5 Alternate Game Endings That They Should Have Ran With
Most fighting games have tons of endings, despite the overwhelming majority being a bunch of fart noises. Commie dance-offs and homoerotic incest parties aside, "here's what would've happened if this guy won" is usually way better in theory than in execution. Most times, the alternate-universe champions simply live happily ever after, unceremoniously die, or stare off into space pondering life, the universe, and how to become a better farter.
Sometimes, however, these endings tease strange and intriguing worlds, starring characters way more interesting than the punks who keep winning for real. The writers behind the confusing and disjointed skull-fractured fairy tales currently passed off as "storylines" really should have embraced the following when they had the chance ...
Mortal Kombat: Raiden and the Elder Gods Destroy the World
Raiden, Mortal Kombat's benevolent thunder god, wasn't always a hero to puny humans. But he was always a fucking god. How Liu "Bloodlusty Ryu" Kang managed to get past him in the official timeline, I have no clue. Apparently, you just savate kick a thunderstorm until it goes away.
Either way, it's a damn shame Kang won, and not just because he's drier than a stale bread sandwich with a side order of cinnamon powder. It's also because Raiden as Grand Champion would've won us this reality:
Yep, before Midway drafted him to protect Earthrealm, Raiden was the worst kind of immortal: evil, arrogant, and utterly uninterested in any life that ends through non-lightning-shooting-out-of-your-asshole means. As champion, Raiden spends years effortlessly turning back challenger after challenger, growing so bored that he turns the entire tournament into Immortal Kombat, a nonstop rumble orgy where the only entry requirement is the inability to die.
As great as Mortal Kombat II was, an entire game of mean immortal assholes beating the eternity out of one another would have been even better. And because they're dicks, they'd fight on Earth, allowing you to destroy towns, cities, countries, and the whole damn environment along with punching your opponent in half. What's the downside? A corpse might get stuck between your toes? Maybe a bit of mountain? Scrape that shit off and get back to breaking Osiris in half.
And quit wearing shoes that make you look like a damn kamel.
Yes, Osiris. The Egyptian god of death (feel free to worship him; he's been awful lonely these past few millennia). Immortal Kombat just wouldn't feel legit without some real ancients in on the action. Maybe, sick of being neglected, they unite and attack Raiden and Friends in a bid for universal supremacy. Whatever their reason, the result remains the same -- dozens of deities fight so goddamn hard that humanity explodes in a mushroom cloud of feces and boners. And the kombatants barely notice.
Plus, it's way more realistic than Johnny Cage's ending:
They successfully killed the careers of everyone involved, so technically it's true, from a certain point of view.
Tekken 3 teases a wonderfully batshit break from the canonical monotony of Heihachi Mishima and his family winning time and again like a clan of kung-fu Yankees. Yoshimitsu, an armor-clad Robin Hood who embraced scary Green Goblin cosplay long before Willem Dafoe made it cool, wants to revive a dying friend with a potion crafted from the blood of Ogre, a giant winged monster so ruthlessly badass that the original pronunciation of his name is the sound of someone shitting their pants.
"Time for a between-fight snack."
Yoshi defeats Ogre and mixes his blood into potion form. But before the big, life-giving chug, he tests it out on a caged lab rat. And then we get the wettest PETA dream of all: The cute little field mouse has a massive growth spurt that leaves him the size of a castle and monstrously pissed off at, well, you:
Sadly, we only see Ogre Mouse for a split second, as the screen fades to black before he gets to gnaw through Yoshi's armor and feast on the tender meaty filling like the world's most disturbing ravioli. Because, let's face it -- a mouse that big would look at everything like it was made by Chef Boyardee. Also, it's infused with murderous Ogre DNA, so definitely no more settling disputes with a mere timid squeak.
Except for your timid squeak. Of which there would be many.
If Tekken 4 had pounced on this instead of Family Matters Part Yawn, it could've added a whole new degree of both difficulty and unpredictability. Imagine playing as Whoever, delivering combo after combo and destroying Whatsizname's will to live, when Ogre-Mouse appears totally at random, squashing your opponent and immediately eyeing you as its next victim. Being roughly 20 times your size, you wouldn't be able to kill it -- you could only make it go away long enough for you to advance a bit in the tournament.
"We're gonna need a bigger cheese wheel."
And it just keeps happening over and over again, even after you think you've won the game, because Nemesis Jerry has no concept of victory. His only wish is to pass you through his rectum as a football-sized black pellet.
Street Fighter IV: Balrog Kidnaps a Mysterious Super Child
Balrog, Street Fighter's boxing guru (one of them, anyway), ends SFIV by escaping a crumbling factory filled with bodies meant to someday house M. Bison's soul. One such body is a still-living child whom Balrog decides to keep, because if traveling the world and publicly beating people into a stew-like substance is legal, why wouldn't child abduction be as well?
Unfortunately for Mr. Rog, Bison's Baby Body is currently powerless beyond glowing eyes and hands that ensure his cats never stop having heart attacks. Balrog responds by carrying the kid like a gym bag while vowing to find a way to make him useful.
If ever there was a time to not read YouTube comments (besides every second of every day), this is it.
A Street Fighter V centered around Balrog and his mystery buddy would be way more intriguing than whatever's planned for real (based on the trailer, we're getting Street Fighter II Part XXVIII, because there is no present, only past). I'm thinking the original Street Fighter laced with Wario Land, with child endangerment sprinkled on top. This would make Balrog the only playable character -- a greedy asshole out to beat people up, make money, and nothing more. Each stage would pit you against some other fighter you can easily play as by popping in one of the other 200 Street Fighters you've got lying around.
As for the child, Balrog could exploit him as a glowy, freaky-eyed distraction in early fights, and as a secondary weapon once he grows stronger and his latent Bison powers begin to surface. It would all come to a head once you've bowled through every other fighter and the kid goes full Bison on your ass, finally ready to exact revenge for your treating him like a toy all this time.
"You never paid for surgery to fix my raging stigmata, asshole!"
And then you kick his ass, too. Because you're motherfucking Balrog, and decades of being reminded you lost your relevance the second Mike Tyson did simply makes you want to cripple people more.
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance: Liu Kang Takes Control of Kano's Body
That's right, another Mortal Kombat entry -- it's my column and I do what I want. Besides, nobody would've given a shit if I talked about ClayFighter.
Blue Suede Goo celebrated his victory by force-feeding his enemies
peanut butter and nanner sandwiches until their stomachs exploded.
In Deadly Alliance, the ending for evil sorcerer Quan Chi sees him turn on fellow evil sorcerer Shang Tsung by ordering fellow evil non-sorcerer Kano to stab him dead. Then, because bad guys can't get along for 10 seconds without something treacherous happening, Chi murders Kano. However, Tsung's death unleashed countless souls that he had collected over the centuries. One of them -- Liu Kang's -- enters Kano's body, giving the red-eyed gristle mountain both new life and the voice of your 10-year-old cousin acting like Bruce Lee.
This twist, had Midway ran with it, could've given rise to Mortal Kombat: Freaky Friday Edition, with everybody's soul playing key party and going home with the wrong body. See, if Liu Kang's soul squatted in a dead corpse, then every other freed soul would've done the same -- likely just picking the first hunk of flesh lying around, since they're souls and not brains.
Suddenly, everybody's fresh and weird and fun again, which I'm fairly certain is the point of gaming in the first place. They'd be killing each other in ways the good Lord never intended: Sonya Blade's shooting Sub-Zero's ice blasts and distracting opponents with frozen statues of herself. Goro's doing Johnny Cage's splits and punching people in the junk. Stryker's sitting down to watch C-SPAN and do Bob the Timid Account's taxes (Shang Tsung isn't picky about the souls he sucks on).
"With your essence now mine, my 401(k) shall be balanced forevermore!"
As for Liu Kang, he'd get his own mini-game, using his extreme makeover to infiltrate Kano's Black Dragon gang and destroy them from within. He'd encounter a set number of Kanonites, and must sneak around and kill them all without being caught. Think Metal Gear Solid crossbred with Metroid II. And if he's ever exposed, he'll simply have to burn, stomp, stab, and eviscerate any survivors while they're still alive, conscious, and screaming.
Like the honorable warrior that he is.
Unless there's, like, 50 of the fuckers left. In which case, have fun clutching your quivering entrails like a child squeezing a favorite teddy bear during a terrible nightmare.
Yes, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 has a story. It's a razor-thin excuse to mash multiple universes into a super-sized blender of pain, but still. Story. Basically, planet-eating monster Galactus awakens after a long nap with a ravenous hunger for fictional worlds. Now everybody, good and evil, must band together to destroy Galactus and save all the universes.
But screw Spider-Man, Magneto, Mega Man, and everyone else. Final Fight's mayor/pro wrestler Mike Haggar easily has the game's best ending. Out of nowhere, this fringe character who hasn't starred in a game since 1995 becomes president of the goddamn United States. With Iron Man as his vice president.
I'll take this over "Wolverine drinking in a strip joint" any day. What's more, Haggar just finished destroying Galactus and already he's running a country. So either Tony Stark is an amazing campaigner when the boss is away, or Americans finally got sick of negative attack ads and crooked special interest groups and just voted for the guy most likely to not wear a shirt to work.
This is how pornos start, right? Cap probably shouldn't wash that blue suit, just in case.
But instead of just tossing President Barrelchest and the drunkest veep since our current one into yet another 60-character clusterfuck, Capcom should focus completely on them, creating the first-ever government simulation/beat-em-up brawler. Haggar and Stark would be regularly tasked with making difficult decisions about healthcare, taxes, foreign policy, and nothing else, because that is all the issues. Make the right choices and the country thrives, the citizens stay happy, and re-election becomes inevitable.
And if their opponents start causing trouble by filibustering or spreading rumors about Haggar and Cody having a thing going on, they'd simply track those assholes down and beat the donkey/elephant shit out of them. With the cameras rolling, of course, because if you can't put it on YouTube, it didn't happen.
Crooked police would be handled way more effectively than Ferguson was.
This Andrew Jackson-esque approach to politics could benefit them in other ways, too. Make a few bad choices and your popularity dips? Just have Haggar win a wrestling title! Not TNA's, though -- nobody's impressed by that. Rumblings of impeachment? Make Iron Man wrangle up some supervillains! There's always a few milling about, and beating them senseless before chucking them in jail would seduce the Senate real fast, even while ignoring due process.
Any remaining dissenters won't dissent -- or exist -- much longer.
This may sound like a crude platform to lead the Free World with, but you can't deny it would make for the coolest, most unique gaming universe in years. And remember -- violence is what got them elected in the first place. Not traveling the countryside and pummeling dissenters to smithereens could actually be considered a broken campaign promise.
Jason also lobbies for the return of Friendships, so take his opinion for what it's worth. He can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and sometimes Earth.
For more from Jason, check out 7 Surprising Realities of Wrestling You Won't See on TV and 5 Disturbing Messages That Always Show Up in Love Songs.
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