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Tuesday’s Trope: New Game Plus

[Tuesday's Trope is a weekly department highlighting an amusing video game trope from TVTropes. Aggrogate is not affiliated with TVTropes.org in any way. All trope examples come from TVTropes and are shared via the Creative Commons license.]

Just because you've finished a game doesn't mean you're done with it. Sometimes it helps to start all over again, with all the experience and equipment you built up or a few extra items you can't even find in your first playthrough. This ability to start again while carrying over things from your previous game is called New Game Plus, and it's become a popular feature in many games. Chrono Trigger wasn't necessarily the first game to do this, but it pioneered the concept and gave it its name. This is actually one of the few video game tropes with its own Wikipedia page!

Examples of New Game Plus include:

• Naturally, Chrono Trigger, as listed above. You get to keep anything that's not a key item in the new game, so you can fight the final boss almost anytime, required to get the various endings. Also, Chrono Cross not only has the mode, but it's the only way to get all of the Loads And Loads Of Characters at once. Cross also gives you two extra items: one lets you switch Serge for another character in battle, and one lets you speed up or slow down the game speed, which is a godsend.
• Once you have won the game once, Mass Effect lets you start a new game with the same character, inventory, and experience, so you aren't forced to use a new character when playing on the newly-unlocked Hardcore difficulty. The game even increases the level cap from 50 to 60 for both old and new characters. Similarly, winning again on Hardcore unlocks the Insanity difficulty, with the same ability to play using an old character. Furthermore, some unlockable bonuses let you use an ability or weapon on a new character, even if that character cannot usually use that ability or weapon.
• In Metal Gear Solid, after completing the game, depending on which of the two ending story paths you chose, you could start over with one of two super-items: A headband that grants unlimited ammo, or an optical camouflage suit that grants invisibility. Get both endings, and you can play through the game the third time in a tuxedo, plus keep both special items.
• After completing each game in the Ratchet And Clank series, players are presented with the option to begin a new game on the same save file, and are allowed to keep their ultra-powerful weapons and ammo. Considering how much currency the average player accumulates over the course of the average game (and subsequently spends on weapons and ammunition), this is pretty much the only feasible way for most players to get the first game's Infinity Plus One Gun, the RYNO.
• Most Resident Evil games allow you to start with an extremely powerful gun once you unlock it, usually by clearing the game really fast, with a very high score. And of course, you get a closet that fills up with spiffy new outfits.
• Some Nippon Ichi games, such as Disgaea and Makai Kingdom, have "New Game Plus" options that allow players to keep all of the characters they've created up to that point, along with all of the awesome weapons they've collected. Almost a necessity, as these games are always rife with extra dungeons, bonus bosses and multiple endings.
• The Front Mission DS remake allows you to New Game + yourself into either easier or harder difficulties, as easy as 0.5x normal to as hard as 20.0x!
• The World Ends With You has a version of New Game Plus that's even better than most: once you've beaten the final boss, you can jump to any chapter of the story at any point, even if you're in the middle of a different chapter, with your level, your items, your pins, your friendship levels, and so forth intact. Want to fight some Noise that only appear in chapter seven, but don't want to play through chapters one through six? No problem!
• In Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, you can start a new game while retaining all of your previous levels. The first few bosses only take a few hits to die.