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A bad ending occurs when the player finishes a video game but is not completely successful for some reason. Generally speaking, in a "bad ending", the player has reached an end-point of the game, and has technically won, but the victory is incomplete, and, in some cases, isn't much of a victory at all. Most bad endings are achieved by being defeated in a certain fight, but some cases are simply glorified Game Over screens.
Examples
For example, in the arcade version of Street Fighter Alpha 3, failure to defeat the game's end boss M. Bison at the 10th and final stage results in an ending where the player character is placed in a machine and his/her power is used to destroy a city.
In a game with multiple endings there is usually at least one bad ending (a simple structure is to have one bad, one neutral and one good ending). For example in Metal Gear Solid there is either an ending where the main character's love interest survives (the good ending) or dies (bad ending). Another example is The Suffering (and its sequel) which has three endings which can be described as "good", another "bad" and the other neutral (interestingly, in this case all three are canon).
In several Sonic games on Genesis and Game Gear, A bad ending is earned by failing to gain all available Chaos Emeralds, usually resulting in the game ending early due to Sonic not being able to transform for the final boss battle.
The second Phoenix Wright game (Justice for All) features a bad ending if the player fails to present a crucial piece of evidence at the last possible interaction which drastically changes the outcome of the final case.
A bad ending is similar to a false ending, although with the latter, the player still continues with the story.