Over years of playing games, several awful endings stuck in my head. What I mean by awful is that the ending did not give you any sense of accomplishment. Some games like fighting, racing, and sports game tend to be light on them. However, I am talking more about the endings for Action/Adventure, RPGs, and Platform games. I am not counting games that loop either. Many old shooter games did that.

Warning: if you have not beaten the games listed and would rather not know what the endings are skip down to the second list.

Here are some I remember:

1)   Dungeon Magic (NES) ? Starts with a scrolling credit screen then goes to a image of a lake and a fish jumping out of it
2)   Altered Beast (Coin-Op) ? Standard still images. However, the story behind the images is what bothers me. The slides end with the whole game being a movie, which you were playing actors in. The final image shows them and the crew drinking.
3)   Jaws (NES) ? Your Cessna flies off into the sunset.
4)   Kid Icaris (NES) ? Standard Ending: You get thanked by the Princess.

There also have been games that for various reasons I could never beat.

Here are some I remember:

1)   Athena (NES) ? You have stand in a set area and just keep hitting the leader until it dies.
2)   Ninja Gaiden (NES) ? I could never make that last jump, before the leader, without getting the Art of Fire attack. I had always heard the Jump-Slash worked better.
3)   Blaster Master (NES) ? I just could not deal enough damage to the leaders.
4)   Castle Quest (NES) ? 100 different rooms, each with 1-4 color coated doors. Find the matching color key to open the door. Open the wrong door more then 3 times and you can?t beat the game? What?...

I thought of those two immediately when I read the title to this thread.  Glad I'm not the only one.

Final Fantasy 8 still comes to mind.  God.  You can get through 90% of the game using the damn summon attacks, so I did.  At the end of the game, you run into a battle that can't be won with area attacks, so summons are right out.  My other attack forms were woefully underdeveloped.  Problem:  once you're in the last area, you can't leave, and I had saved my progress inside the end area, overwriting my only save.  The random encounters there are too low level to work your skills up to a respectable level, you can't leave to go grind somewhere else, and you can't use the skills the game has trained you to use from the start.

Every now and then I'll think about pulling the game out and finishing it, but as soon as I see the damn cover, I'm too angry to put it in the system.

All messages were edited to shorten the subject. It was throwing off the forum display.