I can still remember the first game I ever completed, — License To Kill — a terrible game based very loosely on a terrible James Bond film. The ending was equally terrible.
The only reward for fighting through 5 levels of mediocrity was the text “Congratulations James You Have Defeated Sanchez And Smashed His Evil Drug Empire” (I found the lack of commas as upsetting as the lack of any proper ending).
Still, as a child who had only played children’s games that were closer to visual novels, or never-ending “high score” games like Asteroids, the idea that a game could be completed was new.
Imogen was a simple game
I dove straight into my next challenge, a game on BBC Micro called Imogen. This was a game my Dad has said was uncompletable, but I figured no one would release a game that couldn’t be beaten, so I put everything into it. An important memory for me is the feeling of awe as text started to climb up a black screen (if initially thought the game had crashed).
I’d have thought a few sentences would have been all that was needed, but this was a full short story detailing what happened when the main character had his sanity restored and returned to his village. It was so unexpected that I called my family into the room to witness my “great accomplishment”.
Since then, I’ve really appreciated games that have an end sequence that contains an unpredictable surprise. Here I’m going to share 5 of my favorites, each from consoles that should be playable on any retro handheld (I used the Miyoo Mini as a baseline), ranked in order of the surprise.
While I might talk about aspects of the end sequence of a game without a story, I won’t spoil any plot points of a story-driven game.
5. Vagrant Story: PlayStation 1, Released 2000
The characters in Vagrant Story remain some of my all-time favorites
Vagrant Story was one of my favorite PS1 games, but it’s also a game that would massively benefit from a remaster. While I think the graphics, characters, and crafting mechanics stand up well, even in 2025. The menu system (especially the weapon and spell selection) is particularly clunky and frustrating.
Vagrant Story is a story of 4 different sides: Aristocracy, Government, Church, and A Cult. Early on in the story, as an introduction game’s shifting morality, your character is shown two visions of the past. The visions conflict with each other and there is no way both can be true.
I first played Vagrant Story when it was released in 2000, but I didn’t complete it until it was RH Game of the Month in May 2023. In those intervening 23 years, I probably wondered what was the in-game truth more than I wondered about the plot of any other game.
One outcome stripped away all the layered depth of a character and made them a cartoon baddie, and the other made the game much darker than it had any right to be. I feared a disappointing cop-out, but yet when I finally beat the game (and earned my GOTM point), the “truth” was handled exceptionally well with an outcome I would never have predicted.
4. Wizkid: The Story of Wizball II: Amiga, Released 1992
I could try to explain what’s going on here, but it would take too long
I’m going to spoil the ending of this one, since the Amiga isn’t a popular system within RH, and Wizkid isn’t a particularly outstanding game within.
Wizkid is a surreal game, and it is possibly the only game in existence that combines bat-n-ball gameplay (like Breakout) with an object collecting puzzle aspects. In Wizkid your character has to rescue the cats, in order for them to row you to the castle where your kidnapped parents are being held. When you finally reach the castle, instead of the usual boss fight, the evil mouse wizard Zark says they will only release your parents if you can beat their high score on Asteroids.
It’s only when you manage to beat the high score that you find out the truth, the evil mouse wizard Zark is actually just your father in disguise, telling you “I’ve been having some problems lately” and that he faked the whole kidnapping to get attention. The game ends with him asking you if you could ever forgive him, you reply with a single word: “No”.
Completing Wizkid as a child was one of the biggest WTF moments I’ve had in gaming. I’ve never been sure that Wizkid was the product of a healthy mind
3. Klonoa: Door to Phantomile: PlayStation 1 – Released 1997
Klonoa has a basic story with nice touches
I played Klonoa when it was selected for RH’s Game of The Month in 2022. My GOTM streak is coming up for 3 years long, and I’ll be coming up for 50 completions soon. Klonoa remains in my top 3 GOTM games. It’s a cute platform game from a time when 2.5D platform games were new and inventive. The game itself is simple fun. The story has your character Klonoa, and their Ring-Spirit friend Huepow racing to try to rescue the dive Lephise so that she might sing the Song of Rebirth, saving the land of Phantomile from total destruction.
Between each level, the story progresses and it really isn’t anything special. It feels maybe aimed at a younger audience than the average member of RH. However, the ending, which is only lightly telegraphed through the game, comes out of left field and is surprisingly moving. I’m being deliberately vague about this one intentionally
2. Enduro Racer: Master System – Released 1987
Enduro Racer wasn’t the best-looking racing game
Enduro Racer is a motorcycle obstacle racer, which started off as a 1986 arcade game, but which ported to home systems a year after release. Some of the ports are more faithful to the original than others.
Bottom of the list of good ports is the Master System version which turns a standard “camera behind the vehicle” into an isometric game that seems to bear little similarity to the original. The one thing it does keep is the end-game text, which seems to come from the soul of a tortured poet.
“Enduro” is a symbolic journey through life via the media of a race.
The results are insignificant and what really counts is competing.
Of particular importance are the lessons to be learned concerning one’s self from the various encounters you experience along the way.
There is no victor or loser in this test of endurance.
The only thing that really matters is that you make a commitment to begin the long and trying trek.
This game is then dedicated to all of the “life riders” who have started out on the solitary trip to find their own individual limits.
Last, but not least, may we sincerely congratulate you on a perfect run.
The text didn’t make it into every conversion, as all you get for beating the C64 version is “Goal In!”
1. Zookeeper: Nintendo DS – Released 2004
Zoo Keeper is a simple but addictive game
In Europe, where I live, ZooKeeper was one of the handful of launch titles which were available for the DS. Due to stock shortages it was also one of the only games still available in the shops when I got my console – the DS remains the only console I’ve ever pre-ordered. From the first moment I played it, I loved it, inface I’d go so far as to say I thought it was the best launch title for any device.
Like more modern games like Candy Crush, ZooKeeper is based on Bejeweled, a game where you need to move around objects, which is clear if you get three in a row. Scope high enough and you progress to the next level, but not make the score before the time runs out, but fail to hit the target and it’s game over. In ZooKeeper, Game Over is being called into the manager’s office to hear him utter the words “You are a failure”.
I would have bet money against this being a game with an emotionally weighty end sequence that punches you square in the feels, but I’d have been wrong. I can still remember finally beating it on my DS while sitting alone in a carriage part way through my 2-hour journey on the last train back to London after visiting my family.
I remember the last level going down to the wire and then the screen going black, then seeing some text and not quite believing what I was seeing. I started off the article talking about what it was like to complete Imogen as a kid. The ending of ZooKeeper is as close as I’ve got to that experience, in gaming, since.
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