Reset Buttons in Video Games.
- Most game consoles have soft reset buttons in the same vicinity as the power button, to reset the system's RAM and return to the game's title screen without powering down. Very useful for Save Scumming.
- The whole mechanic of New Game Plus: everything in the story goes back to however it was in the beginning, except for whatever features (usually experience levels and items) you're allowed to keep.
- Most gaming consoles have either a reset button or a combination of buttons (ex: A + B + Select + Start) which would reload the game from the menu screen. This was essentially inputted so as to not hurt the console, as turning it on/off quickly could fry some important stuff. There's even one on the computer which you are using right now!
- The 3rd Birthday has a partial example. On one hand, Aya's actions in the ending make it so that the Twisted and High Ones never existed in the first place, undoing the death and destruction they caused. On the other hand, this Reset Button came at the cost of a Heroic Sacrifice on Aya's part, which only Eve remembers.
- The second Ar tonelico has a Song Magic called the Reset Button. It resets the battle. Supposedly, you use it to reset bad things that might happen in battle, but there's really no point... And then later on, weird things happen to the Reset Button in its so-called "upgrades".
- In Bastion, this is invoked but deconstructed in the Restoration ending. The Bastion completely resets the world, so the characters are replaced with their past selves, and there is nothing to stop events from repeating themselves.
- BlazBlue:
- In the first two games, the whole setting is a "Groundhog Day" Loop, with various possibilities playing out in a time loop, and then resetting itself. Several characters often die in Multiple Endings and other instances, but never canonically. In the Canon ending of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift, however, the Reset Button and the "Groundhog Day" Loop are removed by Terumi, so if anyone dies now, they die for good. In actuality Terumi is merely the catalyst for this whereas the real removal is done by Imperator Librarius, who also happens to be Ragna and Jin's possessed Long Lost Sibling Saya.
- BlazBlue: Central Fiction reveals that across the whole series, Master Unit Amaterasu and its inhabitant The Origin have been constantly resetting the universe to try and usher it towards a version of events where her 'big brother', who she has identified as being Ragna the Bloodedge, can save her from her tortuous situation. Events that lead too greatly from that are undone one way or the other; give the interference of the Imperator and Termui, this has happened many times.
- The retries in the Blinx: The Time Sweeper series act as this, reversing time to before you made the fatal mistake so you can try again.
- In the Survival Horror Exploitation Game Demonophobia, Ritz is a sentient reset button who keeps resurrecting Sakuri should she die. Here's a twist, Sakuri is completely conscious even after being grinded into mincemeat over and over again, and you are the one who forced Ritz to resurrect Sakuri by simply pressing the R button.
- Despicable Bear: The trash can in the lower right corner serves as one, just click it twice.
- Devil Survivor 2, the reset option is one of the endings for Daichi's path. The party chooses to defeat Polaris and have her turn back the world to how it was before the Septentriones arrived.
- In The Elder Scrolls series, Alduin, the draconic Beast of the Apocalypse, acts as one of these for the universe. It is his divinely mandated duty to "eat the world" at the end of every "kalpa" (cycle of time) so that it can be remade anew. Unfortunately, in the current kalpa, he decides to shirk his duty and try to Take Over the World instead, leading to the events of Skyrim where he serves as the Big Bad.
- Final Fantasy V had a Time spell called Return or Reset (depending on which version) that you could use during combat to rewind to the beginning of the fight. This spell was very favorable to the player— it would also reset the battle condition. So, for example, if the battle began as an Ambush attack, the player could use this spell and the battle condition would most likely to be changed to a normal battle or even a preemptive attack. Also, it cost only 1 MP. It also lets you attempt to steal items again, especially useful if you need a Rare Item from one of the rarer encounters.
- Throughout much of Ghost Trick, you're hitting little Reset Buttons here and there to avert people's fates through your powers of time manipulation. All this seems to lead to the conclusion that the game will end with everyone being saved but the universe as a whole being left intact. Wrong! The final chapter suddenly changes things drastically when you're presented with the chance to go back and undo the Plot-Triggering Death itself, completely rewriting reality and ending a ten-year ordeal once and for all.
- Parodied in Grand Theft Auto III's in-game radio chat show channel Chatterbox, in which, while discussing video games, ironically, the show's host Lazlow and a caller get to the concept of reset buttons. The caller says "Life does not have a Reset Button" to which Lazlow responds that the show does and proceeds to prove his point by pressing said button. Since the game disc can only hold so much, the radio show must keep repeating the same things. The Reset Button on the show just explains that away easy.
- In the Monster Hunt mode of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, this is Toki's hero power. Once per turn, you can use the power to start the turn over from the beginning. Useful for undoing misplays and especially for avoiding unwanted effects from randomness-based cards.
- Every time you ascend in Kingdom of Loathing, things rapidly go back to the way things were at the beginning of the game, requiring you to go back and do it all over.
- In The Legend of Spyro, it turns out Spyro is the Reset Button for the planet. If the Destroyer is successful in triggering The End of the World as We Know It, Spyro (and likely any Purple Dragon for that matter) can use their power to stop it and restore the world to normal.
- In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, this is one of the central gameplay elements. Link only has three days to save Termina; as soon as the third night ends, the moon will crash into the planet and cause the end of the world. But every time Link plays the Song of Time, he returns to the dawn of the first day, taking his key items with him, allowing him to do more each time. Now, if you're wanting to blitz the game in the very first cycle after you reclaim the Ocarina, it is possible to do it allnote except several of the minigames, but you have to really know what you're doing: speed run guide
. - Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals gives Maxim the Reset spell, which lets him reset a puzzle room to prevent you from getting stuck if you screw up a difficult puzzle.
- Mortal Kombat 9 resets the entire Mortal Kombat series, starting at the very beginning of the first ever Mortal Kombat tournament. But since Raiden now has knowledge of the future (and the events of the future games), some things are going to change.
- In Persona 2 Innocent Sin, party member Maya Amano is killed near the end of the story fulfilling an ingame prophecy and causing the world to be destroyed. In order to save the world and Maya, the remaining party members choose to wipe away the summer night they all first met from existence in order to ensure that Maya survives and that the prophecy doesn't come true. This leads to their universe being reset, causing the events of the game to have never happened and creates the universe in which all following Persona games take place.
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has the both the Sands themselves and the Dagger of Time, a (very) short-time reset button that allowed a player to undo huge mistakes like falling into a death trap, or taking a major beating in a fight. As well, the events of the entire game end up being reset by the end, and in the end movie the Prince uses the Dagger one last time to undo kissing the woman he fell in love with during the erased timeline, who rejects him for doing so while having "just" met her. In a unique variation, the Reset Button mechanism itself sets off the events of the second game, as the Powers That Be are out to punish the Prince for using it.
- The time manipulations of Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (erasing the existence of the Sands of Time) enable Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones to happen, as they result in the Vizier never being killed by the Prince during the first one. At the end of The Two Thrones when the Prince finds his dead father and his dark side taunts him to find some way to rewind time again, he vows to take responsibility for his actions and refuses to hit the button again.
- In the Neko Entertainment game Puddle, spilling radioactive liquid sodium into a nuclear singularity will cause a Negative Space Wedgie that completely undoes the events of the game, returning the puddle to being coffee. Just in time for the guy who poured it in the first place to return and drink it.
- Randal's Monday: Randal has to rewrite the entire timeline to stop the loop and save Matt.
- In recent issues of The Secret World, it's revealed that there's a universal reset button just waiting to be used - and in fact, it's already been used four times. Turns out the Gaia Engines aren't just used for keeping the Dreamers asleep and purging the Filth: in the event that one of their prisoners happens to wake up and destroy the world, the Gaia Engines are able to harness the Dreamers' reality-warping powers and recreate the world prior to the apocalypse. Unfortunately, this function isn't precise enough to recreate the exact time period, technology or people, so it always ends with the entire universe being reset to factory settings, with only a few exceptionally powerful individuals and artifacts from the previous era being able to live on in the new world; even the laws of physics are warped as a result, hence why nobody's been able to exactly replicate the Lost Technology of the 3rd Age. Worse still, after being used so many times, the Gaia Engines are starting to break down, and they might not be capable of resetting the world. In other words, if a Dreamer breaks out again, it's game over for the entire universe.
- Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne: The Freedom ending has the Demi-fiend reject all of the Reasons, then beat the crap out of God's avatar so hard that he's forced to restore the world to how it was before.
- The Simpsons Game game had the ultimate reset button when they asked God to restore Springfield following an alien invasion.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- A reset happens in the bad ending for Sonic the Hedgehog CD. Eggman presumably uses the Time Stones to CTRL-Z everything you did in the game.
- Used at the very end of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), though it's suggested that Sonic and Elise still remember each other vaguely.
- Crisis City exists in Sonic Generations where it's not supposed to, though that could just be the Time Eater messing with the timelines.
- Mengsk's Dominion empire in StarCraft was hit with a Reset Button at the start of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. You could skip from the original Starcraft to Wings of Liberty and not realize that there was an expansion game (Brood War) in-between where the Dominion got the living crap beaten out of them.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- Super Mario RPG rewinds time for battles via an item called Earlier Times. This resets the battle back to the start, including its conditions such as the party's status and items held at that time.
- Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story has Retry Clocks, which restart the battle if you get KO'd.
- Mario & Luigi: Dream Team has the Miracle/Silver Badge combo, which reverts your status to the prior turn. Returns used items, cancels effects, resets countdowns, etc.
- Super Mario Galaxy ends with Rosalina resetting reality itself after the destruction of Bowser's galaxy ends up ripping apart the universe, effectively making the sequel a semi-Continuity Reboot.
- The implications behind the Reset Button's usage and its deconstruction is the main theme of Undertale, which are then explored in detail.
- In World of Warcraft, the Halls of Origination house the Forge of Origination, a Titan device intended to reset Azeroth to the state the Titans intended for it to have. At the end of the Ny'alotha raid in Battle for Azeroth, the Forge is used to finally annihilate N'Zoth, the last of the Old Gods. The whole point of the raid up until that point is to place special anchor points throughout Ny'alotha to make it possible to annihilate N'Zoth without affecting the rest of Azeroth. Meanwhile, N'Zoth tries to corrupt the Forge to use it to overwrite Azeroth with Ny'alotha, which would bring back the Black Empire from Azeroth's distant past.
- Xenosaga made this a central plot point in the third game Thus Spoke Zarathustra and ultimate goal of the Big Bad. Wilhelm intended to use an artifact to reset time so the Universe wouldn't be destroyed by spatial expansion.
