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Lets say you have a high scoring game like geometry wars, why type would you use for the score and how should you handle overflow?

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Depending on the scoring system in your game and the type you use you may never need to wrap. For example, an unsigned 64-bit integer can hold a maximum value of 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. Long before games get close to that most would start displaying problems rendering a number that long in the UI. It would also take an awfully long time to rack up a score that big so it's not really worth worrying about.

Depending on how you implement a leaderboard (i.e. use a third-party system for online scoreboards) then the format of the score may already be decided for you on their servers.

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I agree. int should be sufficient, and UInt64 should almost never need to be exceeded. – Nate May 17 '11 at 21:56
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9,223,372,036,854,775,807 is the maximum value for a signed 64-bit integer. For an unsigned 64-bit integer, the maximum value is 18,446,744,073,709,551,615. – Michael Madsen May 17 '11 at 22:37
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You could use the System.Numerics.BigInteger type. It supposedly doesn't have an upper limit (performance will probably degrade if it gets too large). – Omnion May 17 '11 at 23:15
@Michael Madsen Doh! Twice as long then before it wraps! ;) Ta – Roger Perkins May 18 '11 at 0:07
18 billion billion is one hell of a score. – Nick Bedford May 18 '11 at 4:34
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