up" is sometimes used to mean "more" in Japan. In this context "1 UP" means "1 more". I was told this from a lived in Japan for a while, but I can't find this anywhere on line, so I'm not going to add it to the article. The only circumstantial evidence I found to support this is the existence of the "UP!" emoji 🆙, but that apparently is not an original emoji, but was added in 2015, so maybe this is just wrong. 73.92.212.248 (talk) 00:36, 11 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've added in the third way to achieve a 1-up in Super Mario Bros, as that game was referenced as being the first to use the term in the reference of a 1-up.

StrangeApparition2011 (talk) 23:24, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As 2-up leads to this page, and 2-up etc has a different meaning in the context of printing (which I think a general person is more likely to encounter than 2-up in gaming), I've added a section on printing. It seems this whole article is about gaming, so should a separate article and disambiguation page be created for this meaning? cmɢʟee☎✉ 20:28, 16 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree with what others have said, that memory tells me 1up and 2up were denotions of which player's turn it was in video games.

If playing "Two Player" mode, player one would be 1up and player two would be 2up, both as instructions of who plays next and also in the score tabulations. The extra life thing is totally new to me. I always thought the video games just said "Extra life!" or "Power up!" Funny how I must have missed things over the decades. History is a funny thing.

Sam -UK — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.233.112.107 (talk) 18:07, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]