Continue
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Continue is the common term in video games for the option to continue the game after all of the player's lives have been lost, rather than ending the game and restarting from the very beginning.
In home console games, continues are not typically available at the player's leisure. While he may start with a preset number of continues, to acquire additional continues he must earn them; either by collecting an item, reaching specific point totals, or performing certain tasks. Furthermore, continues may not place the player directly at the point they ended. For example, in a platform game, an extra life may allow a player to continue from the point their character died, but a continue would leave the player at the beginning of the level he was playing. Additionally, a continue will often reset the score counter to zero, curtailing a player's attempt to achieve a high score.
As a rule, arcade games contain a continue feature whenever a player loses all their lives, but they must use another credit (insert more coins) before it is allowed. This is to not only give the player a chance to continue without losing their progress but also to collect additional revenue from them.
In many arcade games, such as Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara, if the player or players have all died during a boss fight the continue screen will feature an illustration of the boss and a line or two of them daring the player to continue.
In some arcade games, the continue screen will feature the player's character about to die in a gruesome way. Final Fight featured the character (of the player's choosing) tied to a chair with a giant stick of dynamite ready to explode. (This was redone in its Super Nintendo sequels Final Fight 2 and Final Fight 3.) In a similar fashion, the arcade version of Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden featured the character tied to the ground with a giant circular saw being lowered towards the character's chest. If the player doesn't have enough credits or chooses not to continue, the scene freezes upon the end of the countdown, followed by a scream or explosion sound, and then preceded by the message Game Over. Mortal Kombat 4 featured a Continue screen where the defeated player was falling down a seemingly endless chasm. If nothing was done to continue, the player landed on the spike pit below the machine.
Typically, during this period, the player is given a short amount of time (traditionally ten seconds) to choose to continue before it is game over. In many arcade games, simply inserting a coin into the machine will reset the counter, allowing the player more time to press the "start" button or insert more coins; conversely, hitting any other buttons during this countdown will result in a second being taken off the counter for each button press, further shortening the player's decision-making time. This is usually done to prevent other players from starting the game at the original player's status if he or she decides to quit (Or a new player can choose to start over and thus end the game immediately rather than wait for the 10 seconds to go off).
Most arcade games made since the late 1980s feature coin-insertion continues. One notable exception is Haunted Castle, where the player was given only three to five lives (depending on the cabinet's settings) in exchange for the first coin inserted. Additional coins could be inserted before pressing start to increase the player's health; for every coin inserted the player's health doubled, up to the game's ten-coin limit. However this was not quite as useful as those coins giving more lives or continues, as falling down a hole would still take all the player's hit points regardless of how many coins they had inserted.
