History Main / BonusStage

* ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros''

* ''VideoGame/EarthwormJim''

* ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry''

* ''[[VideoGame/BombJack Mighty Bomb Jack]]'' has the unusual inversion of this trope, a Penalty Stage. Players who get too greedy collecting Mighty Coins or Mighty Drinks will be sent to a torture room, which has enemies but no prizes or exits. Escape is obtained by jumping fifty times.

** ''Sonic 3'' was unique for having Special Stages dedicated to the Chaos Emeralds, as well as three less elaborate Bonus Stages for the express purpose of farming rings, lives, and shields -- a gumball machine, a hybrid of pachinko and pinball, and a slot machine located in a perpetually-rotating area based on the Sonic 1 special stages. The Special Stages, meanwhile, were 3D mazes where you must "Get Blue Spheres", which are replaced with either rings[[note]]if one goes around the edges of a rectangular formation of spheres, which causes the player to automatically obtain all of them and replace them with rings[[/note]] or red spheres after being obtained; red spheres eject the player from the stage if touched, whereas rings increase the player's score and can grant a continue if all possible rings are obtained.

** ''VideoGame/SonicMania'' has a new Special Stage inspired by ''CD'' above, in the form of a fully-3D chase after a UFO holding a Chaos Emerald, with players tasked with collecting blue spheres to increase their speed and Rings to increase their time limit. The "Blue Spheres" Special Stages from ''VideoGame/Sonic3AndKnuckles'' also return as Bonus Stages for collecting Medals to unlock new content; getting all the spheres but not all the rings gives the player a silver medal, and getting all the spheres ''and'' rings grants a gold medal.

* VideoGame/KaoTheKangaroo:

* In ''Disney/WreckItRalph'', two bonus stages in their respective games are plot points.

* ''Disney/{{Aladdin}}'' games

* ''VideoGame/BatmanDoom'', unusually for a vanilla ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' mod, has one of these. During your first boss fight with the Scarecrow, mayor Kroll is tied to a ticking bomb in the vicinity. If the bomb explodes, the level ends and you go to the next one (map16) like normal. But if you manage to actually defeat Scarecrow before the explosion, you go to map31. It's a big, empty (and thus somewhat creepy) city map where you're trying to collect a bunch of random bonuses before you can access the exit and continue onto map16. This is also where you can access the SecretLevel.

** ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehogCD'' featured Sonic running around in a 3D environment and trying to destroy 6 UFOs under a time limit, and being awarded a Time Stone if he's successful. Rings increase the player's score but do nothing else. Like in Sonic 1, these stages were accessed via reaching the end of a level with 50 rings or more and jumping through the giant ring that appears under those circumstances.

* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'':

** In the 8-bit (UsefulNotes/SegaMasterSystem and UsefulNotes/GameGear) game, the Chaos Emeralds were hidden in the levels but collecting enough rings gave you access to the bonus stage full of rings, extra lives and one continue per stage.
** ''Sonic 3'' was unique for having bonus stages dedicated to the Chaos Emeralds (3D mazes where you must "Get Blue Spheres"), as well as three less elaborate bonus stages for the express purpose of farming rings, lives, and shields -- the Gumball Machine, sort-of-Pinball, and Slots.
** The bonus stages were brought back for ''Sonic Heroes'', which was notable because the other 3D games (both before and after Heroes) just automatically gave you the Chaos Emeralds over the course of the main plot. Of course, those Emeralds were ''still'' necessary to reach the final story...

** ''VideoGame/SonicMania'' has a new Special Stage in the form of a fully-3D chase after a UFO holding a Chaos Emerald, with players tasked with collecting blue spheres to increase their speed and Rings to increase their time limit. The "Blue Spheres" Special Stages from ''VideoGame/Sonic3AndKnuckles'' also return as Bonus Stages for collecting Medals to unlock new content.

* ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog''
** In the original ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'', the Special Stage consisted of a rotating maze with the objective being to reach the end and collect the Chaos Emerald. They were accessed by jumping into a giant ring that appeared at the end of the first two acts of each zone when you had at least fifty rings.

* In ''VideoGame/StuntRaceFX'', halfway through each of the three difficulty classes there is a bonus level where the player takes control of the large Trailer and drives through an obstacle course to gain additional time for the remaining two courses.

* In ''VideoGame/StuntRaceFX'', halfway through each of the three difficulty classes there is a bonus level where the player takes control of the large Trailer and drives through an obstacle course for additional time.

* ''VideoGame/CrashBandicoot1996'' has bonus stages that are gotten to by collecting three of certain items. The later ''Franchise/CrashBandicoot'' games have one on each level (the page image is from the [[VideoGame/CrashBandicoot3Warped third game]]), which you just have to step on a pad to get to. Some levels have a second pad that only appears if you get that far without dying, or have the corresponding colored Gem in your hands, which leads to a more-dangerous-than-normal-play Death Stage.

* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarOnline2'' has the bonus stages "Tokyo Bonus (Silver)" "Tokyo Bonus (Gold)" "Magatsu Bonus (Silver)" "Magatsu Bonus (Gold)" "Rappy Fever" and "Kazuchi Assault" which can only be accessed by randomly obtaining keys (which expire after 168 hours) as a possible reward for beating a daily featured quest for the first time that day with an A or S rank result. These quests offer high exp gain and/or loot as well as set rare enemy spawns depending on which one you are doing.

* ''Manga/{{Gon}}'' for the SuperFamicom has three timed bonus minigames: "Gon Eats Apples," "Gon Makes a Sculpture," and "Gon Steps on a Crocodile."

** ''VideoGame/SonicMania'' has a new Special Stage in the form of a fully-3D chase after a UFO holding a Chaos Emerald, with players tasked with collecting blue spheres to increase their speed and Rings to increase their time limit. The "Blue Spheres" Special Stages from ''Sonic3AndKnuckles'' also return as Bonus Stages for collecting Medals to unlock new content.

** In ''VideoGame/SuperMarioLand'' on the GameBoy, in addition to coin rooms, taking the harder-to-reach exit to a stage would lead to a bonus game where, depending on your timing, you could get lives or a power-up. One room, notably, exaggerates this trope by having all of the space in the room except for the floor and exit pipe filled completely with coins. It was impossible to collect all coins unless you used a thrown Super Ball (which, unlike other Mario games' fireballs, can collect coins, bounce at a 45-degree angle upon hitting a surface, and are unaffected by gravity). A few of the coin rooms have SpikesOfDoom, allowing you to ''die in a coin room''.

* ''VideoGame/TheSmurfs1994'': Collecting enough stars in all but the Gameboy Advance version will take you into a bonus level.

* ''VideoGame/StarTrekEliteForce 2'' has a Bonus Stage which is a direct pastiche of ''SuperMarioBros''; you even have go drop down a giant pipe to get to it.

* ''VideoGame/{{Bug}}!'' has two kinds. The first plays like the regular game itself (except you had to collect gold objects for extra lives). You could die in those, if that happened you'd exit the bonus level. The other is a PassThroughTheRings bonus, with an extra continue should you make it to the end.

* A [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfVideoGames classic example]] is the Challenge Stages of ''{{Galaga}}''.

* The US manual for ''{{Deathsmiles}}'' [[SchmuckBait advertises the Ice Palace in MBL as this]]. Under normal conditions, it is exceptionally easy to rack up points and max out your lifebar (scores of over ''[[PinballScoring 11 billion]]'' from the stage by itself are not unheard of, making it the single high-scoring stage). Unfortunately, if you happen to be [[NoDamageRun doing too]] [[HarderThanHard good]], the background will be red instead of blue, and you'll have to contend with it at Rank 999, where accumulating points is much more difficult.

The friendly BonusStage (not to be confused with the less friendly BonusDungeon and BrutalBonusLevel) is a level or area in a video game that has all or many of the following traits:

* ''VideoGame/StarTrekEliteForce 2'' has a BonusStage which is a direct pastiche of ''SuperMarioBros''; you even have go drop down a giant pipe to get to it.

** An [[DummiedOut unfinished]] bonus track in Sugar Rush, known as Diet Cola Mountain, is Vanellope's home. [[spoiler: It gets destroyed during the climax , but Vanellope gets a castle immediately after anyway.]]
** [[spoiler: At the end, after being accepted by the Nicelanders, Ralph starts lamenting for the Qbert gang, whose game was unplugged. His solution? Integrate them into the Fix-It Felix Jr. Bonus Level, giving them a new home as well a giving the game a popularity boost.]]