Welcome to the sixth episode of 23 Endings: The Early Years, the show where we put old school video game endings in proper context. After showing you some of the best endings of the 8- and 16-bit eras, today is all about showing you one of the worst. Who are you going to call? The Ghostbusters on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Find out why this conclusion is so memorable in a brand new episode of 23 Endings: The Early Years!


You know the story of the Ghostbusters: A bunch of unemployed scientists discover a way to trap otherworldly spirits in a containment system, which turns out to be a useful skill when Gozer threatens to destroy New York City. This video game takes that basic premise and has the gang driving around the city taking up jobs and buying new equipment.

If you've played Ghostbusters, then you'll already know that it has very little to do with the plot of the movie. There's a reason for that, David Crane programmed the game before seeing the film. As a result, we're introduced to ideas and equipment that wasn't on the big screen, some of which came from Car Wars, an unfinished game that was used as the building blocks for Ghostbusters.

Whether or not it managed to capture the story and humor, it does eventually end with a big showdown with Gozer on top of 55 Central Park West. It's a frustrating fight that leads to this single-screen ending.

That's right, the developers misspelled "congratulations," instead giving us one of the most memorable typos in video game history. To make matters worse, they also misspelled "proved," and the wording is awkward all around. It's a mess, but don't blame David Crane. The famed designer behind Pitfall and A Boy and His Blob may have made this Ghostbusters game, but he's not responsible for this NES port. As you can see here, "congratulations" was spelled correctly in other versions.

But even if Activision had spent a few extra dollars on a copy editor, this still would have been an aggressively bad ending. This is one of the hardest 8-bit games of all time, and this is all I get for my frustration? That's the real crime here.

Of course, Ghostbusters wasn't the only old school game to give us a one-screen "congratulations" ending. You also saw the same thing in games like 1942, Genghis Khan, P.O.W., NARC and even F-Zero. And let's be honest, that's just scratching the surface. For many developers of 1980s action games, endings weren't a priority. In the case of Ghostbusters, neither was proper grammar.