I'm going to let you define "the end" however you want, provided it makes some sense. End stage, end boss, or at least close enough. Whatever. Basically, you were close, but for one reason or another, just couldn't or didn't want to finish it off.

Here are a few of mine...

Bangai-O (DC) - So if you don't know, Bangai-O is a sort of mech SHMUP. It's different from a lot of SHMUPs though in the sense that there is no auto-scrolling and you can go in any direction. Also it has puzzles. Anyway, the game is relatively tough but not super hard. However, the end stage is like WAY LONGER THAN THE OTHERS, requires a very steady, slow pace (this is a game where you mess up and let too many enemies come at you at once, you're dead within an instant), and then at the end of it you get to a boss who instantly shoots like a million missiles (another part of this game is LOTS OF PROJECTILES) at you and YOU DIE LIKE LESS THAN A SECOND AFTER SEEING HIM. Now, the way the mechanics of the game work is that if you launch your missiles at *just* the right moment, you can deflect some enemy missiles, etc. but after playing the super long stage and getting to the end boss and dying within a second before I even had a chance to try to figure out the timing and then this happening like 5 more times, I just gave up forever. Right at the end.

PS. There is a DS Bangai-O game called Bangai-O Spirits that is pretty awesome if you want to check it out. And it doesn't have a cheap end boss either.

Super Ghouls and Ghosts (SNES) - This game is kind of notoriously tough, and you have to play through the whole thing twice, and blah blah blah. Anyway, played through the whole thing twice, got up to the "fake" end boss the second time, and... that stupid bracelet sucks. I can't figure out how to beat him with the bracelet, which is the only way to get to the true end boss. This is another one too where you have to play through this long stage at a slow, steady pace just to get a few shots at the guy and then do it all over again. I did use the Wii save states to "beat" him (in a really, really cheaty way) just to get a sense of how much life he had and then I went back and used the save states again to try to get consistently good at him before trying it without the save states but... I couldn't even get close to consistency, so I didn't even bother.

Super Hexagon (iPhone) - So if you don't know much about this game, it's relatively short (just 6 stages, and you "beat" each one by surviving a minute) but really, really hard. After weeks and weeks I got all the way to the last stage and got really good at every pattern it threw at me... except one. It just plain moves too fast for me to get a sense of what I am doing wrong. I even tried looking it up on Youtube and slowing it down and such, but still couldn't figure it out. So yeah, my record is about 30 seconds or so, but without figuring out that one pattern I don't think I will ever get the full minute.

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles (GC) - I honestly forget how close to the end we were, but I remembered looking it up in a FAQ and my cousins and I were almost there. And then life happened and we just sort of went our own ways and stopped getting together for regular video game sessions so we never finished it off.

Patapon (PSP) - This is a fun little rhythm action game that has a really, really terrible design decision. You can get all the way up to almost the end just playing the game straight through, but then it requires some special moves to continue that you have to go find / level-up / I don't even remember what to unlock. Just didn't have the interest to go back a bunch before finishing off the game so I stopped.

Mighty Milky Way (DSi) - I honestly forget why I stopped right near the end of this, there was some nonsense that annoyed me so I gave up.

Punch-Out!! (NES) - Not sure if this quite counts as the end, but I am pretty sure I got to the second to last fighter a few times, just never quite finished the game off.

Your turn.

/EDIT

Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II - Just remembered this one! Got to the end boss, which turned out to be 4 boss fights in a row (all 4 elementals.) At least I think it was 4 in a row, but I don't think I ever got past the 2nd one? In fact now that I really think about it I think the 2nd boss showed up before you even finished the 1st and so on, it might have been time based? So I just kept getting destroyed when they would start tag teaming me and gave up.

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Final Fantasy IX. I don't remember the location name or anything, but it was being played up as if the area would be where the final encounter with the Big Bad takes place. I don't even remember for what reason I stopped, because I really liked the game.

Actually, this has been somewhat of a problem for me over the years. Not necessarily getting to the end game part, but at least a good portion into it. I think one reason for it may have something to do with my "gameplay first" approach: when I reach the end of a game, there's very little in the way of gameplay left, and beating a game for the story or for just the sake of doing it aren't usually very compelling reasons for me. So I move on to other games that have more gameplay to offer.

Paper Mario TTYD end of the game is quite a drag, I shelved it for a long time but I did finish it off years later.

Mario and Luigi Dream Team: The game is just very very long and after a while I felt like the game was still giving my lengthy tutorials instead of taking off the leash and letting me run free. I loved the world and the premise, but that game was bogged down with way too much handholding.

Bayonetta 2: I bought the double pack when the games hit Wii U. I never played Bayonetta 1 and I spent the first weak playing that game. By the time I beat that and put a solid chunk into Bayonetta two I was feeling an action overload and I never returned to the game.

Okami is probably the game that fits the criteria of this thread closest for me. I got to the final area of the game before quitting. I just didn't find the game that fun or interesting, so I was really happy when I saved the land and defeated the Big Bad of this game world... then the game asked me to do it again with a brand new land and brand new villain. So I did that. Then the game asked me to do it again with yet another new land, and at that point I put it down thinking maybe I'd go back to it one day, but I never have.

For a few decades, this was the case with Super Mario Bros 3. I'd always gotten to 8-2 and couldn't get passed it and, like any kid who'd played Mario games and didn't have a subscription to Nintendo Power, I'd always assumed that there were at least 5 more extremely difficult levels to go. So it wasn't until the mid 2000s, when I became an active gamer again, that I tried it again and discovered I was literally just a level or two away from completing the game. If I'd known that as a kid, I'd have definitely kept at it.

Final Fantasy VII.

All the way to the Northern Crater. Fought my way down through to Sephiroth. After a long and grueling battle....I took out his first form. He went One-Wing Angel and promptly crushed me.

Came back to try again from the last save point. Could barely make it through the final area without the game freezing up- The disc or save was corrupted or something. Officially gave up after about the 12th attempt.


Baten Kaitos as well, but this one is purely my fault. All the way to Malpercio, got my ass kicked half a dozen times, moved on to another game and never went back

.

Xenogears... got to the end boss, but I apparently didn't level up enough to stand a chance to beat him and just watched a Youtube video of the ending rather than going back and grinding.

Xenogears... got to the end boss and realized I had no effing clue what was going on in the plot since it took me so many weeks to get that far (playing during semester). I refused to see the ending without understanding it, so, I started the game over. Got near the end and realized I once again had no idea what was going on in the plot. Basically for the same reason.

Since then, I have not revisited the game. I should really set aside a week of my life and just play through it start to finish and follow the plot closely. I really did like the game and its characters.

@Hinph

Between this and the Cosmic Observatory thing, I think we may really have some strange, unexplainable connection. =P

The first one that comes to mind is, Eternal Darkness. Interesting game, fun most of the time, but I grew so tried of its gimmicks and called it quits near the end of the final level. So irritated with it, I couldn't even stand to have it in my collection - making it one of the very few games I ever traded in.

@NinSage

Coke over Pepsi? Spirit animal = Sloth? "Look, the fact that my penis didn't get hard doesn't mean I'm totally not into you... You're gorgeous! I just drank a little too much whiskey is all..." ?????

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands for PC. Got it as part of the AD&D Masterpiece Collection, really enjoyed it but but I must not have done enough side questing because when I got to the final battle I didn't stand a chance. As far as I remember, there wasn't a single boss that was overpowering me, but just way too many enemies to take out for me to possibly survive.

I'm kind of tempted to check it out again, but I usually find that classic CRPGs have really clunky interfaces that turn me off. The collection came with a sequel too that was supposed to be better but I never tried it because I wanted to beat the first one first.

There are a few games that I've left unfinished right at the end, but here are two of them:

Jet Force Gemini Got all the way to the final boss but just couldn't manage to beat him because of the way the battle is designed, so I took a break from the game and forgot how to play altogether. I'm definitely going to revisit this as soon as I can, 'cause I quite enjoyed the game overall.

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World When I arrived at the area just before the final boss encounters I realized I was massively underleveled, and it felt like hard work getting all the way up to where I need to be. I liked the battle system a lot in the original Tales of Symphonia, but I feel like the monster ally system weighs things down a bit in the sequel, and not being able to fully customize all the original characters makes improving your team feel less rewarding than it should, IMO. Still, I really want to see how it all ends, so I need to get back to this one of these days.

I've gotten towards the end of Bangai-O for Dreamcast as well. I don't know how close to the last level it was, but I do remember going through some pretty long stages and dying like Zero was saying. I didn't play through much of the N64 version, I got it as a curiosity than to really play it. I 100%'d the DS game. I remember those levels were fairly small. But Bangai-O HD that came out on Xbox Live was super hard.

I tend to push through the pain and tears to beat a final boss (see my entry for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance from Backlaugust). But a few games that come to mind are N.A.R.C. for the NES. I put in the continue code and used the two player trick to get up to the final boss. But even with that he was too annoying to continue fighting.

A couple of other games that come to mind which I got to the final boss but gave up are Little Nemo: The Dream Master (NES) and Pulseman (GEN). I don't really remember much about those games other than finding the final boss difficult enough not to want to bother with.

In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue (GB) I got to either the last boss or the boss gauntlet that leads into the final battle. Bionic Commando (NES) also has a gauntlet that leads to the end. But instead of bosses it's a bunch of grapple platforming (for lack of a better word) and if you make one mistake you die. And at the end you have a split second to time a shot or you fail. I might have the patience to do this as a kid, but not anymore.

And of course there's Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (NES). I struggled for a long time against Mr. Sandman and Super Macho Man, but I eventually got good enough to get to Tyson. But I've never had the patience to really make a go at him.

@Hinph

....ya lost me. =P

Added a new one...

Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II - Just remembered this one! Got to the end boss, which turned out to be 4 boss fights in a row (all 4 elementals.) At least I think it was 4 in a row, but I don't think I ever got past the 2nd one? In fact now that I really think about it I think the 2nd boss showed up before you even finished the 1st and so on, it might have been time based? So I just kept getting destroyed when they would start tag teaming me and gave up.

@Mop it up I actually know what you mean, sometimes my motivation to finish off a game gets really low when I am relatively certain there is nothing after the end boss but some small story bits and the credits. Doubly so if the end boss is annoying in some fashion. This is why I prefer stuff like the recent Mario games where there is still a ton of content after you "beat" the main game. But then, of course, you still get to the end of the content eventually and the same thing can happen again...

Eh, too many to count. Lots of game end segments are bullshit.

The one that comes to mind first, though, is Final Fantasy 10. I made it all the way to the end of the linear part of the game, and I was ready for the game to end. But the world map opens up at that point and you're expected to do sidequests before tackling the end boss. I half-heartedly tried one sidequest, that turned out to be too hard for the level my party was at. I thought "fuck it, I'm fighting the end boss right now".

I couldn't even scratch Sin's outer shell any other way than with Summons I could do every 5 turns or so?

I youtubed the rest of the game.

Metal Gear Solid. There was some boss fight late game I was stuck on. The problem was that I got a really bad checkpoint and couldn't take more than two hits or so. I ended up just watching a playthrough on Youtube for the content I missed.

I almost gave up on Final Fantasy Tactics in a similar fashion. There's a boss fight probably about halfway to three quarters through the game where you fight this character one on one and he can essentially insta-kill you if you are not properly prepared. If you know the fight is coming and can prep for it its not difficult but the game locks you in to the fight so it is entirely possible to have a save file that is just unwinnable. This almost happened to me but after enough attempts I eventually got through by the skin of my teeth. That game made me really paranoid about saves so now I keep a minimum of 5 different ones for games that allow it.

Final Fantasy VII for me too. I made it to the final area, but then tried to beat the Weapons and got crushed. Then I wasted all my assets trying to breed the best Chocobo but couldn't do much there either. I was so frustrated I put the game down for a few months and when I got back to it I couldn't make it through the final area.

@NinSage

Pepsi? Reeeeally?

Final Fantasy VI

Got to the floating island thingy that clown-guy (name slips my mind at the moment) was using as a base. I wandered around for a bit, got to a save point, and...I dunno. I was never compelled to return to it. I might get around to it one day and finish it, if the motivation ever surfaces again.