 Hello, time to do another list video, this time going over what I think are the 13 best endings in the Super Nintendo library. Now I'm just talking about the endings themselves here, this list isn't to be confused with the most worthy games to finish, or the most satisfying games to complete. I mean yeah it sure is hell satisfying to beat a really difficult game like R-Type 3, but the ending itself isn't all that special. This list is just meant to be the 13 best endings of Super Nintendo games that worth playing all the way through. And also, it goes without saying that there's going to be a heck of a lot of spoilers here, but I've tried to put together this video in a way that allows you to skip through it if you don't want anything spoiled. Just watch out for the arrows and skip ahead on the time bar, or you can use the timestamps in the video description. 13. Ignition Factor. Yeah, I'm starting out with a bit of a weird one that not many people talk about. Ignition Factor is kind of a strategy-adventure game, similar to the PAL-exclusive game, The Firemen. Only this game is less action-oriented and more mission-based, where you explore, extinguish fires before they spread, and rescue people, all while using finite resources that you have to manage. It's a pretty good game all considered, but the ending really took me off guard. Skip to 145 to move ahead in the countdown to number 12 to avoid spoilers. Ready? Okay. So you get out of the last building and you get interviewed for the news on TV, only your character is a complete smartass prick. It's hilarious. You can get a fourth wall broken down here, as this dude complains about the way the game is designed. And hey, brings up a good point. Why did one firefighter have to do all this work? What happened to everybody else? He cuts off the reporter and continues to complain about the amount of dialogue in the game. This just took me completely off guard and had me laughing out loud. 12. This one counts for Street Fighter II, the World Warrior, Street Fighter II Turbo, and Super Street Fighter II, and I'm specifically referring to Zangief's ending on the hardest difficulty in each game. Yeah, Zangief's not the most fun character to play as, but if you finish any of the three games with him on hard, you get rewarded with one of the most silly, ridiculous endings you can imagine. Skip to 235 to avoid spoilers. Ready? Okay. You defeat M. Bison and get congratulated by then-Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev. This would have made sense in the original arcade game since that was made back when the Soviet Union was still a thing, but it was long gone by the time the Super Nintendo ports arrived. Instead, they were just like, eh, just leave all this stuff in there, and honestly, I don't blame them. It's just too funny to see Zangief celebrating his win with a 16-bit version of Old Gorby doing a traditional Russian folk dance. 11. Contra 3. This game, beginning to end, is just balls to the wall insane, throwing absolutely everything imaginable at you, and that includes the very end of the game. However, to see the best ending possible, you gotta beat the game on hard. Yeah, I know that seems impossible, but hey, if I can do it, you can do it too. Skip to 324 to avoid spoilers. Ready? Okay. Alright, you've got the final boss beaten, or do you? On easy and normal, that would be it, but on hard, this thing grows, arms and legs, and starts climbing the walls coming after you, while you hang onto a helicopter missile with one hand shooting downward until finally it's over, and the chopper heroically raises you out of the climbing flames. From there, you're treated to some great looking pixel art of various scenes throughout the game, including the celebratory shot at the end, complete with some great music that'll give you goosebumps. 10. The nice thing about Mario games is that there's no difficulty settings, however you beat the game will get you the same ending, whether you reach all 96 exits or skip ahead through Star Road. Skip to 414 to avoid spoilers. Ready? Okay. As the first Super Nintendo game, Mario World really needed to nail the ending here, and it delivers in spades. We start with a credit roll as Mario, Peach, and Yoshi travel all the way back to Yoshi's place where all the eggs hatch, much to the delight of the other Yoshi's, but that's not all. Then the music kicks it up a notch and we get a credit roll for all the enemies in the game. I freaking loved this as a kid. It was such a treat to see every single enemy in the game had its own name. And the music here is also so, so good. It's just so festive. Yeah, I guess some of my childhood bias is shining through here, but I really don't care. This ending always makes me so happy. 9. From Mario World to Super Mario RPG. Now when I started thinking of this list, it crossed my mind how easy it would be to just give all 13 spots to role playing games, because I mean, those games are just one long ass story, right? So of course the ending is going to be satisfying and enjoyable. You just gave 20 or 30 hours of your life to that game. So yeah, the fact that 6 of the next 9 spots on this list are RPGs shouldn't surprise you. To skip Mario RPG spoilers, jump to 511. Ready? Okay. 8. The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past. Like Super Mario World, this is one that Nintendo had to get right, and they nailed it. In a way, this one helped write a template for some of the other endings on this list, so while Link to the Past may not have the huge sweeping narrative of some of the other games here, it got the ending pitch perfect. Skip to 557 to avoid any spoilers. Ready? Okay. Similar to Mario RPG, you revisit many of the places you become familiar with throughout the game, and in this instance you check back in with characters you ran into. There's the old man from the caves in Death Mountain, the two quarreling brothers in Kakariko Village, and in a really cool touch, the flute boy is brought back to the light world with his dad sitting next to him. And of course, as is becoming custom here, the music induces some big time goose bumps. 7. Earthworm Gym, okay this one's very simple, albeit very unexpected, and it plays into the game's sense of humor perfectly. I'll get right to it, skip to 650 to avoid spoilers. Ready? Okay. Meet the evil queen slug for a butt, and you've saved Princess What's-Her-Name. No, really, that's her real name. Hey, real quick, remember that cow at the very beginning of the game? You shoot the fridge and it lands on the seesaw and it flings it into space, complete with a dramatic cow launch announcement? Whatever happened to that cow? Oh, here it is. It lands on the princess, and Gym just kinda dejectedly walks off in the credits roll. That's it. Oh, except for where Gym sneaks in and steals the princess' crown. Yeah, this obviously doesn't measure up to the scope of some of the other endings on this list, but it doesn't have to, it's funny and nothing wrong with that. And I thought this was a clever payoff to something seemingly inconsequential early on in the game. 6. Final Fantasy VI. I mean, how can this one not be on a list like this, with all the different characters, the intersecting storylines, and one of the all-time great villains ever in Kefka. Like I alluded to earlier, this is a game that takes 30 to 40 hours to complete so many people are gonna rank this one higher. Skip to 746 to avoid spoilers. Ready? Okay. You finally defeat Kefka's final form, and he disintegrates in spectacular form, taking seemingly forever to finally die. It's a proper send-off to say the least. With Kefka's defeat, the Espers and Biproxy Terra are beginning to disappear. Can she guide the ship out with her last ounce of strength? Of course she can, just barely surviving. We get a credit roll for each of the 14 playable characters with each getting kind of a brief scene to show off what makes them unique, with the music cleverly adding to it as well. There's nearly 20 minutes of footage here, a suitably epic ending for a massive story. 5. Terra Nigma. Unfortunately, this game was only released in Japan and in PAL regions, but if you haven't played this one, you gotta do so. It's an action RPG that's considered the third in the Quintet-Enix trilogy after Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia, but you don't need to play either of those games to get into Terra Nigma. This is one of those games where, when you think back on playing it, the first thing you'll think of is the story, particularly the ending, skip to 1048 to avoid spoilers. Ready? Okay. So the planet where this game takes place is a hollow sphere. It has an external light side and an internal dark side, and the two sides reflect each other in certain aspects I'll mention in a bit. The character you play as Arc is from a village in the underworld on the dark side, and similar to Soul Blazer, you mysteriously gain the ability to move from the underworld to the light side, as well as the power to resurrect plants, animals, cities, and even humans. You progress through the game doing just that, until about three fourths into your journey, you come across a scientist named Baruga, who had himself frozen in a cryogenic sleep. Huh, that's odd. And it turns out he's evil, and he was waiting for Arc to show up and revive him, since Arc was only being used by Dark Gaia, the evil ruler of the underworld, just to set up the light world to be conquered by evil and be consumed by what's referred to as the Star of Darkness. Yup, that elder that had been helping you this whole time was just stringing you along and he leaves you for dead. The entire world of Terra Enigma is hinged on balance between light and darkness, between the light world and the underworld, and this event has it thrown completely off balance. But Arc somehow has kind of been an exception to this, with the game saying that he exists outside the loop of fate. So that being the case, Arc is going to find the light world version of himself to try and make sense of what's supposed to be happening. So he does. And light world Arc kills underworld Arc. Wait, what? Did Baruga screw up the balance so badly that underworld Arc was supposed to be the legendary hero of the light side only things got reversed? The next chapter sees Arc reborn on the light side, and he's raised to become the hero and to defeat Dark Gaia, which you eventually do. I admit it's tough to explain what happens in Terra Enigma without it coming across as a huge convoluted mess, but it's one of those stories that borders on the surreal. The entire narrative has a dreamlike quality to it, which makes the twists that occur so stark and so shocking that they really stand out as something memorable. Even weirder is that this entire story takes place on a map that closely resembles Earth in real life. Anyway, after Dark Gaia is defeated, Arc realizes that, well, he was a creation of Dark Gaia, so with his demise Arc must also pass. Though Light Gaia, the god of the light world, speaks of Arc as a creator and defender of good, which makes him a god of some kind. And the game ends with Arc's partner, L, in the light world answering the door. Is it Arc at the door? Does he survive? The game doesn't tell you, it's one of those things where it's up to the player. I understand if you don't like strange surreal stories and endings like this, but I think the way Terra Enigma executed its story was really well done. The whole thing feels like some kind of weird dream, and I think it's well worth playing to its conclusion. Chrono Trigger. Well the question here is, which ending makes the list? Can I count all of them? That's right, there's 12 different endings here, and even some of those have variations, and there's at least one more ending if you play the DS version. Skip to 1215 to avoid spoilers. Ready? Okay. So once you reach the fight against Lavos in its final form, the party sees that it's actually humanoid, with Luca realizing that it burrows into the planet and combines the DNA it finds with its own to procreate, hence the Lavos spawn you see on Death Peak. In other words, it's just feeding off of the planet, draining it for all its worth until it's time to move on to the next planet. From there, you defeat Lavos, and depending on where and when you defeat it, you'll get a different ending. Call me a sap, but I like the normal ending you get if you bring back Chrono. The parade and the lights, and seeing all the characters from the beginning of the game again is just a happy time, and of course the music helps a lot too. But my personal favorite ending is the one you get if you defeat Lavos with just Chrono and Marley using a new game plus file to go to the right telepod at the millennial fair at the beginning of the game. It's tough to pull off, but it unlocks the funniest ending. It sends you to the end of time, and you travel throughout different time periods. Only every character is speaking for a member of the development team. When I first discovered this, I'd never seen anything quite like it, and I really got a kick out of hearing from the people that put this incredible game together. It's certainly one of the most unique endings of any Super Nintendo game, or of any JRPG, for that matter. 3. Live Alive. This is a square soft RPG that never left Japan, but it has a really interesting structure. It's broken up into 7 different storylines you play through one at a time, and each has a different theme. There's a Wild West story, a feudal Japan story, a pro wrestling story. It's all over the place. Finish each of the first 7 chapters, and an 8th chapter with a medieval theme is unlocked, but the best part of the game is how it concludes. Skip to 1444 to avoid spoilers. Ready? Okay. So this 8th chapter gets real dark real quick, and I'm going to sum up as best as I can because a lot happens, going into a little more detail than usual here since not as many people have played this one. In the 8th chapter you play as the hero and tournament champion, Ersted, and you have to rescue the Princess Elysia from the Demon King. You and your companion, Strabo, set out to defeat him, but Strabo is seemingly killed in the process. Ersted is heartbroken and distraught to the point that he sees a ghost of the Demon King that tricks him into killing the king of his kingdom. So he's then accused of being the Demon King himself, and he's thrown in prison, but he escapes and returns to the Demon King's lair, only to find that Strabo faked his death and sold his soul to be the new Demon King, because he was jealous of Ersted. That's right, Ersted's best friend betrayed him out of jealousy, had him kill the king, and now everyone hates Ersted's guts. The knight in shining armor is now a villain. And it gets better. Ersted defeats Strabo and rescues the Princess again, but it turns out she was in love with Strabo this whole time and blames Ersted for making him turn to the dark side, and she kills herself out of grief. Oh wow. So yeah, Ersted does not take this well, and goes insane. He himself sells his soul to become the new Demon King, and he renames himself Odio, which is no coincidence, since every boss of each chapter was named Odio in some way, shape, or form, and it turns out you've been fighting some form of Odio in different time periods across the history of mankind. So all the characters gather together in the final chapter to fight Ersted, and once you defeat him, do not choose to finish him off. You'll get a seriously crappy ending where it just skips to the credits. If you spare him, there's one more battle that'll depend on who you choose as your party leader. What's insane here is that you can still choose Ersted in this mode, and you can still play through this section and get the bad ending. It's insane. Seriously, it's a doozy of an ending that does a great job tying together each chapter, and it does a great job making it seem like it's going to be the typical happy ending, but it's absolutely not. Live Alive has a tragic and sad ending that's absolutely worth playing through today. True. Yeah, this game isn't for everyone. It's weird. It looks kinda wonky. It's one of those games where you either get it or you don't. One aspect I think it absolutely nailed better than nearly every other game, especially for a role-playing game, is how the ending played out. Skip to 1609 to avoid spoilers. Ready? Okay. No, I'm not referring to Geiges being defeated by Prayer, although I do think that fit the game very well in an odd kind of way. I'm referring to After the Battle. First of all, the music and visuals right after the battle are surreal. I mean, good god, this is like Contra 3 on LSD. I mean, it's just slightly terrifying. But then Geiges is destroyed, and the game does a complete 180, providing some of the most soothing, comfortable music you'll ever hear in any game. The gang all wakes up in Saturn Valley, and then one by one, everyone says goodbye. Maybe I'm just being a total sap, but in games with longer stories like role-playing games have, it always kinda bothers me how stuff just ends. But in Earthbound, your party thanks each other, and you all part ways. Pooh warps back home, Jeff talks about how he's grown as a person throughout his journey and joins his newfound dad. Then you walk Paula home, all the way back through Earthbound's entire world if you'd like, because there's no time limit here. You can take as long as you'd like and talk to as many people as you'd want. You don't actually start the credit roll until you talk to your mom at your house. So yeah, I love Earthbound's ending, both for its content and for its execution, and I wish more games ended like this. 1. Super Metroid, would you believe a game with no words in it at all after the first 5 minutes would have the best ending to any Super Nintendo game? Well, I think it does, and I think it's because the entire Super Metroid experience is so tension-filled and so nerve-wracking that it needed a huge eventful climax to make all that tension worth it. And man, oh man, does this game ever deliver. This is number one, so there's nothing to skip ahead to for spoilers, so just close the video if you don't want Super Metroid spoiled. Ready? Okay. So you're approaching what should be the final boss, and who should appear but a giant Metroid. It destroys the enemy in front of you, then it goes after you, and before you know it, you're trapped, only for it to stop at the last possible moment before you're killed. That's because this thing recognizes you. It's the same little Metroid from the beginning of the game, all grown up, so you replenish your health, move forward, and defeat Mother Brain in a similar setup to the first Metroid, and that should be it, right? Nope. Mother Brain grows a huge, monstrous Frankenstein body from out of nowhere. Oh my God. I was so incredibly freaked out the first time I played this, and the music really adds a ton to this moment. It's a really tough battle, your health is getting low, and Mother Brain is moving in for the kill. But wait, the Metroid that spared you earlier now shows up to save your life. My heart is freaking pounding at this point. The Metroid replenishes your health, but Mother Brain gives it a mortal wound in the process. But wait, the music changes, and suddenly, you've got a badass new weapon, and now you're beating the bejesus out of Mother Brain as it screams for its life. Now the battle is much easier, but it's not over yet. Just like at the beginning of the game, you have to get to your ship in less than three minutes before the whole damn planet blows up. And in a fascinating bonus touch here, if you head down this way, you can also free the cute little animal dudes who have helped you throughout your journey. It's such a great idea, and I always make sure to do this, even if I'm running low on time. Super Metroid is one of the best games ever made, not just because of the level design and game structure, but because it delivers a genuine and satisfying payoff to all that tension that builds throughout. Alright, there you go. And I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.