Game with the bigger number of stages of all time?

[Damon Plus]

I know that Populous had about 4,000 stages, but are there games with more stages? (not counting looping games like Gauntlet, of course, that would be cheating )

[anagrama]

Gah! Saw the thread title and was going to say 'Populous'!
Don't suppose Populous 2 had more, did it?

[KJN]

The Sentinel springs to mind. It has 10,000 stages.

[vulcanjedi]

Hmm

Doesn't populous loop around to the same landscapes but with slightly different AI levels?

What about more action games like Kid Chameleon for the Sega. That has over 100 levels with multiple stages each.

VJ

[imanerd0011]

SMB 3 has 96. I always thought that was alot when I was a little kid. I've never played the games that you say have 10,000!!!

[otterpop]

What about Krusty's Fun House? That had a crap pile of levels.

Just looked it up - only 60 but it seemed like a lot more at the time.

[EnemyZero]

kid chameleon gets my vote - long game - next would def be gauntlet

[jslithy]

The Sentinel's "stages" are more like variants. You don't need to play them all; in fact, I don't think you can, because you skip a lot of levels if you capture the Sentinel with lots of energy left.

[chrisbid]

attaching sonic 1 to Sonic and Knuckles unlocks thousands of specials stages

[Damaramu]

IIRC, Bangai-O for the DC had around 40+ levels. Fun game.....

[tony_good]

Jeez, I would have guessed something like Donkey Kong, which has a finite, "kill screen" would have been the one.

40,000 scenes??? From what I remember, I hated Populous, so I can't even fathom that!

[GaijinPunch]

Did a those Atari arcade games ever have an ending? Xybots, Vindicators, Gauntlet, etc? If they did, those would be it I would assume, but I think they were infinite.

[Sotenga]

I'm going to be the obligatory jackass on this topic and say Pac-Man. Hey, the number of stages would be limitless if the game didn't glitch up after 256 stages or so! That's gotta count for something, right?

[john_soper]

I'm going to be the obligatory jackass on this topic and say Pac-Man. Hey, the number of stages would be limitless if the game didn't glitch up after 256 stages or so! That's gotta count for something, right?

I thought the guy who got the perfect pac-man score said every level after the twelth is identical?

[Gapporin]

Semi off-topic, but I've always wanted to find a sh'mup that had over 100 levels...that would be awesome.

[Cryomancer]

Rampage games tend to have 100~ or 100s of levels.

Also, puzzle games would be a good contender here, dr mario, tetris, whatnot.

And finally, I'll say Toejam and Earl, one or three.

[Dimitri]

And finally, I'll say Toejam and Earl, one or three.

The first TJ&E only has 25 levels or so. IIRC, it's always that many, even on random world. There's no elevator on the last level, just a ship piece.

I don't think it should really count of there's an obscene number of levels that are randomly generated or seeded or what have you -- so with that in mind, my vote goes to Super Mario World. 96 level exits...jeez...

[Damon Plus]

Well, Super Mario World has 96 exits, BUT 74 real stages. Super Mario Bros 3 has more than 90.

Has any of the Pac-Man sequels more levels than the original?

[anagrama]

96? Peh! There's 200 in the Master System version of Bubble Bobble, and I'm sure there's loads of games with more than that.

[Iron Draggon]

Semi off-topic, but I've always wanted to find a sh'mup that had over 100 levels...that would be awesome.

Well aren't Gradius V & R-Type Final like that in a way? Don't they both have hundreds of ship and weapon combinations that you can use? It seems like that would be almost the same thing. But if you want something more like 100 different actual levels, then try Sonic Wings Special. I'm not sure exactly how many levels it has, but it's a compilation of Sonic Wings 1 - 3, and I think that it has all the levels from all the games in it. Plus it has all the ships and all the weapons from all the other games, so it's a massive shmup. I think that what levels you play depends on how you do and what choices you make, as well as what ship and what character you use too. So it has at least 24 different levels, and maybe quite a bit more than that. I still haven't unlocked all the hidden stuff yet, because it's also very difficult with limited continues. But I can tell you it's plenty large enough, with lots of variety.