There are indeed games where defeating the boss wrongly gives you a game over (e.g. Streets of Rage III). However, SOTN's game over looks like this whereas its bad and good endings both look like this; so I don't agree that its bad ending is a "glorified game over".
So yes, I think it makes sense to tag these two runs as "good ending". This is similar to [1917] Windows Cave Story "best ending" by nitsuja in 50:10.30 (Cave Story which also has three endings, with speedrunners generally going for the best one).
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
You may have missed the word "glorified".
"Good ending" is a pointless tag because it's arbitrary, particularly if you have more than three endings. And since in SotN, it is the fastest ending that is actually acknowledged as an ending that entails beating the game, it is redundant to mention it.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
For what it's worth, seven different FAQ authors each individually call it one of the game's four endings (five if you count Richter's), and none of them call it a game over.
Anyway let's get some other peoples' opinions in here.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
I took a look at the top two FAQs (marked with stars). The first one, by 934400, doesn't even acknowledge the branched endings. It just says to do whatever needs to be done to progress to the good endings, and then states "Good job, halfway done with the game". The second one, by ZKeene, mentions the endings but explicitly says "this isn't how the game is supposed to end".
You must be reading different FAQs there than I did.
Anyway, I don't see online FAQs or game ending sites as really relevant. More important is how the actual speedrunning community defines the game ending. I looked at the SDA page for SotN and a number of YouTube videos of SotN speedruns by e.g. romscout, but none of them I saw mention anything about good endings or best endings, but they do go and defeat Dracula and get the good ending in each of them.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.