New Game Plus
Encyclopedia : N : NE : NEW : New Game Plus
New Game Plus (usually written as "New Game +") is a video game mode that allows the player to start a new game after they finish the game at least once, where certain aspects of the finished game affect the newly started game. The term was first coined by the 1995 role-playing game Chrono Trigger. This play mode is most often found in role-playing games, where starting a New Game + will usually have the player characters start the new game with the statistics and/or equipment they ended the last game with. Key items that are related to the story are normally removed so they cannot ruin the game's progression, and are given back at the time they are needed; likewise, characters that the player acquires throughout the story will also not appear until their scheduled place and time, but will get the enhanced stats from the previous play through.
Games with multiple endings often feature a New Game + mode, such as , as having pre-leveled characters makes successive playthroughs of the game easier and faster; with some games featuring over a dozen endings and more than 50 hours of gameplay, it would be a daunting task to play the same game for 50 hours to see each ending. Another significant example is Chrono Trigger; in this game, the player is given several opportunities to jump to the end of the game and defeat the last boss, but in the first playthrough, the characters are far too weak to defeat the main boss at any point other than the end of the game.
Some games have a completion rating, like Final Fantasy X-2, or give bonuses for collecting things, like Tales of Symphonia; however, many of these games have divergent paths, and it is not possible to get 100% unless you use the New Game + option to make different choices and collect the things that were passed over the first time around. In the case of Final Fantasy X-2, it is possible to get a 100% completion rating if the player picks a certain path and makes no errors. Shadow of Memories has a completion rating that counts the number of endings the player has seen; after seeing the game's five main endings, a special stage is unlocked that has a 6th ending.
In some cases, specific things are locked away until the player starts a new game using the New Game + option. In Sigma Star Saga, a special item is needed to unlock two of the four available endings; this item is unavailable on the first playthrough, but can be found in a New Game + game.
Although this type of play is usually found in role playing games, there are non-RPGs with this feature. Mario Superstar Baseball has a challenge mode that requires the player to earn stars to promote characters to Superstar status; but it is impossible to get all the stars on a single playthrough, and no character can get all their stars until the latter difficulty levels. By continuing from a complete game, the characters keep all the stars they earned, and all characters can become Superstars in successive plays of the challenge mode.
Clear Game
A slight variation of this is the Clear Game, similar to the New Game +, the Clear Game is a special game that is played after finishing the regular game. In this type of game, the player is given the ability to continue playing, even though the game is finished, allowing one to see the effect of defeating the last boss on the game world.
In many games of this type, new challenges and levels are opened to give the player an extra goal; each of the .hack games featured a bonus dungeon after completing the main mission objective on the disc. Dragon Quest VIII features a Clear Game mode that's a little bit different; instead of continuing where the game left off, the player is returned to just before the final battle, the difference is the availability of a special level, which when completed, reveals more of the game's history and changes the ending when the final boss is rechallenged. Defeating the boss at this point, gives the player access to another challenge.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.