Endings that blew you away. [Spoilers a go go]

A Mind Forever Voyaging. No graphics, no unnecessary melodrama and still much better than most endings I've seen from the past two console generations.

Spoiler:

PRISM's reward for saving the nation is a final simulation where the Plan never existed, and he is allowed to live out the rest of his years as his simulated human alter ego, Perry Simm.

Our last glimpse into Perry's life is playable. It involves the final moments at his home before he and his wife depart to join Earth's first colony into space.

In fact, in case you want to refresh your memory about the ending or you're just curious, here's a dump of the whole ending as I played it. If you plan to play the game yourself, the following is a horrible, horrible spoiler that will greatly lessen the ending's impact.

Spoiler:

>feeder, transmit record buffer
"Now transmitting record buffer."

>enter comm mode
You have entered Communications Mode. The following locations are equipped with communication outlets:
PRISM Project Control Center (PPCC)
Research Center Rooftop (RCRO)
Dr. Perelman's Office (PEOF)
PRISM Facility Cafeteria (PCAF)
Maintenance Core (MACO)
World News Network Feed (WNNF)
To activate a specific outlet, submit the associated code.

>z
Time passes...

>z
Time passes...

A message begins coming over the message line: "PRISM!" It's Perelman, sounding giddy with joy. "You've done it! That was brilliant, absolutely brilliant, sending your recordings out over the World News Network! Ryder just left here so fast and so mad like nothing I've ever seen! The switchboard is lighting up like crazy, and I just got off the phone with President Bowden himself!" You hear the sound of whooping and cheering in the background, and Perelman gives a "Yeehah!" more suited to a Texas cattle rancher than a Jewish big-city scientist. "The National Guard unit has just been recalled! PRISM, the Plan is dead in the water -- you're a hero!"

* EPILOGUE *

Your visual and audio circuits are now hooked directly to the programming of the World News Network:

"PRISM, the supercomputer who exposed the Ryder scandal, will soon be granted his final request: to live out the remainder of his days -- and how long that might be, nobody knows -- simulating his human existence. PRISM, who recently received the Congressional Medal of Honor as well as a citation from President Bowden, has been spending much of his time in simulations, giving top grades to the administration's new program to replace the discredited Plan.

"At a press conference in Rockvil, Doctor Abraham Perelman, one of the creators of PRISM, insisted that the world's first intelligent machine was, in fact, quite human." The picture cuts to Perelman, standing behind a podium. "His body may be silicon and steel," Perelman is saying, "but in his heart he's as human as anyone I've ever met. As PRISM prepares to embark on his final voyage of the mind, I'd like to read a line from 'Hamlet' as his epitaph, so to speak: 'He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.'"

The image from the WNN Feed suddenly blinks off, and you find yourself back at the entry level of Communications Mode. The list of outlets indicates that none are currently active. A message is coming in: "PRISM, programming of the [MORE]Simulation Controller with the parameters of the New Plan is complete. Everything is set for you to enter Simulation Mode. From all of us here at the PRISM Project, thanks and farewell."

>enter sim mode
Class One Security: waived. This simulation is based 60 years hence.

Solarium
This enclosed sunporch of your penthouse apartment is surrounded by an outdoor patio, accessible to the south. To the north is a sprawling living room.

>n
Living Room
Sunken, comfy pillowseats form a vaguely oval perimeter around a central circular fireplace. The rest of the furniture has been removed. The dining room lies beyond a bamboo screen to the east. An open, curving stair leads up to the master bedroom, and a foyer leads north.
There is a newspaper here.

>take paper
Taken.

>read it
The headline story is about a newly released study which indicates that the average life expectancy for both sexes has now passed one hundred years, and success in the development of regeneratives should send that figure even higher. Despite the dropping mortality rate, global population remains stable at just under two billion, with offworlding now running at a staggering seven million people annually.

To celebrate next month's special twentieth anniversary Disarmament Day, the World Council has passed a bill authorizing fireworks displays in each of the former capital cities of the twenty-two former nuclear powers. The fireworks displays, by Aerialist designer Jean M'gomo, will feature disarmament themes, and will be the largest display of pyrotechnic art in this century.

A story on an inside page catches your eye: "Perry Simm, Noted Author, To Join Crew of Silver Dove," reads the headline. "Perry Simm, author and poet, recipient of the 2089 Mexicana Prize, has been selected from nearly a thousand applicants to be the resident author aboard the Silver Dove, the space colony that is currently being equipped for mankind's first interstellar journey, a trip expected to last a dozen generations."

>s
Solarium
This enclosed sunporch of your penthouse apartment is surrounded by an outdoor patio, accessible to the south. To the north is a sprawling living room.

>s
Patio
Sunlight spills off the vines and shrubs of this wide outdoor terrace. The view, always breathtaking, seems particularly sharp today; beyond the parklands and forests to the west, the foothills of the Rockies are clearly visible; to the south, the river bends around Rockvil before flowing upcountry toward North Dakota and the Garrison Lakes. The glass-walled sunporch lies behind a curtain of vines to the north.

>n
Solarium
This enclosed sunporch of your penthouse apartment is surrounded by an outdoor patio, accessible to the south. To the north is a sprawling living room.

>n
Living Room
Sunken, comfy pillowseats form a vaguely oval perimeter around a central circular fireplace. The rest of the furniture has been removed. The dining room lies beyond a bamboo screen to the east. An open, curving stair leads up to the master bedroom, and a foyer leads north.

>n
Foyer
This bright, airy hallway runs northwards from the living room to the apartment door. Tall, arched entrances lead east and west, and the bath is down a few steps to the southwest.

>sw
Bath
An antique, tile decor masks the ultramodern features of this large bathroom. A whirlpool tub fills the far end of the room. The exit, up a few steps, is northeast.

>ne
Foyer
This bright, airy hallway runs northwards from the living room to the apartment door. Tall, arched entrances lead east and west, and the bath is down a few steps to the southwest.

>n
A hologram of Jill appears. "Don't go out, hon! The skycab will be here any second!" The image vanishes.

>s
Living Room
Sunken, comfy pillowseats form a vaguely oval perimeter around a central circular fireplace. The rest of the furniture has been removed. The dining room lies beyond a bamboo screen to the east. An open, curving stair leads up to the master bedroom, and a foyer leads north.

>u
Master Bedroom
This is a huge, round bedroom, encircled by windows. A stairway leads down to the living room. As elsewhere, the furniture has been removed.
Jill is here, doing some last-minute packing.

>look at jill
Jill's healthy demeanor and graceful pose are more befitting a woman twenty years her junior. She is here, doing some last-minute packing.

>d
Living Room
Sunken, comfy pillowseats form a vaguely oval perimeter around a central circular fireplace. The rest of the furniture has been removed. The dining room lies beyond a bamboo screen to the east. An open, curving stair leads up to the master bedroom, and a foyer leads north.

>s
Solarium
This enclosed sunporch of your penthouse apartment is surrounded by an outdoor patio, accessible to the south. To the north is a sprawling living room.

The gentle voice of your domestic computer calls softly from one of its many unseen speakers. "The skycab you asked for is now waiting on the roof." Jill appears at the top of the steps with the robutler, who is carrying several bags. "Algie has everything, Perry. Let's get going!"

You take a last look around the apartment and follow Jill and Algie into the hallway and up to the roofpad. As you clamber into the waiting skycab, Jill gives the robutler a fond farewell pat. The skycab climbs lazily and veers off to the northeast.

Skycab
This skycab is a luxurious, top-of-the-line model, a veritable sky limousine. The opulent features include reclining seats, tinted zero-glare windows, and a two-meter viewscreen.

>look at viewscreen
At the moment, the screen is dark.

The cab enters the central Rockvil traffic pattern, gently curving along the ring of downtown parks. You can see a festival of some sort in Halley Park. The gold and crimson tents of the festival form a multicolored patchwork against the green background of the city's oldest park.

Jill, glancing through yet another magazine article on the Silver Dove, says, "This story talks about the new athletics and art forms that are still being discovered for the weightless area at the axes of the habitats. Oh, Perry, I'm so excited," she adds, unnecessarily.

>z
Time passes...

The skycab continues its wide arc around the downtown area, approaching the Rockvil Pier. The river is dotted with sailboats, and a tourboat is just pulling away from the pier for a daytrip upriver, through Montana to the Devil's Tower region of Wyoming. Along the river, south of the pier, are the outdoor shells and amphitheatres of the Riverside Cultural Center.

>z
Time passes...

As the cab whisks northward along the edge of the river, you can make out the gleaming surface of the receiver station, nestled among the forests west of the city, where orbiting solar collectors beam their precious energy.

>z
Time passes...

As the skycab begins its approach to the spaceport, it passes over the museum established on the site of the former BSF Base, a sobering monument to one of mankind's great follies.

Suddenly the viewscreen lights up, and Mitchell's face appears. "Hi, Mom, Dad! I wanted to wish you bon voyage, and I enlisted a little help!" He expands the field of vision to include the entire living room of his spacious apartment at the Marine Biology Institute in Nova Scotia. The room is filled with your grandchildren and great-grandchildren, plus various in-laws, more than twenty members of the Simm clan. Everyone is hooting, yelling, waving, and blowing kisses. "We're having a big party in your honor -- I'm only sorry we couldn't be there with you. We're real proud of you both, and excited for you, too. Call me when you get to the habitat! Bye!" The clan signs off by singing Auld Lang Syne, and when the screen goes dark, you notice that Jill's eyes are wet, and a second later you realize that yours are, as well.

>z
Time passes...

With the gentlest bump, the skycab settles into a landing bay at the spaceport terminal. Jill reaches over and gives your hand an excited squeeze. Through the window of the skycab, you can see the sleek, white shuttle waiting to carry you on your first leg of the journey to...to what? The Silver Dove would be more than just another space colony. It was the pinnacle of an eon of human achievement, the first step into interstellar space.

You and Jill would never live to see the completion of that first step, generations hence. (Although in the germfree, low-gee environment of a habitat, and with the recent strides in health and longevity research, who could say for sure?) But you would still have been part of that dawning of a new age, that future of unlimited potential. Humanity was beginning a journey into the universe, a voyage that would last forever.

How ya doing, buddy?