The Bonus Stage

[ROMate]

We all know and love the glorious bonus stage. Full of free health, power-ups, and extra lives, the bonus stage/area has been a friend to gamers for many generations. In many games, the bonus stages were almost more fun than the actual game (destroy the car in Street Fighter!) or so useful as to be abusable (Mario World's Top Secret Area comes to mind). In some games, bonus stages were key to perfection (101, 102, and 103 percents in the Donkey Kong Country series) and some even held items that could only be found there, and would be great boon to the player(Chaos Emerald stages).

But where did the bonus stage go? It's been so long since I played a game with Bonus Stages it's getting somewhat infuriating (though that may just be the hassle I'm experiencing with my computer helping it along). So let's talk about bonus stages. DO NOT MAKE A LIST. If you want to name off games with bonus stages or your favorite bonus stages, say why the hell it's so important.

[boshy]

because it is the reward to a hard work of cheat

[elevator_kart]

Yeh... Bonus stage is one of the important things in games IMO.
I'ts really fun and one of the best bonus stages that I like is in:
Art of Fighting 2
Where you have to complete it to learn "HAOH SHOKOKEN" attack.
Or the other bonus games in the same game where you have to be accurate when you hit the tree.

The sad thing is that most of the new games in new consoles don't have these Classic Bonus stages.

[lumberjack33]

The reson we don't see bonus stages now are because the games industry's recent obsession with realism means that they Just Wouldn't Work, and any game that doesn't fit into the Single Coherent Realistic Narrative mould winds up just being a sequence of gimmicky bonus stages, instead of the Proper Games we're used to.

[YeldellGW]

Final Fight Streetwise had bonus stages, some might say too many.

As far as fighters go, most people care more about beating the snot out of others than beating high scores.

[Snorlax.RAYZR]

I love bonus stages, but sometimes I want the option to remove them. Like in SF3 for example. Sometimes I don't feel like doing the basketball parry//SUV destroy thing.

Shadowdancer had badass bonus stages though. Um um um kah, um um um ka!! (starts beatboxing)

[tetsaru arigashi]

i guess bonus stages are more of an old-school thing nowadays, and i think the new-school eqiuvalent for them would be mini-games, sorta like the various fighting events you had to go through in kingdom hearts 2.  that, and bonus stages often involved the main character being transported to some sort of alternate world, which would probably disrupt the plotline in a lot of games that focused in on the moment at hand (Halo 2 comes to mind).

[ROMate]

I'd have been more inclined to play Halo if there'd been a silly minigame to take the edge off the "dark" bullshit in the game.

[importgamer13]

I liked the bonus games in the NES Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers 2.In some of them,you merely tried to get a 1 up or 2up...but others,you had to play the 'which box is the prize you want under?' game...there could be a 1up,an extra continue,or plaques that you could use for increasing your life gauge!

[R-9]

Now, if you went into the "Bonus" stages in Phalanx, you'd be taking your life in your own hands. half the powerups were real, while the other half would grow spikes and try to kill you.

I'd have been more inclined to play Halo if there'd been a silly minigame to take the edge off the "dark" bullshit in the game.

Yeah. While I have some issues with Shakespeare, this is something that he knew well about. That's why we have stuff like the gravediggers in Hamlet.

[TheS3rpent]

I miss the old Test Your Might games from MK in the arcade. The Basketball minigame in Third Strike is fun, one of the few mini's that actually help improve your tech.

[Snorlax.RAYZR]

The question block minigame from Super Mario 3.

[ROMate]

I liked the memory match card game in Mario 3. The sliding puzzle for lives was fun too, but the last section never wanted to line up right (I always get 2 star pieces with a flower or mushroom bottom).

[Snorlax.RAYZR]

I never got those either. It was pure luck. But if you're talking about the end-level roulettes, I always got stars.

[Qwerty1]

I think the bonus stage all began with Mario Bros' moving-platform-to-get-coins-then-try-to-get-the-last-three stage. Ah, the fond memories of striking the block to make the vine grow off the screen. It was like climbing to Heaven.