10 Video Game Endings That Totally Trolled Players

Today, Dark Souls tends to be the standard by which all difficult games are measured. It doesn’t matter whether a game is remotely comparable to FromSoftware’s beloved franchise or not. If it’s hard, it’s the Dark Souls of its genre.

The fact is, though, this is because Dark Souls’ brutal challenge is a bit of an exception to the rules these days. In the nineties, video games tended to be super difficult as a rule. Something as innocent looking as the classic Aladdin or The Lion King games for the SNES or Mega Drive is ruthlessly challenging.

Ghost ‘N Goblins first released in arcades in 1985 and is particularly renowned for its difficulty. Players will be familiar with the whole ‘one hit and Arthur’s armor flies off, another and he’s dead’ shtick, but this hair-tearing action platformer had a surprise up its sleeve: anybody who managed to miraculously reach the end was greeted by nothing but the message seen above: “this room is an illusion and is a trap devised by Satan. Go ahead dauntlessly! Make rapid progress!”

To actually see the ending, gamers had to play through the entire thing again, an even more difficult playthrough, to actually rescue Princess Prin-Prin. The good news is that the real ending featured the infamous “congraturation. This story is happy end” text, so it was probably worth it.