Games Which Require You to Play Through Them TWICE to Complete Them

[Nz17]

You know the ones, such as those back in the 16-bit era and especially the 8-bit era. There you are, possibly with a friend, and you two are about to finish off the final boss. You land the killing hit, you get to see the ending, and then you find out it is just a "bad ending," or a "false ending," and that you have to play through the quest AGAIN to get the good, true ending of the game. No, this isn't an extra quest like in Mario 1 or Zelda 1, this is a REQUIREMENT if you want to see the true conclusion to the game. And usually you don't even get to save nor get a password to continue with, no, you have to play through both times without being able to suspend your play-through meaning no switching off the power. And if the developers wanted to make it extra arduous, they also tossed in a requirement to complete some crazy extra task along the way to make it happen, or you would have to start over yet again. (Yeah, I'm referring to Bubble Bobble here.)

Let's call out some names here. Which games have this hidden trickery within them?

[Emperor Megas]

Ghouls 'N Ghosts series does this where you have to find the ultimate weapon the second time around to kill Loki.

Rolling Thunder sort of does it, too. The stages have a few changes the second time around, and one stage is completely different, but you're still having to play through twice.

Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars is another that you have to play through twice.

[Jorpho]

Do GI Joe (NES) and Silver Surfer (NES) count?

[Koa Zo]

Many many shoot-em-ups require a "second loop" to reach the true last boss [TLB].

[Nathan Dunsmore]

I think James Bond Jr for the Nes required you to play through it twice to get the real ending, which is kinda cheap considering there are only 4 levels.

[Tanooki]

Probably why I never finished it as it is a motivation killer but Chrono Trigger has a lot of endings. Winback on the N64 and later PS2 is a sadist double ending. They never tell you it in the game but it has a running clock and if you do not get to a certain point by like 4 hours in which you have to work to do, you get the bad ending and lose the game before youre even aware of it.

[goldenband]

A few that come to mind:

Saturday Night Slam Masters (Genesis/SNES)
Air Fortress (NES)
Rally Bike (NES)
Crazy Climber (Famicom)

Some games even require you to play through them more than twice, though some of these are more ambiguous:

Mystery Quest (NES) - have to finish it a total of 4 times (!!)
Arkista's Ring (NES) - loops 4 times, I think
ATP Tour Championship Tennis (Genesis) - have to play through 3 seasons
Wimbledon Championship Tennis (Genesis) - have to win the tournament 4x
Motocross Championship (32X) - have to play through 3 loops of the game's tracks
Pac-Mania (Genesis/SNES) - have to loop it a bunch of times, don't remember how many

Alpiner for TI-99/4A makes it sound like you can properly beat the game by looping it 3x, but you don't get anything new after the third time, and it's unplayable by that point anyway (someone on AtariAge verified it using cheat codes/RAM editing).

[SparTonberry]

Mystery Quest for the NES was originally a disk game in Japan (and I think it had a save feature). Would've made finishing the game 4 times a lot more bearable. I know it also had a story that was cut, probably to make the cart lower memory and cheaper to make.

[Tanooki]

Technically also on gamecube everyones favorite Eternal Darkness is like this. You get the ending fine enough finishing it just once, but there are technically 3 tiers to the game so you'd have to knock it off for each of the 3 colors they're aligned to to get I believe a slightly nicer closing to the game. More gravy for the person who just can't get enough, so it's like a half vote I suppose.

[Ogreatgames]

One of the most memorable for me would be Ghost N Goblins. Its hard enough actually reaching the end the first time but to do the same exact thing twice for its "happy ending".

[Jorpho]

I suppose Astro Boy: The Omega Factor (the excellent Treasure GBA game, not to be confused with the rather terrible other Astro Boy games) also counts, but the second playthrough changes things up in such a brilliant way as to make it very rewarding.

[Rickstilwell1]

Did you know Low G Man actually requires you to beat it 3 times to complete it? It uses passwords to save though.

[Bloodreign]

Irem pulled that stunt many a times with stuff like the R-Type games, but not after the second game, X-Multiply, and other games. You'd finish a loop, start another loop, finish that loop, finally get a game over. Companies like Konami on the other hand, they didn't believe in 2 loops, they believed in infinite ones.

[Tron 2.0]

Irem pulled that stunt many a times with stuff like the R-Type games, but not after the second game, X-Multiply, and other games. You'd finish a loop, start another loop, finish that loop, finally get a game over. Companies like Konami on the other hand, they didn't believe in 2 loops, they believed in infinite ones.
Pysiko,was like that as well with there shooters.If you wanted the credits that meant clearing the game on it's second loop.In the case with games such as strikers 1945 and gunbird come to mind.Even snk pulled that stunt with last resort for the neo-geo.

[Garry Silljo]

Did you know Low G Man actually requires you to beat it 3 times to complete it? It uses passwords to save though.

That must have been a fetish with Taxan. 8 Eyes does the same thing. You will get an ending at each loop and a new password. The third ending is the final and true one.

[Sailorneorune]

While visiting for OMGcon earlier this year, my cousin told me a nice story about how Super Ghouls n' Ghosts nearly drove her insane when she found out she had to finish it AGAIN.

[BlastProcessing402]

Probably why I never finished it as it is a motivation killer but Chrono Trigger has a lot of endings.

I don't know that I'd count CT, as beating it once does get you a perfectly satisfying ending, unlike say the GnG games, where you basically get a more dickish version of SMB's "our princess is in another castle" until the 2nd run through the levels. "Ooops you don't have the right weapon because it wasn't available til now, start over from the beginning" vs "you can keep playing and get more endings" as a bonus.



I don't know if it completely fits, since you don't redo the entire game, but the last half of Bravely Default is basically repeating the same things over and over for several chapters if you want the real ending.

[Jorpho]

The other thing about Chrono Trigger is that the second run is so devoid of challenge as to be an exercise in tedium. Playing through to each of the endings darn near ruined the game for me.