Welcome to the seventeenth episode of 23 Endings: The Early Years, the show where we put old school video game endings into proper context. Today we're going to take on Queen Zz Badnusty to reveal why the Gaiares ending makes no sense. We dive deep into this shoot 'em up finale in this brand new episode of 23 Endings: The Early Years!


The year is 3008 and things are not looking good for Earth. We're told that it's a toxic dump of a planet that is completely uninhabitable. To make matters worse, the evil Queen Zz Badnusty and her band of space pirate terrorists plan on harvesting the pollution in order to create weapons of mass destruction. This does not sit well with the United Star Cluster of Leezaluth, who fears the only way to stop this from happening is to supernova the sun and destroy everything.

But wait, maybe there may be another way! A Leezaluthian woman named Alexis decides to give one champion a chance to fly to Earth and use their alien technology to resurrect the toxic planet. Who is this hero? It's Dan, the last remaining human. Yeah, a lot is riding on his shoulders.

Ready or not, Dan blasts off with an experimental weapon the Leezaluth call the TOZ System, which allows the ship to literally steal powers from the space pirates' own ships. This sends us through an asteroid belt, into a cave, past the Aurora Borealis, into another cave, through a castle controlled by Death, to an upside down city, back into space and then straight to the terrorist's secret lair. If you manage to get through all that, you'll be treated to this ending.

As a kid, I always saw this as a happy ending. I mean, it's a story about the last human resurrecting his planet and getting the girl. It's basically a fairytale ending. But now that I look back on it, this Gaiares conclusion leaves me with a lot of questions. Let's start with the obvious one: Are we sure that humans can procreate with the Leezaluths? That's not a trivial concern if the plan is to literally repopulate the planet.

Also, practically speaking, this plan is doomed to fail. Even if these two species can in fact have children, that's still going to be a problem when it comes to the next generation. And it's not just the inbreeding issue they'll ultimately face, but also the fact that this young couple is planning on living their lives on a completely empty planet. No other people, no hospitals, no power plants, no entertainment, no animals. Nothing. It's just a big empty planet. Sure, the Leezaluths will be keeping a close eye over Dan and Alexis, but wouldn't it make more sense to stay where you are and take advantage of the alien technology? Or at least repopulate Earth as a colony, that way there are a bunch of people with different skills. I know young love is stupid, but flying off to live the rest of your life on an empty planet is next level dumb.