"...and what did you find there?"
"I found the ZX10900 'soup maker' greande launcher"
"But I have tried many times to enter that room, and it is always locked!"
"That's because you haven't killed the final boss with the peeling knife, you need to do that to get the pink lion card. With it you can acces the room"
"WITH THE PEELING KNIFE?!..."

Sounds familiar?

I remember that, quite some time ago, games were not only difficult, but rewarding. In a long lost past, games allowed you to make a special save called "clear game" that allowed you to have a more exciting second run. In fact, some games even had some sort of collectible or achievements that encouraged a second run through them. Were it cards, keys, tags, coins, fingers, hearts, eyes, killing Cerberus with your teeth, escaping from the top secret underground lab in 2 seconds, getting an SSS rating in all 2000 levels, destroying the enemy mothership just by swearing, or whatever, they were there.

Now, I don't know if it's just me, or that long lost past is longed by many gamers. Windows and Xbox live achievements? Sure, but just for bragging. It seems as if the developers and publishers alike no longer care about the replay value of their games' single player modes, but just the multiplayer aspect, and it's sad (I'm not saying that multiplayer is a bad thing). I remember that some games, like Parasite Eve (the first one) or Vagrant Story (both are from former Squaresoft), were so good and had such a high replay value, that I went through them at least 7 times.

So, what happened? Maybe the industry realized that, in a rational and practical way of seeing things, going through a game once and again just to finish it with an even higher level each time was a senseless thing to do; but, we old school gamers loved our senselessness! It is truth that the industry needs to evolve to adapt to the new breed of gamers, but, does this feature really take something from a game? I mean, I'm not a developer, but, how hard can it be to add this feature to a game?

Now, let's be realistic, not all games can support this feature. Your standard FPS would have a hard time giving you the feeling you are experiencing something new once you have finished it. The same would happen to the standard RTS; but other genres, like RPGs and Survival Horror games, are ideal for the "clear game" feature.

So, is the "clear game" feature cleared by today standards? It seems it has. And, to tell the truth, I think there are many recent games that could do or have done way better with it. Oh well, maybe I've grown too old...