The End was the first Konami game to be licenced in the US by Stern. This would be followed by a long list of games including Scramble, Super Cobra, Strategy-X, Amidar and Turtles.

This game combined play elements of Cinematronics Rip Off with Midway's Galaxian. The player controlled a horizontally scrolling ship - shooting aliens that were stealing their pods. The game was over when enough of the pods were removed to spell END at the top of the screen.

Like many games to follow, Stern took Konami's oringinal game and modified to make it a better game. In this case the change was small, but with a dramatic impact on gameplay. The location of the pods the player was defending was changed from above to below the player's ship.