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{{trope}}
[[File:pokemon-red-and-
So you [[Gotta Catch Them All]], eh? Well, the Marketing department has come up with a wonderful way to encourage [[Socialization Bonus|social participation]]! They'll divide some of the game's content (characters, [[Mons]], subplots, or so on) between different cartridges! Sure, you can still play the game by yourself, beat the [[Final Boss]] and watch the credits roll, but the ''only'' way to get true [[One Hundred Percent Completion]] is to find ''other'' people who have purchased the ''other'' versions (or simply buy the other versions yourself) and trade your exclusive content for theirs. This version is particularly common with [[Mons|mon]] games.
Of course, this means that those same characters, subplots, and [[Mons]] are now effectively interchangeable in the overall scheme of things, thus making characterization inconvenient. Also, anyone who doesn't have access to large gatherings of people with the other versions of the game is likely screwed.
A variation of this involves ending a game's story on a [[Cliff Hanger]] and having the sequel pick up where the first game left off, giving the player the feeling that the entire series was, narratively, one game split into multiple parts. However, this practice isn't as well regarded here as it is in other media: Individual volumes of a series of novels, films, or television shows frequently are not expected to be anything ''but'' the continuation of a single, overall work in progress. Videogames, meanwhile, are largely expected to stand as discrete, complete works in and of themselves.
Novels, films, and television shows also do not cost $
Of course, if you want to acquire both versions yourself, this not only means twice the money (to purchase them with), but twice your free time (to actually ''play'' them).
Compare the [[Old Save Bonus]], where you need to interact with a separate game (generally of the same company) to unlock certain content, which is usually not central to gameplay but may be necessary for [[
See also [[Expansion Pack]], [[Two-Part Trilogy]].
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There are three sections to this article: Examples of one game in multiple concurrent versions, examples of one story being split over multiple games, and examples of this phenomenon outside of games and gaming media.
{{examples}}
* ''[[Pokémon]]'' is the [[Trope Codifier]] ([[Older Than They Think]]...). The
** There are some critters the player can only get by trading
** The GTS in ''Diamond and Pearl'' aside, collecting Generation IV's massive list is further complicated (ignoring the GTS's obvious limitations) by the fact that in order to even see a Manaphy, one must physically import it from ''[[Pokémon Ranger]]''; this was rectified in ''Platinum'' and later games, which allow the player to see a picture of Manaphy in books sitting around in certain locations, registering Manaphy as "seen" and enabling the GTS route. For those without a Wi-Fi connection, don't even think about trying to get a Spiritomb without the GTS. This near-impossible-to-achieve-alone feat requires meeting 32 players in the underground (or the same one person thirty-two different times).
*** ''Pokémon Yellow'' brought this to an ultimate - it lacked Pokémon you could only get in ''Red'' AND only in ''Blue'', so if you bought ''Pokémon Yellow'', you also needed trade with BOTH ''[[Pokémon Red and Blue|Red and Blue]]'' to get certain Pokémon.
** Pokémon also brought this to an extreme in its third generation. ''Ruby and Sapphire'' together had only about half of the Pokémon. ''FireRed and LeafGreen'', having come out later, had most of the other half, leaving only a few. ''Emerald'' had a good chunk, and ''[[Pokémon Colosseum|Colosseum]]'' and ''[[Pokémon Colosseum|XD: Gale of Darkness]]'' had one of these each (Ho-Oh and Lugia, respectively). Jirachi was available from a connection bonus from ''Pokémon Channel'' in Europe and Australia only, or a preorder-only version of ''Colosseum'' in America only, and Celebi was available through the latter method in Japan only). That makes six games, one of them having to be preordered and bought twice in different languages (or once plus buying another game in Europe), on two consoles, for [[
*** Speaking of Celebi, it was better in the second generation (for Japan at least) because back then all you needed to get a Celebi was a cell phone and a special link cable for the Game Boy. This connected you to a wireless trading/battle system that could also trigger an event to catch Celebi.
** ''[[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon]]'' pushes this further to the extreme. The first set of games were at least released on different systems but the second set give absolutely no reason for the double release. Trading is not an option here so all but one of the few differences in Pokémon listings are solved by entering passwords which are far easier to find online than in the opposite version. It basically boils down to whether you wanted Mewtwo or Celebi after you've beaten the game. The third Mystery Dungeon ([[No Export for You]]) is One for the price of Three, and interconnectable with each other because they would all be on the same Wii.
*** ''Explorers of Sky'' subverts this by having every Pokémon except Arceus available without any interaction at all, partially because the game uses a completely new password system that does not work with the previous games.
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** The [[Pokémon (anime)|anime]] has used this starting with the first fifth-generation-based movies, ''[[Pokémon the Movie: Black And White|Black: Victini and Reshiram]]'' and ''[[Pokémon the Movie: Black And White|White: Victini and Zekrom]]''. Just like [[Pokémon Black and White|the games]], they are two versions of the same movie, with similar plots, but with Reshiram and Zekrom's roles swapped and a few different Pokémon appearing in the different movies.
*** Also averted: Both movies were released together in a 2-disc DVD set.
** This is averted by almost every Pokémon [[ROM Hack]] ever made. Adjusting encounter rates so every or nearly every Pokémon (some hacks will not add mutually exclusive and/or event Pokémon) can obtained in game is done on all but the most simple (alter the main character's model) or complex (Some hacks no longer include any of the original Pokémon, some don't include any Pokémon at all and replace them with [[Touhou]] characters.) hack.
* The ''[[Mega Man Battle Network]]'' games started doing this with the 3rd installment. At first, it just affected side bosses and cards. Later, what version you got affected what storyline bosses you faced and abilities you acquired. This means that, for some reason, in one version of ''Battle Network 5'', the Navi in charge of a water world is ''Napalm''Man.
** The game also hilariously inverts the trope in MMBN4, making you play the game over 3 times to get everything you need. In theory this made one game much longer in comparison since you got three times the play time. It even looked so, since there are 6 plotline bosses you can fight, with 2 completely new ones with their own side quests on each rotation. In practice, however, this was anything but fun, as apart from the 2 side scenarios (which are rather short and comprised about 20% of the overall game) everything else was the exact same, and while the enemies also leveled up through each run, they only got more HP and attacking power, rarely adapting their strategy. Effectively you invested three times the playtime for the same thing over and over again.
** Battle Network 4 also involved a rare chip called the Z-Saver. This chip can only be obtained by linking up your game boy to a ''[[Mega Man Zero]] 3'' game. However, each ''Zero 3'' cartridge only contained one copy of the Z-Saver chip, meaning that not only did you have to find another game, you'd also have to find one that hasn't been tapped of it's chip (making rental store copies completely worthless, as their chips have already been gutted and put into their own Battle Network games). This basically meant that if you wanted the chip, you HAD to buy another game.
* ''[[Mega Man Star Force]]'' is One Game for the Price of ''Three.'' However, through Wi-fi, you could get the benefits of all three games, making the differences effectively the high-end cards and one boss. ''Star Force 2'' plays with this, with three versions consolidated into two distinct cartridges (Zerker x Ninja and Zerker x Saurian; at the title screen, you choose whether you play Zerker or your cartridge version, and each version has its own save file). ''Star Force 3'' is back to just two versions.
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* A handful of the ''[[Digimon]]'' portable games do this. Notably, ''Cathode'' and ''Anode Tamer'', and ''Digimon World Dusk'' and ''Dawn''.
** ''Digimon Story'' (''Dusk'' and ''Dawn'''s precursor) did something similar, although there was only one version of the game, several of the 'elite' Digimon required multiplayer features to access. Fortunately, most didn't and the ones that did were only necessary for multiplayer battles and a few side-quests.
*** Veemon, a very popular Digimon with several possible evolutions, required the player to go on Wi-Fi, find someone with the game and match Digimon to make an egg that may turn into a Veemon. Also, several evolutions were there, but the pre-requisite was to, previously, having owned that evolution in your team. As in, you would have to do the matching, leave a special egg in the farm that would take eons to hatch, to get said evolution to THEN be able to evolve your Digimon to it.
* ''[[Medabots]]'', a [[Mons|Mon]] series featuring children playing with alien robots rebuilt into toys (no, really) did this. The first three generations of the game subverted it with the Parts Collection games, which were just a series of battles allowing you to get a complete collection of Medals and Parts without having to trade, wrapped in a flimsy [[Excuse Plot]].
* ''[[Might and Magic]] IV: Clouds of Xeen'' and ''[[Might and Magic]] V: Darkside of Xeen'' did this. Though players had a very clear advantage starting a game in Darkside as level 5 characters, and then going to Clouds and open a can of whoop-ass on the baddies. Also, there was a final story that could not be reached (all of the level data files belonged to the "Darkside" game) and completed unless you bought the other game, to reach [[
* ''[[Robopon]]'', shamelessly trying to ape ''Pokémon'', pulled this.
* The portable ''[[Shaman King]]'' games do this, turning the ghosts of the series into collectible mons.
* While you can go through the single-player campaign of the ''[[Warhammer
** Given that it was a stand-alone, expansion-pack priced game, this was more like 2 games for the price of one. Dark Crusade got a lot of accolades for its format, even if you do need the other games to fully access the features.
** Winter Assault also averts the Expansion label to a degree, as not long after the release of Dark Crusade, both the original Dawn of War and Winter Assault were starting to be packaged together for a lower price, meaning it's fully possible to play any of the games without the other, and all three (Soulstorm followed a similar format as Dark Crusade) were rather well priced given what you got.
* ''[[Tales of Hearts]]'' has a twist. One version has
** And as largely suspected by any fan of the series, the sales of the former so far were barely over 1/10th of the latter.
** Probably as much because the CG version, while having gorgeous effects, left all the characters sitting in the [[Uncanny Valley]].
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* The now-defunct company Smilesoft is probably the KING of this trope: All of their monster-collection RPGs had two versions. The ''[[Telefang]]'' series came in Speed and Power versions, each focusing on [[Mons]] with that attribute, ''Bugsite'' had Alpha and Beta versions ([[Incredibly Lame Pun|Though they're equally buggy hahaha]]) and the ''Dino Device'' games came in Dragon and Phoenix versions.
* The SNES port of ''[[Final Fight]]'' was released in two versions: the original release only had two of the three characters from the arcade game (Cody and Haggar), while a second version (titled ''Final Fight Guy'') was released that brought back Guy by removing Cody. There are a few other minor changes between the original release and the ''Guy'' edition (such as new power-ups and new difficulty settings that alter the enemy placement), but for the most parts they're the same port with one character changed for another. You need both versions to have the full roster and you'll still be missing the [[Co-Op Multiplayer]] mode and the Industrial Area stage with Rolento from the arcade game.
* ''Vampire Savior'' (the third ''[[Darkstalkers]]'' game) was released for the Japanese arcades in three versions.
** The original release (and the only that came out overseas) featured the roster from ''Night Warriors'' (the previous game), leaving out Donovan, Huitzil and Pyron in favor of four new characters (Jedah, Q. Bee, B.B. Hood and Lilith).
** ''Vampire Savior 2'' brought back the missing characters from ''Night Warriors'' by removing Jon Talbain, Rikuo and Sasquatch. There were also a few rule and system changes from the original ''Vampire Savior'' that made it played differently.
** ''Vampire Hunter 2'' featured the entire ''Night Warriors'' roster (''Vampire Hunter'' being the Japanese version of ''Night Warriors'') by leaving out the new characters from ''Vampire Savior''. The rules and system are closer to ''Savior 2'', but with a few slight differences.
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* Two less-well-known games for the GBA, ''[[Spyro Fusion]]'' and ''[[Crash Fusion]]'' (otherwise known as ''[[Spyro Orange]]'' and ''[[Crash Purple]]''), require you to trade or play multiplayer games with a player with the other cartridge if you want all the cards.
* Sega originally planned to release ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]] 3'' and ''Sonic and Knuckles'' as a single, mammoth game. However, time constraints and the manufacturing costs made that impossible, so Sega dropped the ability to play as Knuckles and released the levels they had (Angel Island through Launch Base Zones) as ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]] 3''. Later, the remaining levels (Mushroom Hill through Doomsday) were released as a second game, ''Sonic and Knuckles''. The latter game featured unique "Lock-On Technology", which allowed the games to be combined and played as they were originally intended. To be fair, ''Sonic and Knuckles'' also allowed the player to use Knuckles in ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]] 2'', something that would not have been possible had the game been released as a single cart, so it wasn't a total loss. It also contained about a zillion Special Stage levels that could be played independent of the main game by attaching something other than Sonic 2 or 3, although that ''was'' possible to include without lock-on.
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*** Even worse is that about half of .hack's story [[No Export for You|hasn't even made it out of Japan]] as [[Bandai]] has yet to license some of that material for release elsewhere and the fact that the fourth game, ''Quarantine'', tends to be the most expensive product in the series with its used copies being the only ones not cheaper than its original retail price, online or offline.
* ''Shin Megami Tensei: [[Digital Devil Saga]]'' exists as a two-part game, with the second game continuing the story directly from the ending of the first.
* The GBA game ''Golden Sun'' ends on a [[Cliff Hanger]], and its story continues in the sequel, ''Golden Sun: The Lost Age''.
** In what is very unusual for a game on a console without memory cards, the series also provides a form of [[Old Save Bonus]]. At the end of ''Golden Sun'', the player is given a series of passwords that can be entered into ''Golden Sun: The Lost Age'' either manually or electronically (via a link cable). If the player successfully enters the passwords, when the new characters in ''Golden Sun: The Lost Age'' eventually encounter the characters from the original game, the original characters will be as the player left them. This is required for [[
*** The passwords in question also deserve mention as being easily the most difficult part of the game. The gold password, which transfers everything, is ''two-hundred and sixty'' characters long, with ''fifty'' characters for input, many of which are distressingly similar. There is little more agonising than buggering it up (and you will, repeatedly) and having to check each and every character for the single mistake you made.
**** If you have access to two GBA systems and a link cable, you can transfer the password that way, conveniently averting transcription errors.
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* ''[[Shenmue]]'' was originally going to be many chapters long, but the games that were released, ''Shenmue'' and ''Shenmue II'', gave you chapters 1 and 3, 4 and 5 (chapter 2 was supposed to chronicle's Ryu's adventures on the boat ride between games). ''Shenmue II'' allowed you an [[Old Save Bonus]] if you transferred a save from the original game, but unless you were prepared, all of your ready money from the first game would be irrevocably stripped from you unless you swapped it all for capsule toys very, very quickly. [[Guide Dang It]].
* The ''[[Xenosaga]]'' series' first two games were supposed to be the same installment. It just got worse when it was noted that it would only be a trilogy instead of six installments.
* To some controversy, [[Blizzard Entertainment]] announced that ''[[
** Complaints about this have lowered a lot since the game's release, as their talk about the size of the campaign turned out to be true.
* There's an interesting subversion in ''[[The World Ends With You]].'' The Gatito pins mostly require that they're in sets in order to either function or work at full power. You can buy precisely one pin out of any given set, and which one is random and is specific to the DS you're playing with. You can Mingle with other players, which allows you to purchase from a special shop any pin they have equipped-thus, you can get these pin sets by "trading" with other players. Of course, the subversion comes from the fact that this isn't mandatory-all of the pins in question are available as extremely rare drops from various bosses. Of course, to collect the insanely powerful Darklit Planets set, unless you're lucky, you'll have to tackle the [[Bonus Boss]] on the highest difficulty... have fun!
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** An ''[[Xbox 360]] exclusive'' expansion pack, no less. Marvelous.
* ''Tokimeki Memorial Pocket'', the [[Updated Rerelease]] of ''[[Tokimeki Memorial|Tokimeki Memorial : Forever With You]]'' on Game Boy Color, has two versions : the Sports one, subtitled "Koutei no Photograph" (Campus' Photograph), and the Culture one, subtitled "Komorebi no Melody" (Melody of the Sunlight Filtering Through The Tree). They're the same game, aside from the fact the cast is divided in half between the two versions (including the three new characters), the clubs are divided between the two versions depending their nature (Sport-type or Culture-type), and an additional club visiting sequence in the prologue. As far as the character repartition go :
** [[The Ace|Shiori]], [[Aloof Big Brother|Rei]], [[Crash Into Hello|Miharu]], and [[Bromantic Foil|Yoshio]] are in both versions ;
** [[Cute Sports Club Manager|Saki]], [[Cloudcuckoolander|Yukari]], [[Bokukko|Nozomi]] and [[Friend to All Living Things|Megumi]], along with new characters [[Eagle Land|Patricia]] and [[The Rival|Naomi]], are in the Sports Version ;
** [[Gratuitous English|Ayako]], [[Kawaiiko|Yumi]], [[Meganekko|Mio]], [[Alpha Bitch|Mira]], [[Late for School|Yuko]], [[Mad Scientist|Yuina]], along with new character [[For Great Justice|Kyoko]], are in the Culture Version.
* ''Fable II'' had a little quirk which meant that in order to acheive 100% completion on it, you also had to buy the Xbox Live Arcade game entitled "Fable II Pub Games" which basically used a relatively obscure gameplay mechanic of Fable II to give the player otherwise unobtainable items which were then transferable to the main game. It was fixed to a degree when they released the DLC See The Future, which allowed players to obtain the items via an in-game store tacked on with the DLC, but the DLC cost something like 400 microsoft points, so the player still wound up paying.
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** Also for the Famicom Disk System, [[Data East]]'s ''[[Jake Hunter|Tantei Jinguji Saburo: Kiken na Futari]]'' followed Nintendo's example.
* Non-game-example: SMBC's take on [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1624 Science publishing].
* Similar to the ''[[
** It was actually much worse than that. [[Robert Jordan]] originally thought he could do the ''whole series'' in three books. Tor, knowing that he tended to underestimate the length of his books, gave him a contract for six. By the time he [[Author Existence Failure|passed away]], the series had gone up to eleven books, and he had sworn to fit everything into the twelfth book even if they had to ''invent a new book binding''
** Similarly, the final book of ''[[Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn]]'' was so big they couldn't bind it as a single paperback- it was released in two books.
* The movie version of ''[[Harry Potter
** The 4th book of ''[[The Twilight Saga]]'' is also getting this treatment.▼
** The Harry Potter movie series would have started this as early as the ''fourth'' installment, but the director insisted he could fit everything into a single movie.
* Fictional, action figure version: [[Mystery Science Theater 3000|Johnny Longtorso, the Man Who Comes In Pieces]].
** Build A Figure toys released in many action figure lines including [[Star Wars]], [[Marvel Universe|Marvel]] Legends and [[DC Universe]] Classics are essentially a real-life version: pieces of a figure that come packed in with other figures, usually requiring you to buy 6 to 8 different toys to complete - the ones in Star Wars are just additional droids, but both of the superhero lines usually feature more important characters.
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[[Category:Show Business]]
[[Category:Videogame Culture]]
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