98: Sh*tty endings
Endings should never be afterthoughts, you went through all the trouble to beat the game, you should be rewarded with a good wrap up of the story, not just a plain "thank you" or "congratulations".
You remember how disappointing the ending to the first Super Mario Bros was?
Thank you! Your quest is over. What the hell? Now look here princess, I fought my way through horrifying mushroom monsters and giant turtles, I've been told "thank you Mario but the princess is in another castle" 7 damn times, I just killed a giant f*cking fire breathing turtle dragon, and all I get is a simple thank you? Bullsh*t. You owe me some poontang, or at least a blow job.
Either way they could have done something more to reward the player or even progress the story.
^ How SMB
could have ended.
Now Nintendo learned from this, most Mario games since have a good ending, the All Stars remake of SMB ended with Peach giving you a kiss, Super Mario World ended with you partying with a bunch of Yoshis, Super Mario RPG ended with you having a parade and Super Mario 64 ended with you getting that damn cake you were promised. It may not be much but it's something. Nintendo do happy endings pretty well, remember how Link To The Past ended? During the credits you see what happens to every character you encountered from your journey, because so many characters played a part in the story. Imagine if it ended with just a badly spelled phrase like "congratularations" or something? Even back then there should have been no excuse for stuff like that, video games are different from movies, you EARN the endings, that means you should actually get a damn ending.
I'm not asking for clever or complex endings, just a good happy ending and something to sum up the story. Many old games had the problem of just slapping together a simple text ending and that was it, made worse by lack of translators and awful grammar and spelling. Anticlimatic endings are the worst though, new games have this problem, a lot of them also leave cliffhangers for the inevitable sequel, Assassins Creed, God of War 2 and the first two Halo games are examples, that just pisses me off. Then there are ones that are just plain stupid, remember when Super Mario Bros 2 ended with everything being a dream? What the hell? So I achieved nothing? It was all just a dream? Bullsh*t.
Sonic 1 ended with Sonic running around with his little furry friends, brief and simple, but at least it's a good happy ending. Now Castlevania's ending was just pathetic, the castle crumbles and the text explains everything after that. WHY DO YOU NEED TEXT TO DESCRIBE WHAT HAPPENS? It's a video game not a damn book, show us something happening dammit.
Remember how most Metroid games ended? If you beat them in a certain amount of time, Samus shows you her tits, now THAT'S an ending.