History
The first games containing a bonus stage are widely believed to be Namco's Rally-X (1980) and Galaga (1981). In the latter, the level would begin with the text "Challenging Stage" and would feature enemies that do not attack. The player is then rewarded extra points based on how many enemies could be eliminated.
Since few modern games use points as an incentive for gameplay, most modern bonus stages reward the player with power-ups rather than points. Modern games have often blurred the traditional distinction between bonus stages and ordinary levels. Most first-person shooter games allow players to enter bonus rooms within larger (non-bonus) levels to temporarily power up. Some games have optional bonus stages which must be discovered and whose completion impacts the mechanics of the rest of the game, as in the "Star Road" levels of Super Mario World. There are bonus levels in most Crash Bandicoot games, save for Crash Twinsanity and Crash of the Titans.
Read more about this topic: Bonus Stage
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)