How about the time I went to the hospital because of a Nickelodeon game?
The year is 1995, and I’m playing Are You Afraid of the Dark on a Windows 3.1 PC. It’s a point and click adventure that’s designed for kids, so it’s not exactly “scary”, but it pretends it is.
Well, there’s this one part of the game where you click on a wax skeleton to inspect it, and as you leave the room it comes to life and starts chasing you. Keep in mind, this is a point and click adventure, so there’s no real animation, just a few stills.
Well, with the suspenseful music wailing in the background, I furiously clicked my way from room to room, trying to escape this skeleton that I couldn’t even see. Not understanding how point and click games really worked, I assumed if I just clicked as fast as I could, I’d get away.
Well, suddenly, I hit a dead end and I had to turn around. My heart was pounding, and my face was mere inches away from my gigantic 14” CRT monitor. Assuming I had built up quite a bit of distance between myself and the skeleton, I did the only thing I could, and turned my character around 180 to try a different path.
THEN OUT OF NOWHERE the skeleton INSTANTLY appeared up close on my screen, I believe accompanied by a loud scream or sound. It was my first experience with a computer “screamer”. I instinctively PUSHED away from the desk with both arms as hard as possible, when the wheels of the computer chair caught on the carpet behind, which instantly flipped myself and the chair backwards. That’s when the back of my head CRACKED off of the corner of the coffee table and immediately started bleeding.
Shocked, in pain, and probably with a little poop in my pants, I started crying and my parents rushed me straight to the emergency room where I got 5 stitches.
Don’t fuck with Nickelodeon games.