History Main / DefeatMeansPlayable

* The two recurring bosses in ''Videogame/{{Sengoku}} 3'' are playable after the game's halfway point, and they retain all of their strength and powers.

* In ''{{Total War}}'', after Medieval, you could unlock certain factions by beating them. Alternatively, winning a campaign, long or short, unlocked the entire set, except for some factions who weren't playable. In ''Medieval 2'', you only started with five factions, and had to unlock the other factions (and there were a lot of them) entirely by beating that faction. Kind of hard to unlock the Egyptians when you were the English half a map away from them.

* In [[{{Ptitlefjcz80qe}} Dissidia: Final Fantasy]], [[FinalFantasyXI Shantotto]] and [[FinalFantasyXII Gabranth]] can be bought as playable characters from the shop after you play through their individual story modes and defeat them at the end.

* The {{LEGO Crossover Game}}s prior to LEGO Harry Potter.

* The two recurring bosses in ''{{Sengoku}} 3'' are playable after the game's halfway point, and they retain all of their strength and powers.

* This is Model A's power in ''{{Mega Man ZX}} Advent''. Defeating a Pseudoroid or Biometal user allows Model A to copy it and transform the main character into it.

* In [=~Jay's Journey~=], Puff and Shade both join after a boss fight (Puff's can be lost a la HopelessBossFight, though, as the misunderstanding is sorted out either way.)

* In ''NeedForSpeed: MostWanted'', you need to defeat a boss to make his or her car available on the car shop. If you're lucky, you can get the [[RandomlyDrops pink slip]] to that boss car, thus getting it free.

* The same thing in ''{{Blur}}''. Defeating a boss unlock the normal version of the car as well as the boss version.

* Whaaaa, no DoubleDragon? In the NES version of ''DoubleDragon III'' at least, the bosses of the [[TheBigGuy China]] and [[FragileSpeedster Japan]] levels join your party once defeated. They can be swapped in and out tag-team style, and are very useful for countering certain enemies.

** In the ''{{Disgaea}}'' series, any monster class that isn't in your party from the start must be defeated once before it can be used.

* In [[MarioandSonicattheOlympicGames Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games]] on DS, this is generally how it goes in the Adventure Tours.

* {{Lego Crossover Game}}s

* ''MegamanBattleNetwork'' has this in the 5th game. You need to defeat certain Navis before you can control them in the liberate missions.
** A much less useful version also appears in the sixth game (though there are a few missions and one boss which must be fought by people you defeated). Also, 4-6 halfway have this through a second track of MegaManning--once you beat certain bosses, you can do the FusionDance with them in any battle after that point (including rematches against that same boss).

* Subverted in ''Chrono Trigger'' where you must decline a fight with Magus in order to have him join your party.
* This is Model A's power in ''{{Megaman ZX}} Advent''. Defeating a Pseudoroid or Biometal user allows Model A to copy it and transform the main character into it.

* Subverted in LunarEternalBlue, where the party [[GenreSavvy clearly expects]] their StealthMentor [[spoiler:Ghaleon]] to join them after his last boss battle. Unfortunatly, [[spoiler:he's kept alive by the power of the BigBad, so now that it's clear that he's a traitor he fades away.]] FridgeLogic makes that a NiceJobBreakingItHero, because there's only one way the BigBad could have found out just then [[spoiler:from them saying that they knew he was helping them all along instead of playing along.]]

[[{{Space Station Silicon Valley}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Ram_mouse_battle2_965.bmp]]

* In '''Warlords Battlecry 2''', when you play on the Campaign Map initially you control armies from the same race with your hero, but by taking over enemy capitals you can control armies from those capitals.

* All of the unlockable characters except Dr. Robotnik and Super Sonic in ''[[{{Sonic}} SonicR]]''.