These days, video games require gigabytes of storage and hundreds of megabytes of memory to run, but in the early days of arcade games, memory was limited to just a few kilobytes. In fact, this post needs more memory than Breakout or Asteroids needed altogether. So, programmers had to be frugal with naming conventions and rather than displaying 'Player 1' and 'Player 2' on the screen, they would simply put '1UP' and '2UP'.
The term first appearing on pin games in the early 70s. As video games developed the term started being used in multiplayer games, with '1UP' and '2UP' written next to each player's score. Over time, the term was also used to represent collectibles that would increase the player's lives.
But why 'Up'? Most arcade historians believe it was short hand for 'Player 1, step-up', since there was often only room (and indeed controls) for one player at a time.
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