A Winner Is You - Television Tropes & Idioms

CONGRATULATIONS, FLASH. YOU HAVE SAVED THE UNIVERSE. HAVE A NICE DAY.

—Flash Gordon

OH!MY DEAR LITTLE RED HOOD! THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMING!

—Ending to Little Red Hood

Let's say you have been through this incredibly long and Nintendo Hard game in one sitting (because you can't save and don't have passwords), until you finally finish the game and defeat the last, incredibly hard boss. The moment of truth has come, you wait for the epic, satisfying ending and you get...

"Conglaturation!" on a black background, in perfect silence, and nothing more (except maybe the credits). If you're really unlucky, it'll be the same Game Over screen you'd get for dying. And then, after three seconds, the title screen again. They could have at least spell-checked it.

The urge to throw the game out the window is overwhelming, to say the least.

This is most likely to happen with older fighter games, console ports of arcade games and the like.

Cousin to (if not the most extreme form of) Bragging Rights Reward. Compare to No Ending for similar lack of satisfying or suddenly abrupt ending. See also Xen Syndrome. Even worse is if you lose, this game gives you a Have A Nice Death or an Its A Wonderful Failure screen.

Examples:

Video Games

The trope title comes from Pro Wrestling on the NES, where you received the same Engrish conglaturatory message after winning a match. The actual "You Win!" screen consists of a picture of two trophies and your fighter (with one title belt on his waist, and another in his hand), and the message "Congratulations! You are V.W.A. V.W.F. Champion!", while the music repeats endlessly.
Clayfighter, an extremely difficult fighting game where the computer cheats ruthlessly on all difficulty settings, ends with just the credits, except on Hard difficulty, where it had a short all-text screen describing what happened to your character after the fight. C2: Judgement Clay carried on this tradition. It wasn't until Clayfighter 63 1/3 that it showed you your character's ending on Normal level.
The arcade game The Three Stooges in Brides Is Brides has this ending screen.
Sonic Heroes has an extra hard mode, unlockable after several requirements are met. The only reward for beating it is a "Congratulations" and a brief generic picture of the three main characters. The same picture that appears on the title screen and the game's case.
The U.S. release of Karnov for the NES ends with a simple white text on a black screen reading "Congratulations!! The End". Apparently, they couldn't even be bothered to Bowdlerise the original plot or the ending, where Karnov is rewarded for defeating the Big Bad by becoming the successor to God.
Ghostbusters for the NES, a game which is generally considered near-unwinnable, ends with the poorly translated "Conglaturation!!! You have completed a great game. And prooved the justice of our culture. Now go and rest our heroes!" The Angry Video Game Nerd either was crying or laughing. It was hard to tell since you can't see his face.
There are several games from that period (like Super Mario Bros and Ghosts 'n Goblins) that "rewarded" you by unceremoniously kicking you back to the start to play a Second Quest. If you were lucky, you got an ending screen that was slightly better than the one you got the first time you played through. (Although it was no less likely to be free of garbled Engrish.)
- While The Legend Of Zelda similarly kicked you back to the start after an all-too-brief ending sequence and credits, it also unlocked a "second quest" which rearranged the world maps and dungeon maps. To this editor's knowledge, Zelda was and remains unique in that aspect.
- This is called a "second loop" and is popular in Shoot Em Ups.
- When Super Mario Bros was repackaged for the SNES as Super Mario All-Stars, you did get to see the Princess kissing Mario (or Luigi). If you defeated the slightly harder difficulty, the text was different.
The infamously difficult and obtuse NES strategy game Bokosuka Wars gave you a goofy little animation and the message "BRAVO! YOU WIN!" if you actually managed to beat it. Of course, most gamers probably saw the infamous "WOW! YOU LOSE!" game over screen far, far more often.
In Soul Calibur III, after beating the Nintendo Hard final level in Chronicles of the Sword, complete with a difficult Final Boss.... You get "Emperor died (sic)... The empire collapsed, and the people were left only with devastated lands and the memories of the terrible war. The people, however, eventually forgot the hardships. They rebuilt the raised (sic) village and sowed new seeds upon the destroyed fields. Then, by the fire side, they told the tales—the tales of the great ones who spilt their blood upon those lands...".
- In other words, a generic cutscene that makes little reference to the plot, complete with grammatical mistakes... What makes this example so galling is that the final chapter pits your five men against ten opponents, you have no chance to recover lost units, and each of their units is more difficult than the standard Soulcalibur III controller-smashing difficulty, and the final boss has a sword that can drain half of your health in one move, and take it for himself.
  - It should be noted, however, that a razed village would need to be rebuilt. Yes, it's a word.
For custom characters in Soul Calibur IV, you see them obtain both Soul Edge and Soul Calibur, raise them triumphantly... and then the screen fades to black, saying "His/Her name will go down in history for centuries." It is a variation of the description above, as the story mode is pretty much not all that hard.
Doom 64 ends with a text saying "Finally, the Mother of All Demons is dead".
Blue's quest in SaGa Frontier. Once you deliver the finishing blow to the final boss, the picture freezes in mid-strike and fades to black and white as "THE END" appears on it. This is especially egregious, as SaGa Frontier is an RPG for the PlayStation, and its storyline wasn't exactly minimal; it certainly wasn't minimal for the endings to the six other characters' quests, some of whom had Multiple Endings each. There's actually a reason for this, however; despite being so according to game mechanics, that isn't the finishing blow. As revealed in the accompanying book, Blue/Rouge and his friends never win the battle, and indeed, it can't be won. Blue and Rouge weren't being prepared to defeat the King of Hell — they were being trained to keep him busy so he couldn't finish the invasion. For all eternity.
If you manage to defeat Jason in the Friday the 13th game for the NES, you're rewarded with a picture of Jason sitting down and the text "You have finally managed to defeat Jason... But is he really dead? We're not telling!! END.." This editor is more fond of the losing screen, which, right in the midst of Nintendo's Never Say Die period, declared "You and your friends are dead."
If you actually manage to play through a race in the video game trainwreck that is Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing, you're rewarded with a shot of a trophy and the phrase "YOU'RE WINNER!" Not that it's hard to win, since among other things your opponent doesn't move.
- "Yes, I are winner!"
The victory image for 100% completion of Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions (or Special Missions, depending on your locale) was simply a bit of mecha concept art. The significance of this image (it was concept art for the sequel's mecha, which would not be seen outside of Konami for a long time) wasn't immediately obvious, and there was no way of viewing it for a second time, except by starting a new game and getting it up to 100%.
The Master System version of Shinobi is perhaps the most grievous offender of all time. Fighting one's way through the game requires a lot of skill and not a little luck. Due to some slight Adaptation Decay, the original ending from arcade version (which reveals the identity of the Big Bad to be Joe Musashi's former mentor) is replaced by a ''Game Over'' screen in the Master System version (the same screen you get for losing the game).
Space Station Silicon Valley, a Nintendo 64 puzzle game in which the main character took control of various robotic animals, ended with one of the characters explaining they didn't have the budget for a good ending and just played the credits.
- Though this may be (partly) justified as an instruction to get the rest of the treasures, presumably hinting that then the main character will have enough money for the proper ending. The fact that a bug in one of the levels makes this impossible, though, means that the "didn't have the budget" ending is the only one that can be found anyway. So yeah.
Subverted in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem: If, at the end of Karim's chapter, your main character is low on Sanity, you are given a sudden, abrupt To Be Continued screen, informing you that the story will be concluded in a sequel. Of course, it's a case of Fission Mailed: five seconds later, the screen flashes to the main character recovering from the hallucination.
Recent game example: Platypus ends with no ending at all. It simply kicks you back to the main menu after you defeat the final boss.
The NES game The Krion Conquest, when translated from the Japanese game Magical Doropie, had every plot sequence in the game (except the intro) removed. This includes the ending: when you deal the final hit on the last boss, the screen freezes and the words "You win !! Congratulations !" scroll over it, followed by the credits.
While it does have multiple endings, the SNES/Super Scope game Metal Combat still managed to rub some salt on determined players. It gives rewards beating the first three difficulties: two cheat codes and a piece of really good playing advice, respectively. The reward for beating the hardest difficulty is a Congratulations splash screen with Super Deformed drawings of the good guys and their Humongous Mecha.
Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus had a real ending, but taunted players who didn't find all 300 mudokons with the implication that they missed out on something extra special. Upon finding every damn mudokon, the player is given an apology before sitting through a boring slideshow of concept art, some of which was already seen in the previous game, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee.
Nintendo Hard shoot-em-up Xenon 2 has the anticlimactic ending of showing the mid-level shopkeeper again, who briefly informs you that this is the end, followed by a black screen with a white dot.
Stop The Express, the old Spectrum classic by Hudson Soft (later of Bomberman fame) finished with the message "CONGRATURATION! YOU SUCSESS!" and a shot of your guy in the front of the train. Then it loops back to the start, presumably for more SUCSESSful action...
Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver was in its time famous for a disappointing ending consisting of not much more than a screen of very cryptic monologue delivered by a voice belonging to a character who hasn't been seen. It makes sense in the context of the series but is hardly rewarding. This cliffhanger was because the developers were running out of time, and had to cut a solid chunk out of the game to make the due date. Some versions of the game contained voice files hinting at what this chunk would have contained. Those bits that were planned did make it (in very modified form) into the later games.
- Of course, they did the same thing in Soul Reaver 2: Abrupt ending, cryptic phrase, roll credits. Fortunately the developers redeemed themselves with Defiance.
The original Pac Man arcade game technically has no end, thanks to a glitch in the programming that corrupts the screen at level 256. (There are people who have claimed to have worked around the glitches and beat the game anyway.) The frustration experienced by exhausted Pac Man players is accurately summed up in this flash cartoon by James Jouni.
The recent THQ game Warhammer 40000: Squad Command is a fun game, which, unfortunately, not only has no real ending, but also has a ten-second cinematic showing your squad completely failing to achieve the objective of the entire game just played and letting loose a massive daemon that will destroy the system, before cutting to "Congratulations, you have completed the single-player game!" and rolling the same credits available on the main screen.
"Wow! Incredible!!" That's what you get for beating the original Super Smash Bros. on the hardest difficulty: A variant audio sample. Future Smash Bros. games give you trophies for beating different modes on the hardest difficulty, along with the familiar "Wow! Incredible!" voice clip.
- In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, on 'Tourney Mode', upon winning, an icon of your character appears with a voice clip saying 'A Champion is <Chosen Character>'
  - Actually, he's saying The Champion, but the announcer isn't known for his pronounciation.
Neverwinter Nights 2, of all games, ends with a bored-sounding narrator informing you that everyone was killed by the Collapsing Lair of the final boss. In other words, a video game ends with Rocks Fall Everyone Dies.
Flood for Amiga and Atari ST may be a particularly nasty example: After the last level, the player is treated to a very short scene of the protagonist successfully escaping with his life, only to be killed by a passing car. Click here for images.
In the Jurassic Park game for the SNES, after hours of slogging through some genuinely hard FPS and top-down gaming, you finally make it to the end only to be given a simple screen stating "Congratulations, you have escaped Jurassic Park".
- Not to mention that the ending sequence before that is exactly the same as the intro... in reverse!
This is more or less what happens when you catch all 150 Pokemon in the original games. You go to the Developers Room, and the producers gives you a diploma that doesn't do anything.
- All Pokemon games in the main series seem to do this. It can't be helped by the generation of Diamond/Pearl/Platinum there are now about 500 Pokemon to get.
  - Not only that, but more than half of them are impossible to get just by playing through the game. An annoyingly high percentage of Pokemon can only reach their final evolution by being traded to another player, and then there are the ones that simply can't be found at all in that particular version . . .
- Lampshaded, even, with a shout-out to the original line!◊
Beating the PC game Syndicate, which is a time-consuming undertaking that throws at least one ridiculously difficult level at you near the end, "rewards" you with the exact same animated victory screen you see after beating every other level, including the first.
The otherwise-excellent System Shock 2 suffered from this. It seems that, due to changing hardware specs, the game was no longer able to run the opening and ending cutscene videos, so on completion it simply dumped the player back to the main menu!
- This is actually due to incompatibilities with newer Windows operating systems as well as audio and/or video codecs, and no real fault of the game itself. Those old Dark Engine games have a heck of a time working properly these days...
- Of course, how bad this is depends on what you think of the ending in the first place.
Nethack: A game so hard it can take years to finally beat, and when you do, all you get is a couple of lines about how an invisible choir is singing your praises and your god is granting you immortality. And then the game ends.
The NES game Milon's Secret Castle ends with a "Thank you!" As the game had no Mercy Invincibility, which allowed you to be killed quite quickly when cornered, and a million Guide Dang Its around every corner, this can hardly be said to be anywhere near satisfying.
Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic II. A 30-plus hour story-driven RPG, and what do you get at the end? A fifteen second FMV with no dialogue. It's well-known KotOR 2 didn't have time to put in a decent ending, as the game was rushed for the holidays.
- Sure, the ending movie itself is short, but come on, Kreia telling you the future after her defeat, before dying and falling into a collapsing abyss while the Exile makes a daring escape seems like reward enough, even if a couple of plot details do go unresolved. Maybe not quite as epic as the first game's, but doesn't deserve the cries of "horrible ending" it gets by any means. It's not like there's a Jedi Council left over at the end of a game to give you a huge party, either.
The DS shooter Touch the Dead. Your character is a convict in a military prison who must fight for survival when zombies attack (and you never find out why, either). The end of the game consists of you being rescued by an army helicopter, and promptly put back in handcuffs. Cue credits. And rage.
The original Grand Theft Auto showed you your boss congratulating you (as on every level before), then returned to the level select screen; ignoring the absence of more levels.
- Grand Theft Auto 2 has nothing but a screen with "YOU COMPLETED THE GAME" and a bunch of random pictures once you finally complete the last area. Thank ye gods that the following games introduced an actual plot.
After finally finishing level 80, Bugs Bunny in Crazy Castle for the Game Boy had Bugs walking slowly into the middle of the screen with the message "Congraturations! You are good player!" and his standard "level won" animation.
The overly-long, Nintendo Hard, Everything Trying To Kill You Dr Franken 2 on the Game Boy ends with a message saying "Well done Franky, you've saved the chateau!" followed by a full screen picture of Frankie. I could have looked on the game box for a bigger picture in colour, thank you very much.
The Nightmare Fuel freeware game Yume Nikki does this. Although the creator admitted that he simply wanted to a form a creepy game with not much intention of a clear plot (which spawned so much fan speculation and theory on what the heck is going on), the ending just pretty much leaves you feeling that you did all that effort of finding all the different effects for nothing. Giving up all the effects in the ritual room in the dream world, the main character wakes up to find a stepladder, which was definitely not there before, in her apartment balcony. If you walk her up to it, she uses it to jump off the balcony — in doing so revealing that she has been Driven To Suicide. The Downer Ending is quickly cut to the credits the moment she jumps. Feel free to work out what her suicide means, but your guess is as good as anyone's.
The NES game Fox's Peter Pan and the Pirates, while a decent game representation of the cartoon series, featured one of the most pathetic game endings ever. After defeating the final boss, Captain Hook, the player was "rewarded" with a full-screen image of Peter and the words "I win. It's great to be Peter Pan."
The obscure Turbografx-16 shoot'em-up Sinistron/Violent Soldier ended with a bunch of pictures of the various levels of the game and a Black Screen saying "Congratulation!".
The Ghost In The Shell game for the Playstation promised a "bonus" if you finished the game on its hardest difficult setting without ever dying. Said bonus was a low-res scan of a pinup of Major Kusanagi.
X-Men Legends II ends with a way-too-short cutscene showing the parting of the X-Men and Brotherhood, who'd teamed up in an Enemy Mine situation. Magneto says exactly what anyone who knows the character would expect him to say, we find out that, predictably, Sinister had sabotaged Apocalypse's machine, and they fly off. It takes approximately twenty seconds. Quicksilver and Polaris, kidnapped before the start of the game and worried about by various characters throughout, are never seen, let alone given the reunion this player had been waiting to see, even as part of the scene where the two groups walk back to their respective planes.
Paradox Interactive's Victoria was like this. You start off in 1836, build a massive, wealthy empire, probably defeat the Royal Navy at least once (which in of itself is difficult), and all you get to show for your trouble is a screen saying "You won!" followed by the scores of the top eight powers.
- Every single one of Paradox's games is like this.
No More Heroes exhibits this particular trope based on player choice. Upon defeating the final boss, you get the option to save your game, and then you can choose between viewing the ending, viewing the "True" ending, and returning to Santa Destroy. The ending (not the "True" ending) shows Travis on the toilet when a would-be assassin invades his apartment. Cue the credits.
Defeating the final boss in the semi-obscure but Nintendo Hard Neo-Geo shoot-em-up Blazing Star gives you a rather disappointing wall of Engrish text, followed by some credits.
Winning Endgame: Singularity results in a short text. Given the nature of the game, anything other than text wasn't expected, but it's short, not very exciting, and the real clincher: it's displayed in the same plain box every in-game alert is, and the game goes on afterwards as if nothing had happened.
Pirate original games developed for now-defunct systems such as the NES and original Game Boy deserve special mention. Just check out the results of a You Tube search for "pirate game ending" and you'll get a pretty good idea of why.
The boss battle in Gothic ends in a nice cutscene depicting the death of the boss and the collapse of his lair, apparently killing the hero, but destroying the Barrier and freeing the colony. Pirate versions had a glitch causing the game to crash at precisely the moment that the cutscene should have started. As Gothic crashed rather a lot anyway, it could take players a few attempts (or a glance at a walkthrough) to realise that the game was actually over.
Sins of a Solar Empire ends with the screen "You're Victorious" or "You're Defeated" after spending roughly 3,945 hours completing a single map. There is some consolation as you have the option to continue playing the same map if you've won.
The Japanese Disk System version of Super Mario Bros 2 (aka Lost Levels) features a slightly different ending than the original game. For starters, Peach's sprite has been improved, the ending text is different, and the background will turn blue with the seven Mushroom Retainers from the previous Worlds surrounding Mario and Peach. Unfortunately, when the game was remade for the SNES and GBC, they simply used the same ending they used in the remake for the original Super Mario Bros. Compared the Disk System version's ending with the ending in the SNES and GBC versions.
Two of the last examples for the NES are Mario Is Missing and Marios Time Machine. The latter required only marginally more effort.
If you make it all the way to the end of Ghosts 'n Goblins and didn't forget to pick up a necessary weapon and beat the boss, you get rewarded by having to play the whole game over again. If you manage to do that, all you get is a brief scene of Arthur reuniting with the princess and the following text: "Congraturation. This story is happy end. Thank you. Being the wise and courageour knight that you are you feel strongth welling in your body. Return to starting point. Challenge again!" Yes, those spellings mistakes were in the game.
The Sega Master System 2 game Tom and Jerry did this. After playing your way through all the levels and finally catching Jerry, you are Congratulated, then informed that Tom can never really catch Jerry and sent back to play the game over again.
Disney's Aladdin game tie-in has two bonus levels where you control Abu the monkey. When you lose those levels you get a black screen with the text "Nice try". When you win you get the same thing: "Nice try".
The ending to the first Rayman game could fall under this trope, especially considering how unfair the game is. After you beat the final boss, you're "treated" to 10 seconds of fireworks, a narration declaring "You've saved the world!" and then the credits. That's it.
Might And Magic II gives you two million experience points for winning the game. Yes, for winning the game when you no longer need them.
I must rectify the omission of the worst possible example: Sentinel Worlds, an old 80's RPG. (I played it for the Commodore 64, but my friends had it for the PC) The reward you get for defeating the final boss is—wait for it—it returns you to the Dos prompt! Ah, sweet, sweet victory....
In the Game Boy Color version of Gex: Enter the Gecko, where you have to collect everything in order to reach the final battle, you are only given the credits. This is a far cry from the Playstation and Nintendo 64 versions, which had an awesome cut scene at the end.
Kirby 64 features a variant on this - it has a very difficult Boss Rush, in which you must defeat all 7 of the game's bosses in a row without any form of healing, and you were forbidden to absorb any enemies' powers. Bear in mind that 6 hits will kill you. Normally, after beating this, you simply get a screen showing Kirby's friends throwing him happily into the air with the word "Congratulations!" under the image. But if you beat it without taking a single hit, you get a screen showing Kirby wearing various body parts of the defeated bosses, as though it were his personal trophy, with the word "Perfect!" under the image.
Inversion: You Have to Burn the Rope. Given that the game is designed to be the exact opposite of old Nintendo Hard games, it features an ending credits song that may well be longer than the amount of time it took to beat the game in the first place.
Assassins Creed has a decent ending for the Altair plot, but the modernish-day plot gives the player some cryptic scribblings on the wall, the threat of death hanging over the still-imprisoned protagonist, and about 8 billion unanswered questions.
Rise of Nations has this for the different campaign modes. I was pissed off to no fucking end when I conquered the entire known world as Alexander the Great and all I got was a splash screen that said something along the lines of "Great job. Your empire will surely go down in history as the greatest."
Data Design Interactive's shovelware are even worse in regards to this trope: they merely and immediately send you back to the title screen upon completion of the last stage.
Alien Breed: Special Edition '92 hung the lampshade on this thing, it so did.
The NES version of 1942 is 32 stages loooooong. After you clear the last stage, you get a "CONGRATULATIONS" message typed out, and then your final score is displayed, sending you back to the title screen. At least the translators at Capcom managed to spell "CONGRATULATIONS" correctly...
- The arcade ending is even more gratuitious: "We give up! Game Over. Presented by Capcom. Hope our next game."
- In the ZX Spectrum version they didn't bother even that much. If you manage to beat all levels (which is almost impossible without using cheat codes), all you get is the exact same "game over" message as when you die.
Die Hard on the NES: The endings say "YOU WIN. GAME OVER." As opposed to "YOU LOSE. GAME OVER." A normal ending is here. A (not that) good ending here.
Somewhat lampshaded in the PS One game Team Buddies: should you beat the final boss, the ending FMV features a random character walking onto the screen and asking "So you won the game. Whadaya want, a medal or something? Get outta here!"
Beat Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter with a secret character and what do you get? "Congratulations! You've defeated the game with a secret character!". The Japanese version for some reason had endings for Shadow Charlie, Tanned Sakura, and Mecha Zangief that were removed from the international versions.
- The same thing is true for Marvel vs. Capcom, although the Capcom secret characters (Lilith-mode Morrigan, Shadow Lady and Roll) get their own endings.
ffx runner uses this. after getting past the first part of the game twice and going past, a very long part near the end of the game. you get... wait for it... the title screen, with a message saying "congratulations! you win!".
In Army Men: Sarge's War, after the big bad is killed, all the player receives is a medal, and are unable to save the game after beating the last boss so they can keep the medal.
The Bob-Omb Mafia, a ROM hack of Super Mario RPG has its ending shown affter you collect all four MacGuffins: you immediately return to Bowser's castle and find Bowser and Peach waiting for you. Bowser says, "Hey, good work Mario. Here's the princess." The screen scrolls up as it fades out, and you are greeted by this message:
Congratulations.
You beat the hack.
Now kill yourself.
The Great Giana Sisters, once you reach the crystal in the final level immediately shows a black screen, with the text: "Giana get up. The sun has frightened off the night." Which doesn't even make sense unless you know the game's backstory.
While the arcade version of Commando is a Kobayashi Mario and loops indefinitely after level 8, the NES version ends after the fourth mission(16th level) with the Engrish "Your all mission is all over. Your great player. Thank you for playing. This game was ended".
Super Double Dragon, being an Obvious Beta, lacks any actual plot and features a generic text-only ending before the credits after the defeating the final boss.
- The Japanese version doesn't even have that. You just get the credits.
Medieval II: Total War has a campaign where the objective is to take 45 territories, but you can choose to keep playing afterward and try to take over the rest of the world map. Your reward for conquering all of Europe, the Middle East, north Africa, spending dozens of turns sailing to the New World, and slogging your way through hordes and hordes of Aztecs, is...the same damn ending mini-cinematic, with the message that Charlemagne and Alexander the Great have nothing on you. Fan-freaking-tastic.
The simply titled Mickey Mouse for Gameboy, one of many Mickey Mouse video games, finishes with the oh-so-gratifying declaration: "CONGRATURATIONS!! YOU ARE GOOD PLAYER!!" while Mickey pumps his arms up and down for your entertainment. Oh, boy. How swell.
Transformers: Mystery of Convoy for the Famicom, as expected for a nut-bustingly hard game with camouflaged projectiles everywhere on screen that kills your character in one shot, only awards you with a paragraph of text after you beat it, and probably can't understand if you're not a japanese player. However, getting the better ending will let you play the game again as Rodimus Prime...who plays exactly the same.
- The ending screen from a fan-translation, quoted from a screencap is translated as follows:

EMERGENCY ORDERS THE DECEPTICONS HAVE COME BACK THANKS TO A NEW POWER. TAKE RODIMUS' ENERGON CUBE AND CRUSH THE DECEPTICONS ONCE AGAIN. SCRAMBLE! ULTRAMAGNUS!

Legendary Wings for the NES has a "congraturation" ending like this. Just a black screen. Not worth all the button mashing it took to get to that point.
The Japanese versions of the Street Fighter EX games actually had text-only endings for each of the characters. For some reason, Arika/Capcom didn't bother to translate them for the international versions (even though they're only two or three paragraphs long each), so they just took them out completely. Averted with EX 3, which kept the endings.
The Impossible Quiz features this - your reward for victory is simply a picture of a trophy, with the words "Ur Winnar" [sic] on the front of it.
Wonder Boy in Monster Land: "War is over. Dragon was robot. He may come from star. We regained our peace. People will be happy."
Arcade version of Wonderboy III: Monster Lair: "The invaders from the space were destroyed by your courageous fight. They had in advance stolen the Legendary equipments from us which were the threats in their past defeated war. But the Legendary arms were no use for the vicious invaders. The Legendary equipments were put back to the original position and peace was brought to the Earth again."
Andro Dunos for the Neo Geo ends with a message telling you "PLEASE TRY THE NEXT STAGE". But even if you play on the hardest difficult and loop the game, the ending stay the same.
At the end of the pirate/unlicensed Famicom game Thunder Warrior, after placing the final puzzle piece, the game displays the same "The End" screen as the Game Over screen before going to the credits.
Mickey Mousecapade: After the Final Boss, Mickey and Minnie exit the castle into a wooded area, and the mystery friend is... Alice in Wonderland! The End.
The ending of Chameleon Gems (a Zuma clone) consists of the simple message "Congratulations, [nickname]! You finished the last level!" and the endlessly repeating credits sequence which can be viewed from the main menu at any point anyway. Oh, and they couldn't even be arsed to compose some original music for the ending - you are treated to the same tune which you've been tortured with for all the 100 or so levels.
There's an entire website devoted to endings (many of which are examples of this trope) on the Sinclair ZX-Spectrum computer. Probably the worst is Kraal, where completing the last level loops you back to the start of the game — you don't even get to keep your hard-won points.
The Amstrad version of fiendish Mastertronic game Soul of a Robot, sequel to Nonterraqueous is legendarily poor. The aim of the game is to destroy a "master computer" which controls your planet - but when you enter the final room, instead of a boss fight you're treated to a tiny, crude line drawing of what appears to be a typewriter. Flashed on the screen for roughly two seconds before the inevitable message 'Congratulations! Now go and play the original Nonterraqueous'. Thanks, thanks a bunch.
Truxton II has the standard "Conglaturations" upon beating the Final Boss. The original, of course, has No Ending.
The arcade version of Zero Wing, while it doesn't have "All Your Base are Belong to Us", has a similarly gratuitous Engrish text in its ending: "Congratulation!! AD 2111, all bases of Cats were destroyed. It seems to be peaceful, but it is incorrect. Cats is still alive, Zig-01 must fight against Cats again, and down with them completely! Good luck." Sounds like a Sequel Hook, although no sequel was made.
The Tower Of Druaga: "Congraturations! Now you save Ki and the adventure is over...Thank you from...Amusement creater NAMCO" Uh...you're welcome...?
Legend Of Kage makes you fight over the course of four seasons to save a Princess. Your reward? A brief ending scene that ends with "However..." and the Princess gets kidnapped again.
- Legend of Kage does have an ending, after you rescue Kiri-hime three times. But the game does loop again after that...
Every GBA Backyard Sports game just has a congratulations screen and nothing else when you beat the game, except for Backyard Football, which is a worse scenario.
After completing the surprisingly fun Disney's Tarzan video game for Playstation, you're treated to a brief clip from the movie, a screen that says "Congratulations" and a voice-over from a Rosie O'Donnell sound-alike congratulating you. Yep, that's it.
After beating the last mission in UFO: Extraterrestrials, you get a dull 20 second movie of the alien mothership exploding and then a text box saying "Victory! You have destroyed the alien overmind and freed Earth from slavery. Rejoice!"
There's a game for the TI-83 titled Iceclimbers (not to be confused with the NES game) by downloading a program called Mirage. You get a bland screen that reads "A Winner is You. Victoly!"
In Mario & Luigi 3: Bowser's Inside Story, Fawful actually quotes "A WINNER IS YOU!" as the first thing he says in the game.
Waynes World on the NES and Game Boy: "Excellent!" says Wayne.
I know this is going to be controversial, but the end of Final Fantasy VII is very much this with a little meat on it.
Arkanoid has this on the C64... After completing the game (which must be impossible without an infinite-lives cheat!) you get the usual "Game Over" screen!
Metrocross on the C64 also simply shows "Game Over"
The main storyline of Final Fantasy Tactics A 2 has a proper ending, but the reward you get for beating all five level 99 clans in a bonus mission after you completed all 300 missions is just the credits. The same credits you get for beating the storyline. No Infinity Plus One Sword or Bragging Rights Reward at all. Keep in mind that all of the clans in this bonus mission displays the finest examples of The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard.
- And you can't save afterwards, loosing your experience and never having a proof of actually beating it. Sad.
After beating obscenely hard Guide Dang It - ridden Amiga space strategy sim Exodus3010, you get a single screen, almost identical to the Game Over screen, with the text 'WELCOME ON MRYNN. YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR NEW PLANET', complete with the game over music.
Lands Of Lore 2 has an ending so disappointing it might ad well simply say "A Winner Is You". After an epic game filled with awesome cinematics, after finally defeating the evil god Belial, what do you get? The Draracle walking in on Luther and Dawn in bed, telling them he is leaving. That is all.
The ending in the arcade version of Strider was nothing special, but in the home computer ports by U.S. Gold it was replaced by some cop-out ending in which the whole game is revealed to be a training simulation, just because the programmers couldn't fit the final boss battle into the ports.

Non-video game examples:

Anime and Manga

In the TV Ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shinji does some soul searching and decides that his life is still his own to live and he would prefer to struggle with uncertainty than be living in a Mary Suetopia where everyone is one big happy ~~puddle of Tang~~ Hive Mind. What does he get for this effort? A standing ovation of the entire cast, all saying "Congratulations!"
- (...Shinji was satisfied at least...)
- MOW?!?!
- This interpretation of the ending is... debatable.
  - In fact, I would say that the exact opposite is true: Shinji is granted access to the utopia Hive Mind after he finally puts aside his insecurities and accepts that (for some reason) other people actually like him for who he is.

Film

In Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country; after the Enterprise has thwarted an assassination; solved another; uncovered a nefarious joint Federation-Klingon plot; AND stopped another hundred years of war, their reward is....Starfleet telling them to come home so they can scrap the ship and force them all into retirement.

Literature

A Shortcut in Time, by Charles Dickenson. Josh Winkler discovers that something about his hometown causes people to sometimes, apparently at random, travel through time. He and his daughter Penny work out how to make it happen deliberately, and they travel back to 1918. While there, they alter history irreversably, and when Josh returns to the present without Penny, he discovers that things are drastically different than the way they used to be. Penny finally returns to the present, discovers that her mother doesn't know her, her father has — and always has had — a different wife, her mentally-retarded uncle is now normal, and the house she grew up in was never built. Worst of all, this is a version of events in which she never existed, so nobody remembers her any more. In addition to that, she has to tell her father what she's been doing in the two months since he last saw her. This is all resolved in the final two pages. People reviewing the book on Amazon.com said it ended so suddenly they thought there must have been a page missing.

Web Animation

Parodied by Homestar Runner in the bonus email "videro games" on the "strongbad_email.exe" DVD.
Strong Bad: And who doesn't remember staying up all night to beat an end boss only to be rewarded with a hearty "CONGRATURATION!" They didn't even bother giving you multiple ones. Just a single congraturation they had lying around the video game make place.
- Later in said episode...
  BALD GUY: Hey man, you gonna eat that last Congraturation?
  WILBUR: Naw, man. We're puttin' it in the game if you beat the end boss.
Also parodied in one of the non-canonical endings of Red vs. Blue. Believing that the large computer beneath Blood Gulch controls reality itself, Sarge begins to assault it when it's obvious that Red Command isn't going to back him up in destroying the Blue team. Sarge begins to rejoice, then asks "What the hell am I looking at?" when the computer displays badly-translated text informing him that's he's won and rolls credits composed entirely of Japanese names. It's implied from there that the whole series was one extremely long, very weird Halo match on X-Box Live.

Webcomics

Parodied again in this Non-Adventures of Wonderella strip.
Penny Arcade speculates what REALLY is supposed to happen when A Winner Is You.
MS Paint Adventures does this in Problem Sleuth's ending.
- Although the epilogue gives it a much cooler ending.
- Also done in-universe here. Death either does not like this trope or is overwhelmed.

Western Animation

Also parodied on the Guitar Hero episode of South Park — when Stan and Kyle finally broke a million points on Guitar Hero and unlocked super-stardom, all they got was the message, "CONGRATULATIONS! YOU... ARE... FAGS!" It pissed them off to no end.
- YOU HAVE PLAYED GUITAR HERO ENOUGH TO SCORE ONE MILLION POINTS!!!
Parodied in the second season finale of Drawn Together, in which the producer reveals that the winner of the show is, "You, the viewer." Unamused, the audience promptly descends into bloody, gory rage.