Here We Go Again! in Video Games. This is an Ending Trope, so beware of spoilers.
- This is lampshaded sometimes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons when habitual castaway seagull Gulliver washes up on the shore of the player's island and is woken up:Gulliver: Hooooo boy. Up we go. On your feet, sailor. This isn't our first mystery beach, and it won't be our last... blugh... swallowed a LOT of seawater... Come on, get it together. Talk to the local. Here we go.
- Silent Hill. This is a concept in the series wherein if a main character makes a massive mistake and/or refuses to come to terms with their inner demons during his/her time in the town, it will refuse to let said person escape or it will give the person a reason to come back. This was unofficially coined as "Full Circle".
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time did a time-reset to the beginning. However, this was followed by a final fight scene in which the Big Bad is defeated, meaning that the events of the game never actually take place, and only the Prince remembers them.
- Prince of Persia (2008) features this: Before the game, The Mourning King offers up his soul to resurrect Elika. At the end, Elika sacrifices her life to re-imprison Ahriman. Ahriman then whispers the offer to resurrect the Prince's love if he frees the dark god. The Prince accepts.
- The Infocom text game Trinity begins and ends with your character spending the last few minutes before the start of World War III performing identical tasks in the Kensington Gardens. Complete with a foreshadowing/ironic slogan and "you feel you should do X" epilogue.
- Many video games from the 80s "ended" in this way.
- Perhaps most memorable was The Legend of Kage, which described the happy times of your character and the princess he just saved, and then with a foreboding "However....." begins the kidnapping process all over again.
- In the NES version of Bump 'n' Jump(not the arcade version, which is a pure Endless Game), after defeating the Final Boss and saving the Damsel in Distress, she gets captured again and the game begins anew.
- The 2004 version of The Bard's Tale has the "good" ending do this. Incidentally, the other two are much more awesome. The good ending is siding with Fionnaoch and killing Caleigh, with The Bard ending up having to con people for a living once again.
- Spyro the Dragon (1998) begins with Gnasty Gnorc, infuriated by the dragons' badmouthing of him, petrifying nearly every dragon in the land into a crystal statue. At the end of the game, after Spyro defeats Gnasty, frees all the dragons and re-collects all the treasure in the kingdom, Spyro makes a snide comment about Gnasty "not being a worthy opponent", which sets the original plot in motion again, prompting Spyro to speak the name of this trope.
- In the platformer Gods (the PC version, at least; other versions differ), at the completion of the game you are given the reward of immortality. Then the game suggests you should use your new power to do something challenging, and warps you back to level one.
- The line appears at the very beginning of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, so the usual meaning of the trope applies on subsequent replays. However, the in-universe significance of its first use is that CJ, having just got back to Los Santos for the first time in years, has just been immediately dropped in the middle of rival gang territory by Officer Tenpenny, forcing him to get moving and steal a bike to survive. He's been thrust straight back into the lifestyle he was trying to run away from. This line also provides the quote for the main page.CJ: "Ah shit, here we go again. Worst place in the world: Rolling Heights Balla Country. I ain't represented Grove Street in five years, but the Ballas won't give a shit!"
- Shadow Hearts: Covenant had a version of this in the good ending. With his friends scattered throughout time and his lover dead (the bad ending of the first game was the canonical one) Yuri chooses to die rather than allow the curse he's under to rob him of the memories of his friends and loved ones. When next we see him, he's at the beginning of the first Shadow Hearts game, clearly planning to change the past and get the good ending.
- In Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Mario says it in a cutscene after you complete every world where Donkey Kong accidentally loses all his Mini Mario Toys and proceeds to kidnap the Toads who produce them instead. Then you have to complete a new set of levels, albeit set in the same worlds as your first run. After you complete these levels, a similar cutscene appears, where Donkey Kong had six Mini Mario Toys in his bag and takes these away with him. Mario then says "Here we go again ... again!" and goes to the final boss battle.
- Subverted in killer7. The end of the first mission has Harman Smith asking Kun Lan "You're awake from your dream?" to which Kun Lan responds "Harman, the size of the world has changed." In the end of the final mission, Harman asks Kun Lan, "You're awake from your nightmare?" The response is "Harman, the world doesn't change, all it does is turn." Also, their confrontation at the beginning of the game takes place in Seattle; their confrontation at the end takes place in an unspecified Chinese city. You can probably fill in the blanks.
- Happens in the Best Ending in Metal Max Returns.
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door ends with Princess Peach and Toadsworth arriving at Mario's house, telling him that they found a new treasure map and need him to help them find the treasure. The big difference is that the second treasure presumably isn't secretly an Eldritch Abomination trying to trick someone into releasing it.
- Dissidia Final Fantasy has an extreme example : in the last cutscene, the heroes are in a beautiful land, and all warp back to their respective worlds... except the Warrior of Light, who just walks away with his crystal in hand to a town that's obviously Corneria, the City of Dreams. aka. the very first town of the entire series, effectively starting the plot of the very first game.
- In the Sega Genesis platformer Saint Sword after you hack your way through multiple levels, defeat various bosses and climb to the top of Gorgan's sinister castle you'd think you would emerge victorious after felling the evildoer. This is not the case, he promptly mocks you saying that you are too weak and cannot defeat him then sends you back to the first level, stripping you of all your items and transformation icons whilst generously letting you keep your score. Although there is a slight variation in the second playthrough, such as nighttime versions of the levels and enemies that now have ranged attacks, this is probably a fair example of Nintendo Hard, he can be beaten the second time though. The evil bastard.
- Super Mario Galaxy features a galaxy unlockable only after collecting all 120 stars and again as Luigi. The Grand Finale Galaxy is actually just the game's intro level (Awesome Music and Scenery Porn included), where most of the characters in the game congratulate you on being awesome.
- Comix Zone invokes the trope without lampshading it: if you beat the final boss, but don't do it quickly enough to save the girl, the protagonist will attempt to recreate the circumstances that led to the beginning of the game, so that he can bring her back.
- Chrono Trigger's true ending is this way, as well as most variations of it. After finishing their main quest, the main character's mother hops into the last Time Gate just before it closes, forcing the party to hop into their time machine for one more adventure.
- The Path, after the girl in white visits the grandmother, returns to the empty character select room. Each of the girls in red enters, takes up her original position, and they become selectable again.
- You just can't keep Carmen Sandiego in jail.
- Cho Ren Sha 68k: That explosion you see at the beginning of the game? Complete Stage 0 (the last stage of a given loop in this game) of the first loop and as the result screen shows up, you'll notice that the boss doesn't explode right away like other bosses. After the result screen disappears, then it explodes, you see the very explosion you saw at the beginning of the game, and you start Stage 1 of the second loop.
- The bad ending of Suikoden Tierkreis is somewhere between this and Shoot the Shaggy Dog. The One King you fight wasn't the original—he chose to sacrifice the lives of his allies to kill the previous One King, and wound up replacing him. Sacrifice your own allies, and guess what happens?
- In Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 2: The Siege of Spinner Cay, this is lampshaded by the MerLeader when McGillicutty repeatedly attempts to drown him/her as "torture":Chieftain Beluga: Guybrush, sink his ship!
McGillicutty: I'll deal with you later, Stinkwood! I think old fin-face here wants another dip in the drink! HA ha ha ha harr!
Chieftain Beluga: Here we go again. [s/he is lowered into the water] - CarnEvil ends with a sick, twisted version of this. After surviving the evil circus, you end up back at the grave where it all began. A moment later, the token used to start the whole business pops out of the bottom of the tombstone like a prize coin. A hand picks it up...and then (even as the girl screams in the background) puts it back in the tombstone. Without saying them, the ending scene depicts the three most dreaded words one can hear at the end of a scary ride: "Wanna go again?"
- Journey (2012) gets somewhat meta on one of these, the mountain that you've journeyed to reach merely re-incarnates you at the first stage of the game, giving a justified reason for doing multiple playthroughs.
- Conker's Bad Fur Day ultimately ends with a drunken Conker stumbling off into a dark and stormy night, just as in the beginning.
- The end of Futurama is the same scene as the beginning; at some point during the game, the three main characters go back in time.
- The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures ends with the characters escaping from Game Land, only for the Nerd to find out that the game was specifically made to do so. He remarks that you'd have to be a "total nerd" to play it again... three guesses as to what happens immediately afterwards.
- A side mission in Borderlands 2 involves breaking up a cult inspired by original Vault Hunter Lilith. Unfortunately, the human sacrifices rescued in the process begin to worship the Player Character.Lilith: Uh...whoops.
- If you survive Five Nights at Freddy's, you'll get your paycheck and a note from your boss saying "See you next week". Aw, hell... This trope is averted after completing the seventh "Custom Night", where you'll get a pink slip from management for messing with the animatronics' AI. Yaaaay!
- It seemed like it'd be this trope when Five Nights at Freddy's 2 was announced, that management hadn't learned and you'd have to go through the hell of this game again. Then The Reveal showed that FNAF 2 was a prequel. So the original game is the game this trope applies to.
- Five Nights at Freddy's 3 is absolutely this trope, as the plot revolves around the creation of a theme park horror attraction based on the events of the first two games, with the creators managing to get a hold of the last remaining animatronic. No one seemed to think this would be a bad idea.
- One of the Multiple Endings of Hollow Knight has The Knight take the place of the Hollow Knight as the new vessel for sealing the infection, but since it doesn't have the proper means of destroying the actual source of it, only time will tell if the playable Knight wakes up and becomes fully infected as well. Even Hornet is aware of this trope, as she tries to defy it very early on by halting the Knight, fearing that it may end up like the Sealed Vessel.
- Yoshi's Safari uses the trope as an excuse to justify hard mode. The dialogue and narration even acknowledges that the king, prince, and the twelve MacGuffins have been taken yet again. Said king and prince will even note that you saved them not once, but twice.
- In Night Trap, Megan says, "Oh boy, here we go again!" when Danny tries warning the girls again in the kitchen about the Augers, as she knows that she's heard that warning that she ignored before, in the living room.
- The postgame sidequest for Ali, one of the supporting characters in Octopath Traveler, reveals that he and his father last parted on bad terms after a fight. The player can bring them back together so they can open a shop, only for them to start fighting again on how it should be run.
- Codename: Kids Next Door - Operation: V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E. ends with the revelation that the entire story was just a video game Sector V was playing. Then the beginning of the game happens again in exactly the same way, including the Toiletnator breaking into Sector V's Treehouse.
- Super Treadmill: Each day effectively repeats a cycle - Billy starts fat, exercises and loses weight, becomes fit and thin, then the next day he's fat again.
- Planet Explorers: The campaign begins with the player character crash-landing on Maria's southerly Galileo Continent after hitting a derelict spaceship. To cut a long story short, they and their friends eventually build an airship powerful enough to bypass the wind belt cutting them off from the northern Newton Continent. Before they can get there, however, three decidedly non-derelict spaceships phase in from out of nowhere, looking like they mean business.
- The plot to the Triangulum Arc of Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker is focused on the fact that the cast has to fight off yet another wave of otherworldly invaders. Choosing the Endless Battle ending means that the cast has to fight off wave after wave of invaders until the end of time.
- In Densetsu no Stafy, the events are begun by Starfy accidentally hitting a jar into the ocean, releasing the antagonist Ogura. Just before the credits, Moe asks for a reward for saving Pufftop. Starfy goes to get him some of the castle's treasure...and knocks all of it into the ocean. When Papa Star finds out, he instructs them to go retrieve it before they can get a reward, and Moe begins chasing Starfy around Pufftop angrily. They accidentally run into Ogura's jar, causing it to fall and releasing him once again. This sets up what becomes a New Game Plus.
- In Magical Girl Critical, Momoka finally ends up back at her world after dealing with the issue that summoned her to the other world. However, when Nyaggard had sent her back in time so that it's like no time passed at all, it turns out he sent her a little too far back in time to before she was summoned. This results in Momoka being summoned to the other world yet again much to her displeasure, leaving things open for a New Game Plus.
