New Game Plus

On finishing, a player may begin again with levels, equipment or abilities intact against unchanged or slightly rescaled opposition. Early encounters collapse, pacing accelerates, and attention moves to content the first run could not reach. Some designs use the mode to gate real material, hiding endings, bosses or explanations behind a second or third completion, which turns replay into an extension of the story rather than a bonus.

Square's Chrono Trigger in 1995 built the mode around a plot involving time travel and a set of multiple endings, most of which are reachable only by confronting the final boss at unusual points. Replay was therefore not a courtesy but the mechanism through which the game is fully seen. Cartridge memory and a battery made carrying a completed state across a fresh start technically straightforward.

Approach solved a genuine problem, since long games are expensive to make and expensive to replay, and it gives mastery somewhere to go once credits roll. Risks are familiar. A run where nothing threatens the player is a victory lap that quickly bores, so later designs scale enemies, add modifiers or introduce new rules. Where it works, it converts knowledge of a game into that game's next difficulty setting.