Do you remember the first video game ending that let you down?

[ToxicAdam]

I grew up in the NES era, so being let down by the endings of a game was the norm. But the one game that pissed me off the most was Ikari Warriors. A shitty port of an excellent arcade game, it was a pretty balls-hard, top-down Rambo shooter.

After you struggle through stage and stage of endless enemies (IIRC, with a limited amount of continues) you are rewarded with this:

[Howard Alan Treesong]

Super Mario Bros. 2

[bork]

Nothing ever really bothered me with 8-bit games, but I remember being pissed at how shitty and almost non-existent the ending to Landstalker was on the Genesis.  Loved the game, and then it rewards you with what is essentially "You beat the game cool k thx bye!"

[Joe Molotov]

First game I can remember getting mad at the ending was Quest 64. The game may have been garbage, but come on, beating an RPG in the 32/64-bit era should get you a little more than a text scroll.

[Brehvolution]

Tecmo Bowl

[tiesto]

Nothing ever really bothered me with 8-bit games, but I remember being pissed at how shitty and almost non-existent the ending to Landstalker was on the Genesis.  Loved the game, and then it rewards you with what is essentially "You beat the game cool k thx bye!"

I thought that Friday professed her love for Nigel or something... I remember the game being hard as balls but not being bothered by the ending when I beat it.

[Huff]

I remember being annoyed with starfox 64 in that your dead dad comes back to help you through some shit then peaces. like wtf dad lets grab a beer

[bork]

Nothing ever really bothered me with 8-bit games, but I remember being pissed at how shitty and almost non-existent the ending to Landstalker was on the Genesis.  Loved the game, and then it rewards you with what is essentially "You beat the game cool k thx bye!"

I thought that Friday professed her love for Nigel or something... I remember the game being hard as balls but not being bothered by the ending when I beat it.

Here is the ending.  Starts at 3:03.  After all you do in the game, you get a few lines of dialogue and then the credits.   

[Great Rumbler]

I want to say Xenogears, because of how it doesn't make a lick of sense whatsoever. But I was 12 or 13 at the time, so I probably thought it was the greatest thing ever. 

Add a couple of years to that and you could say the same thing about Metal Gear Solid 2.  :'(

[Big Barry Jazz]

Super Mario Bros. 2

I really liked that one as a kid. One of the few I can remember from that period.

Must have been some worse ones from the nes/snes era, but the first I can recall was Turok's. Just a quick shot of him running and then straight on to the credits. Then Iguana pulled almost exactly the same shit again with Shadowman.

[Positive Touch]

i remember hating illusion of gaia's because it was so damn long and so very boring. quake one was also garbage, not because i expected anything, but because the time when having a single screen of shitty text ended like a decade before. really, most any nes game belongs on this list. trying to think of some more recent examples and failing

[BobFromPikeCreek]

We were poor as shit and games were super expensive. I wasn't allowed to not like games as a kid.

[Positive Touch]

my dad bought me games from marshalls

[Himu]

Growing up, I thought most endings fit the games they belonged to. But the first game ending I thought was utter putrid shit was Jade Empire's. Holy shit. It was literally just an image with text.

[The Sceneman]

Didn't give a crap about endings in the 8/16-bit era and even the PS1 era to be honest. First ending that really fucked me off was FFX for some reason. I guess I hate that game

[Brehvolution]

I remember one time my brother and I were raking leaves for some old lady with a huge yard. We knew we were going to be paid, but not how much. We figured that it took 3 hours to rake. At $15 a piece we agreed to pool the money to get Zaxxon for $30.

We each got $5.  :'(

It's an indirect video game let down.

[The Sceneman]

I imagine many a child's dreams were crushed at the hands of a cheapskate old person. Like in that episode of the Simpsons where Bart works his ass off for some old woman and she pays him 50c

[Robo]

Mass Effect 3

[tiesto]

Growing up, I thought most endings fit the games they belonged to. But the first game ending I thought was utter putrid shit was Jade Empire's. Holy shit. It was literally just an image with text.

That was the first Bioware game I ever played, I remember there was so much hype behind it and it got that 9.9 from IGN, then I played through it and the whole game was absolute shit. Luckily at least the Mass Effect series was better than that turd.

[ToxicAdam]

Didn't give a crap about endings in the 8/16-bit era and even the PS1 era to be honest. First ending that really fucked me off was FFX for some reason. I guess I hate that game

I lived for game endings back then. Good ones were so rare that I would play everything to the end to see it. I think Bionic Commando was the one that sprung me.

FFX wasn't that bad. It was FFX-2 where you had all those various bullshit endings depending on how you much of the game you finished.

[Great Rumbler]

Mass Effect 3

Truth.

[Brehvolution]

Ah, it's not usually that they're cheapskates, they're just out of touch with inflation.  They really think a few bucks can get you two or three comic books and enough candy to make you sick.  It'll happen to us, too, eventually.

As to the topic, I think it was Link to the Past.  For all the interesting characters introduced, the ending really seemed to only make partial sense at best.  It's like, it was just enough to make me expect something more than an 8bit THANK YOU FOR PRAYING ending, but not enough to really deliver a solid wrap-up.  Not surprising, though, Nintendo really kind of suck at endings.

To be fair, I was 11 and my bro was 9, and the year was 1986. We wanted it for our Atari 2600. I believe Atari games were 29.99 at the time.

[Himu]

Didn't give a crap about endings in the 8/16-bit era and even the PS1 era to be honest. First ending that really fucked me off was FFX for some reason. I guess I hate that game

FFX has one of the best endings in the series I think.

[cool breeze]

Halo 2, I guess.  Never really had expectation for game endings.

Or hidden packages in GTA3, if that counts.  My friend and I shared a save file and slowly worked to collecting them all, and I can't even remember what the prize is anymore, but it was something you could always unlock with a cheat code.

[Himu]

It was a rocket launcher. You get it at your safehouse. As someone who doesn't use cheats, I think that's pretty cool.

[tiesto]

Lots in the NES era, I suppose, but shitty endings were kind of the norm.

I never really much cared for the time loop text ending of Final Fantasy even though I loved the game and went on to play it over and over again.

Lots of SNES rentals I recall with dinky, unrewarding endings...  Lagoon, maybe, but that whole game was mediocre.  I didn't get a whole lot of games and I read reviews even back then so thankfully I didn't end up owning a whole lot of stinkers.

Illusion of Gaia, I'll second that... good gameplay for the dungeons but the story was boring and the ending more so.


Still, letdown sort of implies high expectations... got the box of SNES catridges around somewhere...  Final Fantasy VIII would be among my first major letdowns among big title purchases with high expectations where I felt the endgame really underdelivered and the ending stunk.  Plus at that point I would have bought it for myself.   Won't second Xenogears, I rather liked it for the most part... can't recall the specifics of the ending though.  Hrm.

Lagoon had some pretty good music (very influenced by Ys)... I have some remixes on my computer that are pretty good, synthpop-py with lots of early 90's house music style "woos" in there.

[Steve Contra]

God 7th Saga was awful.  I believe the localization team were sadists and incompetent.

[Tasty]

LttP's ending was indeed disappointing, but only looking back on it for me personally. I was all "OMG LINK GOT THE TRIFORCE" the first time, and being reminded of all the characters in the end credits made it all seem more cohesive than it was. At the time when it ended I was also "sated," the game had far more content than I thought it would and beating Ganon after several deaths at his hands was very satisfying.

But because of that it wasn't the first VG ending that let me down, I'd have to think about it because I can't remember off the top of my head.

[Positive Touch]

gta3's ending was stupid. i mean, the story sucked, but after finally getting to the end of such a ground-breaking awesome game your reward is a "joke" about the main guy killing the woman he was rescuing and then roll credits the end. thanks, rockstar.

[Robo]

Ghosts 'n Goblins

This is my serious answer, tho.  "Start over, play again!"  Burn in Hell, fuckers.

[Van Cruncheon]

normally, i don't give a fuck about endings, but there is one exception...

SHADOW OF THE BEAST AMIGA

I FUCKING BLED TO GET THERE! SKIN AND LIGATURE: RUINED! AND I FIGHT A GIANT STUPID HAND AND THEN SOME STUPID TEXT?

YOU GOT WHAT YOU DESERVED, PSYGNOSIS

[tiesto]

God 7th Saga was awful.  I believe the localization team were sadists and incompetent.

Wait, did they make it harder in the US version??

[Joe Molotov]

They buffed the enemies and debuffed the main character.

[Tasty]

Also I never did beat it, but Crystal Chronicles had a jank ending. But the game had no story either so I guess it doesn't matter.