King of the Hill tournaments have existed for Core War since the 1980s. The concept of 'King of the Hill' in video gaming was introduced by Core War players who would pit their warriors against each other's in a fight for survival. This game practices playing a singles point. Variations of this game include the challenger having to win two or three points in a row. If the challenger wins, they replace the “king” on the other side of the court and become the new king. One challenger steps up and plays out a single point against the “king.” The point can be started with either a serve or a drop hit. The other players line up single file on the other side. In this game, one player is designated as the 'king/queen' and occupies one side of the court. In tennis, a variation of this concept manifests in the recreational game alternately titled King of the Court. The name of the game has become a common metaphor for any sort of competitive zero-sum game or social activity in which a single winner is chosen from among multiple competitors, and a hierarchy is devised by the heights the competitors achieve on the hill (what Howard Bloom called 'the pecking order' in his book The Lucifer Principle), and where winning can only be achieved at the cost of displacing the previous winner.

The king or queen has the ability to 'kick' an opponent team's person from the hill and send that person back to their own team in exchange for the person with the same role from of the king's or queen's family.

Other team's people can push off their respective counterpart on the hill and become the 'royal' role.

The king, queen, prince and princess are the members of the team that gets on the hill first.

In this version there is not just the king but also his family, making up teams of 4

At the end, the king and his allies win.

Allies of the king (his team) can push opponents and enemies off and allies of the opponents (enemies) can push off allies but not the king.

To become the king, the leader of a team (opponent) must get on the hill and push the king off.

King is the leader of the first team to get up the hill at the start.

In this version, there are two or more opponent teams

To become a king, you need to go up the hill and push the king off.

The first to get on the hill at the start becomes the king.

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