Yeah I know that. What I meant was that ZE3 will be region locked so I need a European release!

The coffing ending is essentially what you get in almost every path of VLR when you are missing something, tho it's a good thing they changed this from being an actual ending. But while most of the endings in 999 arn't necessary for you to get the true ending, they are actually game overs that show you the consequences of the wrong choices you made and to make you think about an alternate ending or about the culprit by giving you subtle hints.

For example: What if you did give Clover the bookmark would she still turn into Jack Torrence? Maybe she won't and she might lead you to a better ending? And in both the knife and submarine ending Lotus is killed and is missing her bracelet. Who killed Lotus? Who would benefit the most by taking her and Mr. number 9's bracelet? When Junpei is getting this close to figuring things out, it's too late, he's stabbed in the back and drowns. You never find out who the killer is and that's the end of the game. This is not a continuation or brief moment to travel back in time, this is You Failed, Game Over, Try Again. This means that every path in the game gives you a different end to the game and only 1 end/game over is needed for the true end. In VLR every good end is basically the safe end from 999 which you need to get the true end and to give you this huge plot twist, so the endings in this game are more like continuations instead of endings. Since Sigma and Phi travel through multiple timelines, in the end, none of the endings have ever happened but they did happen because Sigma remembers them and Akane is aware of that... I guess.

With 999's bad endings in mind, you start doing the math, 9(dead) + 8(dead) + 1(alive)  = 18, 1+8 = 9. That there makes the person with the number 1 bracelet highly suspicious of working with or being Zero and what about this ice-9 maybe i should talk about that in this path this time. With that in mind you restart the game by taking the same/different path and making the same/different choices. So we can view these bad endings basically as game overs with different outcomes which is what 999 handled a lot better than VLR did imo. Most of the game overs in VLR basically give you the same ending but with a different individual each time escaping and locking you up, and if i recall only Phi's bad end was needed plus maybe another one? When you try to escape yourself it's still a game over because Sigma is such a mastermind but can't even outrun an old guy like Tenmiouji.

SPOILERS AHEAD




I think you are wrong about the endings in 999 Snoorlax.There is no way to know 100% if this is true, but i do think that junpei dont really die in the bad endings, but simply jump to another timeline(or dimensions, whichever you want to call it).I mean, his body dies, sure, but his mind makes the jump before it really dies, as the danger of the situation would trigger it, as it did trigger sigmas mind to jump to the past at the ending of VLR.We can see this as being very likely when junpei remember the events of the coffin timeline(the ending that you need to get before going to the true ending, dont remember the name), remembering the information needed to keep on going.And if im not mistaken, in VLR, Akane mencions that Old Junpei has the same power as Sigma and Phi,being that power of travelling thorugh different timelines, or universes.
So supposing that he did live through that timeline to "die" at the end of it(the coffin ending), just to jump to the real timeline(the one with the true ending), why couldnt he have done the same thing before, just with the bad endings?The fact that he dosent remember could be that those timelines didnt have meaningful information necessary for his surival in the true timeline, making it not necessary to remember.
As i said, the game is not as blunt with this topic as it is in VLR, but i do believe that Junpei has the same power as Sigma and Phi.
And Sigma is just as old as Junpei during the events of VLR.