From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 1/30/2026 10:49 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Thu, 29 Jan 2026 14:16:10 -0500, Mike S. <[email protected]>
wrote:

On Thu, 29 Jan 2026 10:54:18 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<[email protected]> wrote:

IIRC, you have to find the seven parts of the Staff of Foozle-Killing
and then bring them to the end of the final dungeon where a cutscene
plays. I don't think you even get to fight the evil foozle. I don't
think it was a bad ending, but it did feel a bit anti-climatic.

You are right, you use the assembled staff (eight pieces) to end the
game. I think you touch the staff to something but I don't really
remember. You can definitely attack Jagar Tharn but I think he is
invulnerable so it does not matter.

I am not a fan of boss battles in video games so I was ok with ending
the game just using the staff. It made sense to me anyway as you spent
the whole game looking for its parts.

I actually had to watch a video after I posted to remind myself of the ending. It's literally a case of double-clicking a texture on the wall
to trigger the cutscene.

Like you said, narratively there isn't really anything wrong with the concept. Honestly, I find boss battles sort of weird anyway. Why is
the bad-guy leader engaging in combat anyway? Why is he always the
most powerful? It bears absolutely no resemblance to reality; do you
think if the US snuck a commando team into Russia, Putin would
eventually show up armed with two M60s and, if he was murdered in the Kremlin, Russia would throw up their hands and go, "Oh, you got us.
You win."? It's the mechanics of the games overriding the narrative in
the silliest way.

So it wasn't the idea that there was no end-boss... but there could
have been more build-up; more challenge. Honestly, had Bethesda
changed the texture to a big "You Win!" switch, it wouldn't have been
much different. Especially since the final dungeon wasn't,
mechanically, any different from the dozens of others you'd already
fought your way through.

[Bethesda fixed this in Daggerfall. The end-dungeon of that
game was really trippy]

So, narratively Arena's ending was fine. It was just, as I said,
pretty anti-climatic how it was implemented.

I know I finished all those games, I have no recollection of any of the endings even after them being described.

I'm trying to think of the first ending of a game I remember. Probably
Master of Magic, you take over the world / get rid of the other magic
gods becoming...

"Master. of. Magic!" Not really spectacular I think. That's if I
remember it correctly. It's not an epic rpg, it's a game you're meant
to keep playing again and again, like a board game.

I'm pretty sure I finished Pool of Radiance fighting the red dragon.
That's probably the first semi-memorable rpg one.

A lot of really old games didn't even have endings, you just kept
playing until you got bored, the game got too hard, or a bug you
couldn't get past.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 4 Feb 2026 08:28:00 -0800, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

I know I finished all those games, I have no recollection of any of the >endings even after them being described.

I'm trying to think of the first ending of a game I remember. Probably >Master of Magic, you take over the world / get rid of the other magic
gods becoming...

"Master. of. Magic!" Not really spectacular I think. That's if I
remember it correctly. It's not an epic rpg, it's a game you're meant
to keep playing again and again, like a board game.

I'm pretty sure I finished Pool of Radiance fighting the red dragon.
That's probably the first semi-memorable rpg one.

A lot of really old games didn't even have endings, you just kept
playing until you got bored, the game got too hard, or a bug you
couldn't get past.

We should start a thread about that; call it something like "The Worst
Endings" or similar. I bet it would get at least 22 replies! ;-)

But, yeah, a lot of games from the earlier era lacked satisfactory
endings. This was in part due to the technology; a cinematic ending
needed artwork and sound assets that had to be stored on disk
somewhere. Disk-space was expensive and floppy disks were a
significant portion of the cost of shipping a game; developers did
their best to minimize the number of floppy disks used (It was even
worst with cartridge-based games). Plus, you had to pay for the
artists and programmers to actually create that ending!

And, like you said, with a lot of games a lot of people never, ever
got that far in the game. Why put all that effort into an ending that
only 10% of your players would ever see? Add to that, that sort of
ending is a narrative feature, and for a lot of people games weren't a narrative experience. They didn't expect an 'ending' to a game any
more than we might expect an 'ending' to playing tic-tac-toe or
tennis.

Even my beloved Ultima games didn't really have proper, memorable
endings until Ultima 5 (and, really, not till Ultima 6). Mostly it was
a 'well done' screen and drop-to-DOS. Heck, even "Doom" was pretty
shoddy in that regard.

But as the narratives gained ever more importance to games (and
disk-space became less of a restriction)... only then did we start
getting really memorable endings.


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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 4 Feb 2026 08:28:00 -0800, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

I know I finished all those games, I have no recollection of any of the >endings even after them being described.

I'm trying to think of the first ending of a game I remember. Probably >Master of Magic, you take over the world / get rid of the other magic
gods becoming...

Earliest ending I can remember is bringing the gold chalice back to
the yellow castle in Adventure on the Atari 2600 and hearing the short
fanfare play and the flashing colors. Does that even count as an
ending? I think it does.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:31:23 -0500, Mike S. <[email protected]>
wrote:

On Wed, 4 Feb 2026 08:28:00 -0800, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

I know I finished all those games, I have no recollection of any of the >>endings even after them being described.

I'm trying to think of the first ending of a game I remember. Probably >>Master of Magic, you take over the world / get rid of the other magic
gods becoming...

Earliest ending I can remember is bringing the gold chalice back to
the yellow castle in Adventure on the Atari 2600 and hearing the short >fanfare play and the flashing colors. Does that even count as an
ending? I think it does.

Ending? Yes. _Satisfying_ ending? Well, that's more subjective. For
it's time, probably. Nowadays, not so much.

It's not as if early games didn't have endings. I mean, some didn't,
of course. "H.E.R.O." (one of the earliest computer games I owned)
just started replaying random levels you'd already completed.
"Pac-Man" infamously kept going until some counter overflowed and the
game crashed. AFAIK "Pong" would keep going endlessly until you
finally turned off the machine (although it probably differed
depending on the machine).

But some games did have endings. The earliest I can remember is, of
course, "Zork". Find all the treasures and enter the barrow that is
the start of "Zork II". "Ancient Art of War" (a very early real-time
strategy game from 1984) give you a victory screen when you defeated
your enemy. After completing all the sports in "Winter Olympics" by
Epyx, you got a medals awards ceremony. Even "Eye of the Beholder" (a
game I frequently make fun of for its lack of an ending) actually had
an ending. Push the titular monster into the trap closet, watch the
spikes crush it, and get a page of congratulatory text before being unceremoniously dropped to DOS.

But given that you would often spend weeks or months playing these
games, these twenty-second endings rarely lived up to the rest of the
game.


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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:31:23 -0500, Mike S. <[email protected]>
wrote:

On Wed, 4 Feb 2026 08:28:00 -0800, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

I know I finished all those games, I have no recollection of any of the
endings even after them being described.

I'm trying to think of the first ending of a game I remember. Probably
Master of Magic, you take over the world / get rid of the other magic
gods becoming...

Earliest ending I can remember is bringing the gold chalice back to
the yellow castle in Adventure on the Atari 2600 and hearing the short
fanfare play and the flashing colors. Does that even count as an
ending? I think it does.

Ending? Yes. _Satisfying_ ending? Well, that's more subjective. For
it's time, probably. Nowadays, not so much.

It's not as if early games didn't have endings. I mean, some didn't,
of course. "H.E.R.O." (one of the earliest computer games I owned)
just started replaying random levels you'd already completed.
"Pac-Man" infamously kept going until some counter overflowed and the
game crashed. AFAIK "Pong" would keep going endlessly until you
finally turned off the machine (although it probably differed
depending on the machine).

But some games did have endings. The earliest I can remember is, of
course, "Zork". Find all the treasures and enter the barrow that is
the start of "Zork II". "Ancient Art of War" (a very early real-time
strategy game from 1984) give you a victory screen when you defeated
your enemy. After completing all the sports in "Winter Olympics" by
Epyx, you got a medals awards ceremony. Even "Eye of the Beholder" (a
game I frequently make fun of for its lack of an ending) actually had
an ending. Push the titular monster into the trap closet, watch the
spikes crush it, and get a page of congratulatory text before being unceremoniously dropped to DOS.

But given that you would often spend weeks or months playing these
games, these twenty-second endings rarely lived up to the rest of the
game.

I thought Police Quest I ended spectacularly.
--
6iuq7JrV8XY
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:54:12 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <[email protected]> wrote:

Even "Eye of the Beholder" (a
game I frequently make fun of for its lack of an ending) actually had
an ending. Push the titular monster into the trap closet, watch the
spikes crush it, and get a page of congratulatory text before being >unceremoniously dropped to DOS.

On an (almost completely unrelated) aside, I saw this video yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuMc_6ANAQI

It's an 'homage' to "Eye of the Beholder", presenting the first part
of the first level of the game utilizing a modern engine. It's fully
3D (although it still uses step-based movement... mostly) and looks
quite nice. I could see myself playing this game.

[But probably not for long. The new visuals are nice but
I hated the combat in that game. ;-)]

Actually, I'm surprised nobody has made a fan-remake of this game,
even if just to port it to a new engine. While I wouldn't say it would
be /easy/, it certainly would be less complicated than a lot of the
other mods/remakes that are pushed out. There are a lot of concepts
but nothing beyond that. Well, aside from a "Neverwinter Nights" mod,
which isn't really the same thing.





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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:54:12 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <[email protected]> wrote:

Ending? Yes. _Satisfying_ ending? Well, that's more subjective. For
it's time, probably. Nowadays, not so much.

It definitely was satisfying to me at the time. Partly because this
was the only 2600 game I had where I could actually reach an end game
screen. Adventure is probably the very first game I 'finished.'

But some games did have endings. The earliest I can remember is, of
course, "Zork". Find all the treasures and enter the barrow that is
the start of "Zork II". "Ancient Art of War" (a very early real-time
strategy game from 1984) give you a victory screen when you defeated
your enemy. After completing all the sports in "Winter Olympics" by
Epyx, you got a medals awards ceremony. Even "Eye of the Beholder" (a
game I frequently make fun of for its lack of an ending) actually had
an ending. Push the titular monster into the trap closet, watch the
spikes crush it, and get a page of congratulatory text before being >unceremoniously dropped to DOS.

I played and finished several Infocom titles back in the day but I
don't really remember how any of them ended. My best memory is having
to kill Floyd at the end of Stationfall. Although, I don't remember if
the game was actually over yet but I am pretty sure it was close to
the end.

Now, Eye of the Beholder, that drop to DOS ending I do remember. :)
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 5 Feb 2026 14:21:03 -0600, phoenix <[email protected]>
wrote:

I thought Police Quest I ended spectacularly.

I remember the ending to Space Quest 3 the most. I played that game a
lot when I was a kid as it was one of the first Sierra games I played
and I watched the ending over and over again. I am not sure which
Sierra game I would consider to have the best ending if I replayed
them all now.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Fri, 06 Feb 2026 12:58:13 -0500, Mike S. <[email protected]>
wrote:

I remember the ending to Space Quest 3 the most. I played that game a
lot when I was a kid as it was one of the first Sierra games I played
and I watched the ending over and over again. I am not sure which
Sierra game I would consider to have the best ending if I replayed
them all now.

I was never a big Space Quest fan, but that's mostly because I came to
them late in my 'adventure game' career and was tired of most of its
tropes. I was more of a Kings Quest person... although those games
were probably some of the weakest of Sierra's creations. That said,
"Kings Quest VI" probably had the best ending... all the moreso since
there were different endings depending on how you solved the game.
(Although arguably all the endings were sort of creepy if you really
thought about them. But fairy-tale endings usually are.

TL;DR: I don't remember /any/ of the endings of the "Space Quest" game
but that's more of a problem with me than an indictment of the series
itself. ;-)
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sat, 07 Feb 2026 13:15:30 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <[email protected]> wrote:

I was never a big Space Quest fan, but that's mostly because I came to
them late in my 'adventure game' career and was tired of most of its
tropes. I was more of a Kings Quest person... although those games
were probably some of the weakest of Sierra's creations. That said,
"Kings Quest VI" probably had the best ending... all the moreso since
there were different endings depending on how you solved the game.
(Although arguably all the endings were sort of creepy if you really
thought about them. But fairy-tale endings usually are.

You may be right about King's Quest VI having the best ending. You
probably are. King's Quest VI was one of Sierra's best games and I do
remember replaying it to see the different endings.

TL;DR: I don't remember /any/ of the endings of the "Space Quest" game
but that's more of a problem with me than an indictment of the series
itself. ;-)

I played most of the Space Quest games but I really only remember the
third game's ending clearly.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sat, 07 Feb 2026 13:50:29 -0500, Mike S. <[email protected]>
wrote:


Speaking of /bad/ endings... "Eye of the Beholder II" springs to mind.

On a technical front, it actually was pretty great. You get several
different scenes, all done in that classic pixel-art style that
Westwood used. It lasted several minutes, which was quite impressive
for games of that era, and concluded the story nicely. You got a nice
shot of the Big Bad lying dead on the ground and the usual, "good job,
son!" from your allies.

But man... what it actually shows was so annoying. Sent to see what's
going on at the temple of Darkmoon by the archmage Khelben Blackstaff,
you fight your way to the bottom of the dungeon without any assistance
from the wizard. You triumphantly kill the Big Bad in a heroic battle.
And then Khelben teleports in, says, "Oh yeah, I always knew this guy
was trouble", and sends in some other wizards to raze the castle to
the ground with a few seconds of pyrotechnics.

And I watch this thinking: if you knew there was a serious threat
here, and had all this power just ready to go, and could have
teleported yourself to the bottom of the dungeon at any time, then WHY
THE FUCK did I just risk life and limb in a weeks long quest, you lazy
fucking sorcerer?

It's a good thing the game ended there because otherwise I'd have
taken a sword to the archmage himself. ;-)


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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 2/8/2026 8:08 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Sat, 07 Feb 2026 13:50:29 -0500, Mike S. <[email protected]>
wrote:

Speaking of /bad/ endings... "Eye of the Beholder II" springs to mind.

On a technical front, it actually was pretty great. You get several
different scenes, all done in that classic pixel-art style that
Westwood used. It lasted several minutes, which was quite impressive
for games of that era, and concluded the story nicely. You got a nice
shot of the Big Bad lying dead on the ground and the usual, "good job,
son!" from your allies.

But man... what it actually shows was so annoying. Sent to see what's
going on at the temple of Darkmoon by the archmage Khelben Blackstaff,
you fight your way to the bottom of the dungeon without any assistance
from the wizard. You triumphantly kill the Big Bad in a heroic battle.
And then Khelben teleports in, says, "Oh yeah, I always knew this guy
was trouble", and sends in some other wizards to raze the castle to
the ground with a few seconds of pyrotechnics.

And I watch this thinking: if you knew there was a serious threat
here, and had all this power just ready to go, and could have
teleported yourself to the bottom of the dungeon at any time, then WHY
THE FUCK did I just risk life and limb in a weeks long quest, you lazy fucking sorcerer?

It's a good thing the game ended there because otherwise I'd have
taken a sword to the archmage himself. ;-)

Wizards (and Gods) work in mysterious ways.
--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sun, 08 Feb 2026 11:08:43 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <[email protected]> wrote:

It's a good thing the game ended there because otherwise I'd have
taken a sword to the archmage himself. ;-)

Wow, even with your description I just don't remember the ending to
Eye of the Beholder 2 at all. I do remember the intro which I liked
very much though!
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sun, 8 Feb 2026 08:39:40 -0800, Dimensional Traveler
<[email protected]> wrote:

Wizards (and Gods) work in mysterious ways.

They always do. And the magic they work with is always Ancient Magic.
There is no other kind.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Spalls Hurgenson <[email protected]> looked up from reading the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

On Sat, 07 Feb 2026 13:50:29 -0500, Mike S. <[email protected]>
wrote:

Speaking of /bad/ endings... "Eye of the Beholder II" springs to mind.

On a technical front, it actually was pretty great. You get several
different scenes, all done in that classic pixel-art style that
Westwood used. It lasted several minutes, which was quite impressive
for games of that era, and concluded the story nicely. You got a nice
shot of the Big Bad lying dead on the ground and the usual, "good job,
son!" from your allies.

But man... what it actually shows was so annoying. Sent to see what's
going on at the temple of Darkmoon by the archmage Khelben Blackstaff,
you fight your way to the bottom of the dungeon without any assistance
from the wizard. You triumphantly kill the Big Bad in a heroic battle.
And then Khelben teleports in, says, "Oh yeah, I always knew this guy
was trouble", and sends in some other wizards to raze the castle to
the ground with a few seconds of pyrotechnics.

And I watch this thinking: if you knew there was a serious threat
here, and had all this power just ready to go, and could have
teleported yourself to the bottom of the dungeon at any time, then WHY
THE FUCK did I just risk life and limb in a weeks long quest, you lazy >fucking sorcerer?

He didn't have probable cause or something like that.

He could have known that guy was trouble, but not that that guy was down
in that Temple, he just knew _something_ was off in that temple, so he
sent you to investigate.

A Schr�dinger's Temple kind of situation, until someone took a look,
they didn't know what was what there.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sun, 08 Feb 2026 14:11:04 -0500, Mike S. <[email protected]> said
this thing:

On Sun, 08 Feb 2026 11:08:43 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson ><[email protected]> wrote:

It's a good thing the game ended there because otherwise I'd have
taken a sword to the archmage himself. ;-)

Wow, even with your description I just don't remember the ending to
Eye of the Beholder 2 at all. I do remember the intro which I liked
very much though!

In fairness, neither did I. I mean, I vaguely remembered that Khelben
the Archmage appeared after the end, and that I was annoyed by how the
game ended, but beyond that the specifics had escaped me.

But this thread made me go out and re-watch the ending cinematics for
a bunch of DOS-era games, including EOB2. So I was able to refresh my
memory... and annoyance. Win-win! ;-)



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