Remembering the 8-bit sunsets

We've spent the week regaling releases of yore, celebrating the intricacies and conventions that made them so memorable, but if there's one trait about some of these retro titles that we don't remember fondly, it's trudging through waves of enemies and uninteresting levels only to find our efforts rewarded with little more than a shot of the protagonist staring off into the sunset.

These twilight scenes weren't anomalous, phenomena exclusive to games of a certain genre or limited to a few occurrences. With just a cursory check, Games Radar was able to dig up no less than 18 NES titles that featured these over-the-horizon endings. Were developers just too lazy to try for anything more? Or was it something more sinister -- a secret cabal of Apollo acolytes looking to resurrect their solar deity with these 8-bit tributes? Think about that the next time you wonder why the sun seems to have somehow increased in size since you last saw it ...