Welcome to the fourth episode of 23 Endings: The Early Years, the show where we put old school video game endings in proper context. Today we're talking about the Bad Dudes, a couple of street-smart fighters that saved not only one sitting President, but two. Did the NES or arcade have a better ending? Find out now when you watch a brand new episode of 23 Endings: The Early Years!


So get this: When President Ronnie gets abducted by an evil ninja gang, the Secret Service doesn't turn to Seal Team Six or their military experts; they turn to a couple of street-smart brawlers to slowly walk from left to right and kick butt. It's a simple premise that sees them fighting in the sewers, on the top of a moving truck, through the forests, on a train, into the caves and straight to DragonNinja's secret lair. It's not the most direct route, but what are you going to do.

The whole thing builds to this exciting moment when you fight the evil ninja leader while a helicopter hovers overhead. There are even dogs running around below. But these bad dudes didn't come all this way to lose to a guy with long blonde hair and horns, so they kick his ass and this happens.

President Ronnie is safe, so of course that can only mean one thing: Hamburger party! But before we get to that, can we rewind back to his message for the bad dudes? Look, I know that a lot of people think Reagan was starting to lose some of his mental faculties in the final years as President, but that's no excuse for the grammar mistake. Why is the comma after "thanks" and not after "dudes"? That's not how punctuation works.

Now when Bad Dudes was released on the Nintendo Entertainment System, Data East ran into a couple of problems. For one thing, the year was 1990 and Ronald Reagan was no longer the president. There was also the issue that Nintendo had a rule against political content. As a result, the home version had us rescuing a nameless president that kind of, sort of resembled George H. W. Bush. Here's how that played out.

As you can see, the ending is essentially the same, only this time around they put the comma in the right spot. Good on you, Data East.

But here's what I don't like about this ending: In one scene we see fake H.W. Bush talking about getting a burger, yet in the next scene we see a completely different person chowing down. It's clear the president sent Vice President Dan Quayle out to keep the bad dudes company, and that's not cool. These two guys risked their lives to save the president. They literally fought on truck and train. The least Bush can do is have a burger with dudes that rescued him. No wonder he was a one-term president.