This and Monster World IV, which ends by bluntly telling you that the whole series is over and that you should go outside and have fun.

Good point. This game is having a fun adventure on a fantasy island, meeting interesting characters, and then unleashing the Nothing in one blast. I could easily see it as a metaphor for an adult selling their near-30 year horde of accumulated game stuff and never looking back.

Katamari Damacy 2, which the creator pretty much made under duress, is completed with a ridiculously tedious challenge (roll up 1,000,000 roses) while the King occasionally wonders aloud if you're not sick of the game yet and suggests you go outside.

You have to charge into the library shelf, duh!

I picked up this game and played it in small runs before getting stuck on something and stopping throughout a majority of my childhood. The day I finally beat it was the day I became a man.

P.S. this ending is the secret one you only get by not dying once.

I bought a 3DS this past Saturday. After the initial battery charge and setup, I went to the eShop and bought "Link's Awakening" and "Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins."

Considering how many Gameboy games I played back in the day that felt like crippled demos of NES games, I'm amazed at how fun and engaging these two are. Then I remembered this game's ending from when I was a kid. Looking back as an adult, I realize how shocking and crushing the ending truly is. Up until the halfway point you're simply told you washed up on the island and have to wake the Wind Fish in order to leave. Later comes the big reveal: "you're actually part of the Wind Fish's dream world, and when you complete your quest EVERYONE�the friendly villagers, Marin, the enemies, the Goomba and Koopa cameos�WILL DIE. Adventure on, Link!"

Proto ending to FF10.

Get Donkey Kong for GB and Balloon Kid, those games are fucking awesome.

It's funny how I mostly buy new Nintendo systems for the Virtual Console. That and Wii Fit were the main reasons I got a used Wii. Likewise, I'm sure the 3DS library is fun (I got Resident Evil: Revelations to go with it) but I'm mainly interested in the old Gameboy/GBC stuff I can't otherwise run anymore.

Also I read Wikipedia's eShop listing wrong. I thought the 3DS eShop was going to have GBA games but there was a footnote in that article I failed to notice. Well, shit.

When I first beat this as a kid, I almost cried. It was my first time seeing such a gutpunch in a story and bittersweet ending.

These credits are gibberish so I'll have to look it up later, I wonder if Miyamoto really had much to do with making this one. Every other Zelda, while mostly fun in execution, still boils down to "Link! Save the princess! Save the world!", and you're pointedly doing neither in this game.

sounds like shitty gameboy speakers to me?

Nah, this kid is just shit at capturing audio correctly. Even the gameboy's crappy soundchip and speakers sounded better than this.

980 bucks for a piece of wood and a string? You'd become a THIEF too.