Top 10 Surprise Endings in Video Games

While it has not always been the case, today when a new video game title is released for mainstream game systems, it almost always includes a plot with sub-plots that rival the sort of quality we expect in feature films. Because the video game has now reached that level of entertainment in terms of quality and quantity.

As game stories progressed to this point the industry began to adopt the same basic tools that are used for movies and TV - including the odd and unexpected endings that can with any luck really twist your noggin! Well, we like it when that happens anyway... Or do we?

With that question in mind, we thought we would take a look at the Top 10 Surprise Endings in Video Games.

Bear in mind that (1) there are only 10 possible choices here out of thousands of games, so chances are that our list is not going to match the mental list that you carry around in your head, and (2) we are very likely to have not chosen the game that would be on your list.

If that is the case - and we expect that it will be - you should feel invited to nominate your own list of games by making good use of the Comments System at the bottom of each page! Seriously - we actually want you to share your choices with us. That way we get a much more complete picture while still coloring inside the lines.

So with that duly noted, here are our Top 10 Surprise Endings in Video Games:

10. Metroid (Nintendo, 1986)

Metroid making this list takes some explaining. Mostly because the current generation of gamers is not going to get why it makes this list, because gaming today is a lot different than it was when Metroid was first released. Which even though it dates me as a gamer I freely admit was 1986...

It was an awesome game and easily retains its position among the Top 10 best games for the NES platforms - both due to its excellent environment and mechanics, its awesome play style, and the over-the-top efforts that went into its rendering and the classic 8-bit music that accompanies pretty much all of the epic game play action.

The premise of the game was simple enough: On the planet Zebes you - the warrior Samus Aran -- are dispatched to retrieve the parasitic Metroid organisms stolen by Space Pirates. Their plan is to replicate the Metroids, which they will do by exposing them to beta rays, and then use them as biological weapons to destroy... well, everything!

From the very beginning you are a kick-ass warrior who doesn't even bother taking names first! The epitome of the gung-ho classic warrior. You have to understand that. There is no freaking doubt about that from the start.

In an era in which boys play games, and in which every game hero was modeled after the players (for the most part) you struggle through an awesome adventure; you take righteous pride in doing a really good job of ass kicking. You battle against incredible odds.

You struggle through some epic battles and against all the odds you emerge victorious, thanking God that this was not a game you had to fund with coins out of pocket - only to have revealed to you - at the very end of the end - that you are a girl?!

Considering the large selection of female heroes that can be found in games today, this wouldn't really qualify as a surprise or shock ending - today - but let me tell ya something fella, in the late 80's it did! I knew gamers who literally were unable to accept this. They were in major denial!

And it wasn't as if the game studio did not intentionally mean to set up that surprise either!

While writing this I dug out the manual from my copy of the game for NES and verified it - the manual refers to Samus as 'he' throughout. So there is no question this was all part of the plan all the way along!

Were they making a statement about gender roles in video games? Yeah, I think they were. Did they drive home the point that a strong female lead was possible and would be readily accepted by gamers? Well, maybe. I have to wonder if the player had known from the start that Samus was a girl, would it have garnered the kick-ass rep that it did? To be honest I have my doubts.

But there is no question that Metroid nicely kicks off this list.