First game too ever spoop you
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Probably Silent Hill, I was like 6 or 7 when I played it so it was pretty spooky then. Not much else has really spooked me since, Anmesia the Dark Descent was a good try at atmospheric horror and Alien Isolation was also pretty good on that end as well, but otherwise I don't get spooked by most games that isn't just bad jump scares.
Going wayyyy back, there was a line of Nancy Drew point-and-click adventure games for the PC that I played when I was very young that I remember spooping me pretty bad. There was one where you were in a tunnel of some kind in a hotel (ventilation shaft maybe?) and if you took the wrong turn you'd fall to your death. :U
Or, it could have been Lego Island (yes, really!); I don't remember which happened first. But I remember playing for hours and hours one night, and having the game bug out and replace all of the face textures with plain gray squares. Didn't like that one bit haha
Or, it could have been Lego Island (yes, really!); I don't remember which happened first. But I remember playing for hours and hours one night, and having the game bug out and replace all of the face textures with plain gray squares. Didn't like that one bit haha
Mr. Resetti from Animal Crossing scared me pretty bad as a kid. Sonic Spinball also had some slightly scary imagery, too. Lavender Town in Pokemon Red was a tad spooky, though not actually scary. As @Frezgle said before, the Nancy Drew point and click PC games actually had some "wait what?!" startling/scary moments.
Actually, Ecco the Dolphin was the first game to legitimately scare me. You think you're going to get a cute game with a dolphin, with nice pretty graphics for the time, but NOPE, still slightly scared of ever playing it again, even 17 years later.
Actually, Ecco the Dolphin was the first game to legitimately scare me. You think you're going to get a cute game with a dolphin, with nice pretty graphics for the time, but NOPE, still slightly scared of ever playing it again, even 17 years later.
Same here actually. The music and atmosphere of the whole game is seriously creepy.
Okay...this is going to sound stupid, so please bear with me: bubble bobble on the (original) gameboy.
First of: the age. I got it when it was new, so I was five or six at that time.
Second: the tone. As you probably know, bubble bobble features this cute bubble-shooting dinosaurs. The tone is mild, cheerful and enthusiastic. It wasn't easy, but because all video games were hard at that time, that was okay (this was before games were about holding your hand). It had 99 levels and a boss every 25 levels. These were one of the known enemy types but about four times the size, and instead of blowing bubbles at it you had to get this bottle somewhere in the level that changed your bubbles to fireballs. Like most video game bosses at that time, it was sort of blind and just had you learning to dodge correctly and not blindly leaping into where you weren't supposed to be (again: a kid's game).
...and then I got to the final level/boss. The first thing to notice was the music: no cheerful jingle of most levels or the deep 'impending danger' beats of previous bosses, but more the music a police siren would make if it decided to shifted tones every so often (thank God for youtube
). There were also almost no walls or things to jump on to. Not that enemies were ever hindered by walls in the game, but it was instantly clear that you were totally exposed to this boss.
Then there were the boss's hitpoints. I can't really remember how many the previous ones had (about 20 or so), but there was this enemy that had OVER A HUNDRED!!!
But of course: I knew this was the end boss, because it was level 100 (kids logic that proved 100% accurate ). This is what I was hoping and expecting. All I had to do was find that fireball bottle, and it'd be a FIGHT!
First thing I learned was that the boss didn't mess around. It threw bottles in all directions, and being the kid that I was, I didn't anticipate or timed much (these were things I was busy learning). It's possible it took two or three continues just to climb on top of the level and grab that bottle.
It didn't contain fireballs.
It did contain the one power-up I always avoided (the shoe), because that increased speed meant I couldn't properly jump over projectiles. It also featured electricity bubbles...but THESE DID NOT WORK!!!! I fired at the boss, but he just kept going. No glowing "you hit me" sign. No growl. No lowering of amount of lives. Nothing.
In more than one way, this devastated me. I WANTED to win, but it just...couldn't be done.
Looking back, it probably only took me a couple days to figure out (you had to jump toward the wall and blow bubbles at it...it would send the electricity out of your back, which you should aim for the boss), but these were hard days. With the blaring music and the open field (and nobody around me who I even bothered to tell anything because video games were my world), I just felt scared. I had learned to anticipate the enemies in other levels a fair bit, but because I was scared I started to fail to follow his (normally predicting) movement patterns. That got me killed, which increased the scaredness...and so on.
Come to think of it: finally beating him probably was one of my best achievements in video gaming. But while I can remember that moment, I can't remember it feeling like overcoming that fear.
First of: the age. I got it when it was new, so I was five or six at that time.
Second: the tone. As you probably know, bubble bobble features this cute bubble-shooting dinosaurs. The tone is mild, cheerful and enthusiastic. It wasn't easy, but because all video games were hard at that time, that was okay (this was before games were about holding your hand). It had 99 levels and a boss every 25 levels. These were one of the known enemy types but about four times the size, and instead of blowing bubbles at it you had to get this bottle somewhere in the level that changed your bubbles to fireballs. Like most video game bosses at that time, it was sort of blind and just had you learning to dodge correctly and not blindly leaping into where you weren't supposed to be (again: a kid's game).
...and then I got to the final level/boss. The first thing to notice was the music: no cheerful jingle of most levels or the deep 'impending danger' beats of previous bosses, but more the music a police siren would make if it decided to shifted tones every so often (thank God for youtube
). There were also almost no walls or things to jump on to. Not that enemies were ever hindered by walls in the game, but it was instantly clear that you were totally exposed to this boss.Then there were the boss's hitpoints. I can't really remember how many the previous ones had (about 20 or so), but there was this enemy that had OVER A HUNDRED!!!
But of course: I knew this was the end boss, because it was level 100 (kids logic that proved 100% accurate
). This is what I was hoping and expecting. All I had to do was find that fireball bottle, and it'd be a FIGHT!First thing I learned was that the boss didn't mess around. It threw bottles in all directions, and being the kid that I was, I didn't anticipate or timed much (these were things I was busy learning). It's possible it took two or three continues just to climb on top of the level and grab that bottle.
It didn't contain fireballs.
It did contain the one power-up I always avoided (the shoe), because that increased speed meant I couldn't properly jump over projectiles. It also featured electricity bubbles...but THESE DID NOT WORK!!!! I fired at the boss, but he just kept going. No glowing "you hit me" sign. No growl. No lowering of amount of lives. Nothing.
In more than one way, this devastated me. I WANTED to win, but it just...couldn't be done.
Looking back, it probably only took me a couple days to figure out (you had to jump toward the wall and blow bubbles at it...it would send the electricity out of your back, which you should aim for the boss), but these were hard days. With the blaring music and the open field (and nobody around me who I even bothered to tell anything because video games were my world), I just felt scared. I had learned to anticipate the enemies in other levels a fair bit, but because I was scared I started to fail to follow his (normally predicting) movement patterns. That got me killed, which increased the scaredness...and so on.
Come to think of it: finally beating him probably was one of my best achievements in video gaming. But while I can remember that moment, I can't remember it feeling like overcoming that fear.
@Taleweaver , your story reminds me of my experience with Super Mario Land's final boss. I had the game borrowed from a friend so I didn't have the manual or know what any of the characters were meant to look like; instead of little alien Tatanga in a cartoony space ship I thought it was some sort of skull-faced robot monstrosity. The low growls it emits when you shoot it certainly didn't help. It felt like a shift from "fun cool Mario game" to "oh crap I really have to save the planet this thing is True Evil". Took me several more continues just to beat even though it's hardly much different from any of the other flying bosses. I was just too intimidated so my reflexes shat the bed.
Of course now I know it's just... a doofy purple alien, but hey. A child's imagination is both very powerful and very stupid. xP
Of course now I know it's just... a doofy purple alien, but hey. A child's imagination is both very powerful and very stupid. xP
Hmm, probably Rugrats: Search For Reptar. I'm sure there will have been one before that but I currently can't remember
Same. I used to play that with the volume turned up and the lights off when I was like 13, shit was scary. I haven't been scared like that by a game ever since. Dreadhalls was kinda scary in VR but mostly it was just a constant sense of stress.
Doom and Duke Nukem (old platformers). I was playing alone in an empty house and that shit was scary!
Zelda oot/mm
The wallmasters in forest temple, also the creepy music there. The toilet hand. Mindmill faggot. The house in mm with all those zombies around.
Oh and also outlast.
The wallmasters in forest temple, also the creepy music there. The toilet hand. Mindmill faggot. The house in mm with all those zombies around.
Oh and also outlast.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_on_Fractalus!
I played Rescue on Fractalus when I was about 6 or 7 and it scared the piss out of me:
"As an amusing twist on this relatively straightforward premise, added at the suggestion of George Lucas,[9][10] some of the "pilots in distress" are actually hostile aliens in disguise. After landing near a downed pilot, the player watches him run off-screen, and then has to wait for several tense seconds—if it were human, the familiar, frantic "tap-tap" noise would be heard from the ship's hatch; otherwise, the alien Jaggi would suddenly jump back into view, sans helmet, roaring and trying to smash into the cockpit. Unless the player restores the ship's shields, the windscreen cracks open and the pilot is killed."
It gave me nightmares lol if you watch the scene here now it's laughable:
I don't think I've ever found a game scary since, maybe some of the Fatal Frame games. Most horror games I find creepy, but very rarely scary.
I also remember Tatanga. And it was one of my first gameboy games as well. Those fireballs really look scary, but I can't remember how I got to it (note I was pretty certain I was the one to come up with it, though it was quickly spread throughout the schoolyard), but there was a trick to him. If you were small, hid in the far lower left and just kept the fire button pressed, he couldn't get to you. You simply shot down all fireballs coming your way, and even though the entire screen seemed to explode in all directions, it never came diagonally over there. Meaning: that spot ensured quite some high scores in magazines (that were worthless, as it just meant they were patient enough to just STAY THERE and rack up the points from shooting Tatanga's bullets).
Yes: in order to kill him you had to leave that comfort zone, but knowing that you could always return to that safe spot really took the edge off.
PS: sorry for the late reply...I didn't had time at that time, and forgot about it.
Hmm, I’d probably go with the original Silent Hill and maybe Killing Time (3DO). I was well into my 20s when both were released, but up until then I hadn’t really seen anything scary in a video game. Sure, we had stuff like ‘Haunted House’ on the 2600, heh, but those graphics were hardly enough to conjur nightmares. I’d certainly seen my share of mildly shocking and WTF things in video games up until that point, but nothing truly scary.
I found the burnt babies/children-things in Silent Hill to be quite disturbing, same goes for the transformation to the hellish dimension and those staticky radio noises.
The reaching/mocking clowns in Killing Time got under my skin a time or three.
I found the burnt babies/children-things in Silent Hill to be quite disturbing, same goes for the transformation to the hellish dimension and those staticky radio noises.
The reaching/mocking clowns in Killing Time got under my skin a time or three.
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