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[Pejo]

MB2 was definitely a scary game

The Phanto mask from Super Mario Bros 2 #gameplay

The Phanto mask from Super Mario Bros 2 #90s #90skids #80s #80skids #2000s #2000skids #throwback #nostalgia #nostalgic #retrogaming #retrogames #retrogamer

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Lol at that ending.

 

[OGM_Madness]

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

 

[FalsettoVibe]

 

[Aenima]

None. As a kid me and my best friend pretty much just watched Horror movies and martial arts movies. Videogame graphics looked too basic in comparison. Some years later, when FMV became more comon in games, Phantasmagoria 2 became my favorite game.

I think the videogame that terrefied me the most was one of the Fatal Frame games. PT also did a good job.

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

I’ve never really been genuinely scared by a game or movie before, but when I first played Splatterhouse in the arcade, it did give me a somewhat unsettling feeling I never felt before in a game.

PT was another game that admittedly was very atmospheric and even quite creepy. I’ve don’t think I’ve ever experienced tension like that before in a game.

 

[Elder Legend]

Half Life - I couldn't get past after the headcrabs first spawned in at the beginning of the game. They scared my 8 year old brain. But now it's one of my greatest game of all time along its sequel.

Resident Evil 2 - the dog jumping out of the window made me never touch Resident Evil ever again until I got older and Resident Evil 4 came out on the Gamecube.. the first game I ever beat in the RE franchise.

 

[Edellus]

Resident Evil 3.

I played that game a tad young (8) and everything about it was scary to me. I could not play it at night, though, because I needed to experience daylight to recover from the feeling of impending doom lol. It was really draining to me.

It was not without consequences, though. I had bad dreams about zombies for the longest time.

But I pulled through and finished it. Now I have 6 mainline REs games under my belt as of now, so it all turned out alright in the end.

 

[Crayon]

I never came across any scary games when I was a kid.

 

[STARSBarry]

no really, I'm not joking

both ecco games end with you fighting some alien monster queen, and at the age of 6 was quite terrifying.

 

[The Infectious Paradox]

My buddy called me up when we were like 11 freaking out when the commander or whatever starts telling Raiden aka you to turn off the console.

Hilarious shit

 

[nkarafo]

DOOM.

In my 12 year old eyes it looked like the most realistic game ever made. I was completely immersed.

I didn't know you could strafe so that made the game much harder. It also made the Cyberdemon a scary motherfucker. The sounds of his steps as he got closer or the sounds of his rocketlauncher firing from a distance to one shot you made me panic 100% of the time.

 

[BlackTron]

I don't know why but I had an irrational fear of Birdo from Super Mario Bros 2. I think it tied in to my mild Trypophobia

Irrational?

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

Tomb Raider 1 and 2.

Tomb Raider 1 with those wolves jumping out of nowhere even on level 1 were enough. Those graphics, the minimalistic music and sound effects, etc...all that was enough to make it scary. I mentioned wolves but there were creatures in most levels like this.

Underwater stuff on both first games were scary because you're already fighting against the time...and then you got enemies in there as well.

Now that i think about it, i don't know how we could play those games when we were kids. I feel like if i gave a controller for a 10 year old kid he wouldn't be able to do shit with those games, lmao.

 

[Gambit2483]

Hell yes

 

[Corian33]

Shadows of the Empire on N64 had some levels that freaked kid me out.

Nearly invulnerable wampas in the base on Hoth.
IG-88 in the junkyard making all those crazy sounds.
Don’t even get me started on the sewer and dark palace levels.

Had to have my friend’s older brother beat it so I could play the fun flying levels.

 

[ShadowNate]

As a kid:
- King's Quest 3: everything killed you in that game, a wizard teleported around and zapped you to dust, a cat tripped you when climbing stairs, cliffs had a pixel wide paths, a medusa would appear in the desert to turn you to stone, it was brutal. Most Sierra games were like that, but this was something special.
- Alone in the Dark: same reason and probably the first game with 3d models that I'd played at the time. Also the slow and bad controls helped in the experience. It became less scary and more annoying in the final segment though.
- Bioforge: Good story, and fights with tank controls (same as AiTD iirc). I think I found the story and its implications more scary though rather than the actual monsters / encounters. Too bad there was no sequel.

I wasn't a kid when I played these:
- Alien Vs Predator 2, the Marine campaign. That could be part of the gameplay being a bit bullshit for the marine, but the radar mechanic and the speed of the aliens (and those freakin' face huggers) made me nope out before I could finish it.

- FEAR. But this was mainly due to the creepy girl and the early jump scares.

 

[Comandr]

Ecco the Dolphin. The way Ecco would SCREAM upon taking damage made me terrified to ever get hurt. And that damn octopus. And the spooky music. And the looming threat of drowning. Don’t even get me started about the aliens. Jesus Christ.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

- Alone in the Dark: same reason and probably the first game with 3d models that I'd played at the time. Also the slow and bad controls helped in the experience. It became less scary and more annoying in the final segment though.

Forgot about this one, even with just about 10 polygons on the screen at a time it was unnerving.

 

[NanaMiku]

I don't why I scared with this when I first played it

Also this

 

[Pimpbaa]

I had a Celecovision as a kid, hard to make scary games back then. Only thing that kinda scared me were those invincible green monsters in the game Venture that would kill you if you stayed in a room too long. By the time stuff like Doom came along, I was a teenager (who had seen way too many horror movies) so it wasn’t really all that scary.

 

[PleazureDome]

Here is a game for only the bravest among us. You'll need some friends though, so probably no one in this thread.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I remember this game for Atari called Microsurgeon that looked like this.

When I was a little kid there was a catalog I had with some video games and it had a screenshot of this and I threw the catalog away and had nightmares about it for a few days. It sounds silly but I was five years old at the time.

Wow Microsurgeon! Was on Intellivision, not Atari I think.

It was too hard for me at the time, so I only played on easy. Didn't really like it. All I remember is on the harder difficulties all the virus and bacteria start bee-lining fo you and shit like lung cancer spots are hard to kill. At some point, too late and the patient dies.

 

[demented waffle]

Define scared.

If shitting myself? None.

If jumping out of my shoes? Resident Evil. That motherfucker made me jump a few times.

 

[draliko]

Sierra lighthouse gave me months of nightmares... I really felt the tension with that game... and the first silent hill was also something I dared to play only with friends around

 

[Knightime_X]

I did find Doom actually scary when I first played it.
First game I was actually too scared to play past 11pm was resident evil 2 on ps1.
I didn't play re1 until a month or so later.

The bird scene in re2 made my ass flex.
I jumped, big time. lol

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

I was already a teen, but The 7th Guest spooked me deeply for some time. I think it was the completely gratuitous horror and violence, the constant descent into worse and worse stuff. After the first few scenes you know that every clip you’ll unlock next will just be horrifying for the sake of it. It’s pretty tame all things considered, but the morbidness of it all just got at me. There’s no sense of victory completing that game. I’m glad my PC wouldn’t run The 11th Hour for some reason, I read about some of it later and I think it would have been much worse.

Silent Hill also made me keep the night lamp on for a few nights. That game was something else compared to Resident Evil. SH1 was pure genius.

Screenshots of this game scared the shit out of me when i was a kid

Yeah, those Mindscape adventure games didn’t pull no punches. Amazing how they didn’t care to dial things down a bit for the NES versions. As with many games at the time though, the worse thing wasn’t the horror stuff - it was the constant uncertainty of things, the feeling of not understanding what you were supposed to do, what with this giant puzzle looming above you and new stuff being thrown at you on every new screen. I played Déjà Vu on Game Boy Color and barely understood a thing. Recently I played the Shadowgate remake and it’s merciless even on the simplified difficulty level.

 

[Kagoshima_Luke]

I was a kid during the 8 and 16 bit gens; there weren’t any scary games that I can think of from back then.

 

[bajouras]

This game man… a damn side scroller, scared the hell out of me. It had these xenomorphs with guns on their backs that came of out the walls.

 

[CuteFaceJay]

Yeah Silent Hill was a bit much.

 

[Marchizmo]

 

[crackajack]

I am easily jump scared, kinda works in any online shooter or whatever, but I can't remember games actually scaring me. Maybe Condemned and Outlast came closest, but that was already past my kid age.

 

[supernova8]

Same here.

Didn't help that (at the time) our family home had a fancy looking staircase that vaguely resembled the one in the spencer mansion. Also we had a stained glass window going up the stairs with trees in the driveway, which was terrifying on stormy nights.

(No my family wasn't wealthy, it was just a really old house that they bought at a good time for cheap after the elderly owner died)

 

[Marchizmo]

That zombie haunted me for a few years, then I learned you can run past all of them. Just like all hurdles in life.

 

[Kenpachii]

Super mario bros 2, the owl that ate you, the sun, the everything really was scary as hell.

Mario 64, the dam ghosts and empty creepy house with ghost toad in it.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

No game has ever scared me... But I'll admit, I wasn't ready for PT

I remember saying out loud "What the fuck is that?"

This. The only game ever that managed to make me not want to turn a corner.

 

[Kikorin]

One of the first horror experience I had, I was terrified:

 

[John Bilbo]

This dude in the beginning of Space Quest 4:

 

[NeptuneCL]

There is an Atari game, about the space and you are in a spaceship...., I can't remember its name, but you can go to several places. If you decide to go straight towards the Sun, the spaceship and you get melted, and the sound of that is just....., terrifying!

REmake in the Gamecube also gives me chills...., the Crimson Head were terrible!

 

[swaffles23]

Friday the 13th on NES

Going through the cabins and turning a corner and seeing Jason and the loud scary noise it makes freaked me out as a kid.

 

[delfrickintree]

Tomb Raider 1 and to some degree 2. The minimal music, the sound effects, the maze-like level design and loneliness. Especially under water parts.

Tomb Raider 1 and 2.

Tomb Raider 1 with those wolves jumping out of nowhere even on level 1 were enough. Those graphics, the minimalistic music and sound effects, etc...all that was enough to make it scary. I mentioned wolves but there were creatures in most levels like this.

Underwater stuff on both first games were scary because you're already fighting against the time...and then you got enemies in there as well.

Now that i think about it, i don't know how we could play those games when we were kids. I feel like if i gave a controller for a 10 year old kid he wouldn't be able to do shit with those games, lmao.

Not to mention the Atlantean levels near the end of TR1. That was so freaky to my 12 year old self. Skinless creatures that were leaping on all fours, centuar types, flying horrors, and they shoot fireballs at you! The walls are covered in pulsing flesh ans sinew and these giant eggs would burst open and get jump scare you with the creatures inside... The final boss is some enormous freak, and if you fall off the platform, she screams the whole 100 stories down into the lava. That experience sticks with you as a kid. T Rex can get fucked compared to Atlantis!

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

Not to mention the Atlantean levels near the end of TR1. That was so freaky to my 12 year old self. Skinless creatures that were leaping on all fours, centuar types, flying horrors, and they shoot fireballs at you! The walls are covered in pulsing flesh ans sinew and these giant eggs would burst open and get jump scare you with the creatures inside... The final boss is some enormous freak, and if you fall off the platform, she screams the whole 100 stories down into the lava. That experience sticks with you as a kid. T Rex can get fucked compared to Atlantis!

Oh right...those levels...and there's veins everywhere from the walls where you can feel some sort of beating heart leading to that last boss. The "pulsing flesh" you mention basically.
Yeah the T Rex close to that is nothing. But it's also more memorable because up until that point (so level 3, lmao) you never fought anything extinct like that...and the build up is also awesome: You enter that arena, the floor starts shaking and you don't see the T Rex right away. Once it does, the song starts, and the fight begins. It's kind of awesome when you remember it.

Tomb Raider 1 and 2 kind of blew me away. I still remeber being turned to gold when i touched Midas Hand, lmao. Or the first time i'm in Venice on TR2 and riding those boats. Simpler times.

 

[BbMajor7th]

Alien Ressurection on PS1 for me.

 

[The Cockatrice]

No 2D/sega/nes age games have ever scared me as a kid. Only years late when I started playing on PC, the 3D stuff, I started getting scared. This was one of the first games that scared truly me I think

 

[KiteGr]

Depends on the age. When I was 4, even the lion boss on Super Mario Land scared me.

For actual scares, I'll say:
Resident Evil (saw a video and the mechanic movement of the zombies gave me nightmares)
Project Zero/ Fatal Frame, (rented it and never touched it until much later when I was a teenager)

 

[NecrosaroIII]

 

[Holammer]

I'm in a small dark room, it's way past my bed time and I'm playing Friday the 13'th on the C64.
I don't understand what's happening in game and suddenly Jason kills someone.



The sampled scream plays and this image is displayed

I turned off the micro, ran to my room and went to bed terrified.
Same year Dracula on the C64 scared me as well. It was a text adventure, but I got so into it, I freaked out when I managed to get a bad ending and it flashed a scary image.

Scary games, but they did not leave any lasting damage. Like watching C.H.U.D. did, I was freaking terrified of the shower drain for awhile.

 

[Senua]

Silent Hill on the Playstation.

Oh my fucking god nightmares

 

[veterangamerUK]

Outrun on the Amiga

 

[VeganElduderino]

this cover freaked me out when I was a kid
.

 

[Alex Anderson]

Intro screen to WWF WrestleMania on NES