"Taito Ending" / Bad ending Appreciation thread

[copy-paster]

This thread is for appreciation of grimdark, downer, bittersweet, downright depressing, bad, or WTF endings in video games. The reason for the title is Taito and happy endings are two words that won't go well most of the time. Here are some examples:

Rayforce
Dead Connection
Ninja Warriors and Again

[xxx1993]

I remember being confused the first time I saw the ending of RayForce. "Why did we just blow up the Earth?" Also, who would have thought that Mulk would be just as bad as Banglar? Was Dead Connection's ending really that depressing, though?

[SuperDeadite]

Syvalion has something like 256 different endings, some are really bizzare and wild.

[BrianC]

Syvalion has something like 256 different endings, some are really bizzare and wild.

Some of them even reference other Taito games like Raimais, which itself has some bizarre endings, including one that is impossible to access normally.

Spoiler

Not to mention that they all end with someone lying on the ground and music playing afterwards

[BulletMagnet]

I honestly really liked the "bad" ending from the first Guacamelee, quite affectingly bittersweet IMO. Fast-forward to around 5:30 here if you want to skip the boss fight footage.

[copy-paster]

Was Dead Connection's ending really that depressing, though?

Bittersweet maybe fits better, gonna update the thread then!

[null1024]

It still feels weird, the Rayforce ending. Wondered for ages if there was a 1CC ending, nope lol.
It is a striking, fitting end though, and you absolutely weren't outrunning the planet exploding right behind you.

but boy, it certainly hits you right in the heart

I remember being confused the first time I saw the ending of RayForce. "Why did we just blow up the Earth?"

If you don't know ahead of time about the whole bit with Con-Human, it really is just quite confusing, especially since none of that is shown in the attract sequence.

One bit that confused me for ages was that whole big fleet that gets just completely annihilated right before you descend to the planet because I was dumb and didn't think about the fact that they'd be your allies.
Kinda makes the end even grimmer, absolutely no one survived this mission.

[BIL]

CYBERRR-LIP *smooch* ;3

There are no more obstacles in our way...

Man, that elegiac staff roll BGM ;-;7

One bit that confused me for ages was that whole big fleet that gets just completely annihilated right before you descend to the planet because I was dumb and didn't think about the fact that they'd be your allies.
Kinda makes the end even grimmer, absolutely no one survived this mission.

I get the feeling they were a deliberate diversion, helping you sneak into Earth relatively unimpeded (once you take out the orbital watchdog serving as st2's boss, ofc). Though I don't know if they counted on getting obliterated quite so one-sidedly, the poor devils.

Operation Meteor was a grim affair all-around, though by the same token, a valorous one. ;-;7

Also a killer judo flip of Taito's earlier, genre-defining Space Invaders - now you're the hated invader from beyond, and Earth is the genocidal monster bent on humanity's eradication. Would've been a good setup for Cyber-Lip 2.

[xxx1993]

It still feels weird, the Rayforce ending. Wondered for ages if there was a 1CC ending, nope lol.
It is a striking, fitting end though, and you absolutely weren't outrunning the planet exploding right behind you.

but boy, it certainly hits you right in the heart

If you don't know ahead of time about the whole bit with Con-Human, it really is just quite confusing, especially since none of that is shown in the attract sequence.

One bit that confused me for ages was that whole big fleet that gets just completely annihilated right before you descend to the planet because I was dumb and didn't think about the fact that they'd be your allies.
Kinda makes the end even grimmer, absolutely no one survived this mission.

Yes, we have to play RayCrisis first to truly understand what's going on...

[Lander]

An opportunity to expand on my Taito post in the shmup ticker? Don't mind if I do!

Rayforce's is awesome - a real emotional rollercoaster from endboss tension to the suprise excitement of the final first person lock barrage, finally dropping you off at melancholia station as you come to realise that no rescue ship is going to appear under the credits.
Then, grasping the greater context of the military action against Con-Human, and understanding that the wider game was over long before you put in a credit. But at least it's done.

Real high-fidelity stuff. I think the theming goes a bit deeper too - can't remember where I read about it, but the stage names and progression to earth's core all call back to some interesting mythology.

And speaking of Taito, how about...

Metal Black

(Nicking footage from Birru since YT heard me typing and immediately autoplayed the goods after Cyber-Lip full final boss included since the background oozes theme throughout.)

The alien force may in fact be God (or your regional equivalent), soon hitting you with existential crisis as it demonstrates total knowledge of humanity's origins.
Shit's bad, and making it dead isn't necessarily going to fix that. And in killing it, we... Crack the earth in half?! That's worse than expected

Or perhaps not.

Are we all simply a dream in the mind of the godhead?
Are cats truly the ultimate form of life after creepy japanese dolls?
And is the Black Fly really just a flying boat?

Harrowing questions all, so savour the mindfuck and mull them over while you enjoy the sunrise and dancing manbows.

[xxx1993]

Nobody understands Metal Black's ending at all.

[BIL]

I do. It's all right here, in my definitive video essay.

The alien force may in fact be God (or your regional equivalent), soon hitting you with existential crisis as it demonstrates total knowledge of humanity's origins.
Shit's bad, and making it dead isn't necessarily going to fix that.

Maybe it's aspiring machine god ORN from the Thunder Force series, escaping his supposed destruction in TFIII via cross-IP slipgate? He just wants humans to think about what they have done - no seriously, for real this time, have a think willya! Brought a slideshow and everything, after TFIII's epilogue text didn't quite prompt the introspection he'd hoped for.

BTW, not sure if you've seen Skyknight's thread - pretty interesting imo. While MB is willfully elliptic, as good cosmic fiction tends to be, it's got the requisite anchoring as well, via that refreshingly blunt intro text. The Earth died. Oof.

A tale of "Nemesis" / "Doppelganger" on cosmic scale, if I had to sum up its theme in a word. Or what I think it's getting at anyway. After SK's thread, I've come to think of it as less alien invasion, more some twisted reunion. Maybe one with some semblance of a happy ending, with the wistful ending scenes of azure skies and the ocean so brutally denied by st1's baking seabed-turned-desert.

Also, read on for first-rate Engrish as per Zuntata's typical good form.

[Lander]

While about half of G-Darius' endings leave a sense of unease in the pit of your stomach, And Then John Was A Planet stands out as particularly strange.

I do. It's all right here, in my definitive video essay.

Bellylaugh / 10, with distinction

BTW, not sure if you've seen Skyknight's thread - pretty interesting imo. While MB is willfully elliptic, as good cosmic fiction tends to be, it's got the requisite anchoring as well, via that refreshingly blunt intro text. The Earth died. Oof.

A tale of "Nemesis" / "Doppelganger" on cosmic scale, if I had to sum up its theme in a word. Or what I think it's getting at anyway. After SK's thread, I've come to think of it as less alien invasion, more some twisted reunion. Maybe one with some semblance of a happy ending, with the wistful ending scenes of azure skies and the ocean so brutally denied by st1's baking seabed-turned-desert.

Also, read on for first-rate Engrish as per Zuntata's typical good form.

Cor, a treat of a thread! I like the synergy between the ideas of greek hubris Nemesis and cosmic body Nemesis, and the usurper angle has the planetcrack and subsequent hopeful note make a lot more sense.

I'm split on my own read of the sunrise; it could be a first-person view of the dreamer waking - reducing the game an exciting nightmare fed by a pilot's existential complices, or a none-person vista presenting a more general image of rebirth following the absolute death of the climax.

The Black Fly scrollby that follows makes me think that everything wasn't just a transient imagining, since the ship, attached military and everything else would surely fade along with the dream if it were all simply a fiction. I suppose it could just be a cool thing to look at by that point, but I want to give it more credit than that.

And that acronym is a masterwork of nihon cryptolinguistics Absolute Lesson in particular - shmuptastic, equally applicable to the mechanics as it is to the wider story.

[xxx1993]

By the way, it’s not just Taito. SNK was known for their bittersweet or downbeat endings. Prehistoric Isle in 1930 being quite possibly the most infamous.

[BIL]

Ultimate Bittersweet SNK Ending is fucking Guevara dropping the timeout nuke on your characters and killing them during the ending celebration. The timer keeps ticking down until Batista's boat is safely offscreen, so even if you technically kill the last boss, slow play will see your No Miss trashed. Unfortunate, on top of an already overly-ruthless final stage (short and simple, but utterly bereft of ammo, so you've got maybe ten seconds and two grenades to spare, unless you know a certain exploit which greatly expedites things)

There's also SAR, where even at the end, a gov/corp hush-up ensures that outside of your characters, the Attract sequence's memorable status quo remains! Nobody knows the facts! Neatly setting up an Aliens-esque "Nope nothin' to see here, pls colonise this deserted rock for us wink wink ;3"



I'd suggest your characters might be suicided to keep things quiet, but those two space dudes tore through a small army of pants-shitting biomechanical horrors in search of survivors, when (as Mortificator pointed out in one of my favourite-ever posts) regular grunts would take one look at that meatwalled Cronenbergian nightmare and run screaming for the orbital nukes.

So who knows! Ala Cyber-Lip, neat hook for a sequel that so far hasn't come.

[xxx1993]

Well, in the arcade version of Guerrilla War, the villain escapes, yes. SAR, your protagonists survive the mission but are forced to destroy the abandoned ship entirely.

[copy-paster]

While about half of G-Darius' endings leave a sense of unease in the pit of your stomach, And Then John Was A Planet stands out as particularly strange.

Are you sure Xi route ending (Accordion Hazard) not the most strange one? But yeah no matter what ending you get the pilots will never come back to their home planet.

One of my picks for most mindfuck ending gotta be Raystorm Extra mode. Shows how meaningless war is, kids.

[Randorama]

...as a kid, I even remember adults (e.g. uncle, father) making jokes about Taito's endings. "Oh, a new Taito game. Will everyone die at the end?".
Actually, Taito games with bittersweet endings shouldn't be that many (I even counted them, once), but they were more or less the only arcade company featuring them, back in the day.

Also: RayStorm, Elevator Action Returns, Acrobat Mission (UPL, but distributed by Taito), Master of Weapon (OK, this one has a really grim plot and a fitting ending), Kuri Kinton ,Raimais (because this title really needs to be mentioned more often), Cadash (players actually save the kingdom and the princess moments from total annihilation), and a few others I am forgetting (e.g. SpaceGun? Other less known titles?).

The Rastan trilogy games don't have bittersweet endings, but true to their roots as homages to Conan stories, they leave the players on a "this is just one episode in a long struggle" note.

Even if this may sound strange, two titles that partly belong here are Puchi Carata and Land Maker.

Puchi Carat is a breakout, vs. mode game that Taito released in 1998, and that features a typical '90s anime illustration style. Most endings for the various characters tend to be "sweet-bitter", though definitely on the melancholic side, and the YACK OST (last work as a Zuntata member!) has a definite "pastel nostalgia" theme.

Land Maker, 1998, is an original puzzle, vs. game in which players play the role of gods shaping the lay of the land and fighting for control of the world (OK, players must put together tiles forming increasingly big squares, then destroy these squares and thus turn them into attacks against the adversary). Very anime-esque style and very melancholic OST, though endings are more variegated.

Honestly, when I first saw the endings of Liquid Kids and The New Zealand Story, I was deeply perplexed ("What? We win? With Taito?!").

[BIL]

Well, in the arcade version of Guerrilla War, the villain escapes, yes.

Hey, Ernesto and Fidel are right chuffed standing on that dock at the newly-vacated Presidential Palace. And so am I, game's fuckin brutal.

Arguably that's a tragic ending in itself, with Cuba going from one set of vicious dictators to another. Curl up baby, curl up tight.

Maybe the timeout nuke is secretly the hero of the whole show, probably caught Batista in the blast wave.

[xxx1993]

At least I always win on time. But in the NES, you actually defeat the villain.

[BIL]

Dying and respawning will reset the timer (obviously a no-go if you're aiming for a 1LC), as well as replenish your Grenades, which are the only means of damaging the boss. Other than that, you're looking at either very tight execution, or the exploit (which is still pretty precise).

Just one powerup, never mind Tank, would break the whole thing wide-open. It's a clear overstep from Obada and co, as it is. Still a great game if you can wrangle it.

The FC version is a different game entirely - wisely, as with most of the machine's great arcade-derived classics. It's one thing to port Mappy or Legend of Kage, but the fire-breathing floor-shaking monsters of the mid-to-late 80s? Discretion is the better part of valour, by far. Compare Micronics' dogshit FC Ikari and Dogosoken to the fire and passion exuding from SNK's beautiful Guevara.

---

Speaking of questionable home ports, one of the Euro PC Contras randomly alters the ending so that taking out the Alien hive somehow blows up the whole Earth. It's dumb, like a lot of things involving European PCs and Japanese arcade games!

Ah, here we go. Amstrad version, apparently. Cheers Contra encyclopedia, always handy for info on Contra stuff I find weird and depressing!

[copy-paster]

HOW SAD.

[BIL]

"Unfortunately"

This would've been near or around Super Contra's release, too, which kicks off with a massive red text: "THE QUEST FOR FREEDOM CONTINUES," IOW no, the fucking planet didn't blow up, how the Christ would that even work? Why would invaders with that sort of power at such casual disposal be sneaking about undercover? Special Ops took out an infested base, wow, great.

Never thought the FC/NES's expanded ending, where the island blows up for unspecified reasons (I favour Earth forces demolition, the Contras being the tip of the spear) would seem mature and tastefully restrained by comparison.

I've never played the Amstrad version, and tbh I don't care to - maybe it actually plays pretty well. But that ending is such a great microcosm of the Wild West approach to those PC ports. Amiga Final Fight being probably the best example; a dogshit slapdash facsimile of the PCB, plus heaving reams of text about the fucknut responsible's crushingly dull life and music tastes. Also he shits all over the game itself, and by extension you for expecting a decent conversion of it. Classy fellow! Imagine paying money for that BITD, oof.

[Lander]

Are you sure Xi route ending (Accordion Hazard) not the most strange one? But yeah no matter what ending you get the pilots will never come back to their home planet.

Personally I find the fusion ender a little less weird; Xi leaves the pilots' fate unclear, so there's some chance they could still be alive and well inside the newborn bird. Alternately, it could be a gribbly biomechafusion soup under the shiny silver hull, or perhaps a more elegant "mind subsumed into machine" kind of deal. The horror is only as bad as your imagination allows

The big bang ender is a lot more explicit about it, showing the full toe-to-top disintegration constrating against the pilots' desparate embrace. I think that contrast is what gets me - it captures a very japanese feeling of purity juxtaposed with inexorable cosmic horror.

Watching the 2001 Metropolis OVA as a kid probably takes the blame for that; I went in with an expectation of high-energy japanese cartoon fun (i.e. Dragonball or the ultra goofy Rave Master localization), only to have it shattered by a deeply philosophical tale of grim futurism, robot sentience, and innocence lost. Came away with a forcefully-opened mind and a thousand-yard-stare

HOW SAD.

Excuse the narrator while he plays the solar system's tiniest violin

[xxx1993]

At least Sameluck and Raida don't die in the Omicron ending. However, it does have a significant event that leads directly to the first Darius game, Belsar collecting the remains of Great Thing.

[xxx1993]

One thing that peeves me with Elevator Action Returns, as great of a game it is, is the abrupt ending. I already explained why in another thread. Also, Gun Frontier is one Taito game that actually has a happy ending, but it's only if you don't lose against the final boss. If you die against the final boss, you get the bad ending.

[BIL]

TBH, I think the sheer abruptness of EAR's denouement works a treat. I, too, was like "Wait. WHAT?!" the first time.

But that's life, son. If a nuke blows up in your face, you won't have more than .001 planck time to contemplate, either. See also The Sopranos' ending.

The trick is to make sure the nuke is blowing up in your (and the cunt responsible for launching it's) face, not the innocent victims targeted. That is what makes Edie, Jad and Karte heroes.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

[xxx1993]

The bad ending is even worse, the missile launches, causing a mushroom cloud followed by the words, "Your mission is over".

[BIL]

True but that's Bad Ends for you, innit. Splatterhouse Part 3 has a real humdinger:



Rick: "Just need to get my toe into this trigger guard..."



Rick: "Oh. Yeah, thanks." *BANG*

The OG Splatterhouse could go here, of course. Though Part 2 mulligans it. Imagine if lovable JENNIFER really was dead, oof! Now that'd be grim, son.

Mask: "LMAO RICK I WAS JUST FUCKIN WITH YOU BRO, THAT BITCH DEAD LOLOLOLOLOL!"
Rick: "MASK YOU DIRTY MUHFUCKA! IMMA KILL YA REAL SLOW!"
Mask: "Wasn't it fun beating up zombies again, though 3;"
Rick: "yeah tbh lmao"

~THIS STORY IS HAPPY END~

[copy-paster]

Honestly, when I first saw the endings of Liquid Kids and The New Zealand Story, I was deeply perplexed ("What? We win? With Taito?!").

I saw that New Zealand one and yeah it's still an bad ending, your fellows faced an unknown fate.