Siliconera Speaks Up: What Scares You?

By Louise Yang . March 22, 2009 . 10:08am

Siliconera Speaks Up: What Scares You?

What’s one of your scariest gaming memories? It could be about a genuinely scary game, or about the time you almost lost a game save. I’ve had a couple of scares of the, “Oh crap, my memory card is giving me errors!” variety.

 

Siliconera Speaks Up: What Scares You?Louise: It sounds silly to think about it now, but the original Prince of Persia used to scare my pants off. It was the combination of being too young to understand patterns and controls and having an overactive imagination that made Prince of Persia so scary for me.

One thing that specifically scared me about the game were the pits with spikes that would pop out. The graphics weren’t realistic or anything, but just accidentally falling into a pit and then the sound of the spikes suddenly coming out and then the resulting blood on the Prince made me turn off the game in fright several times. It was even worse when I jumped to the end of the screen and made it to the next screen only to stumble off a cliff into the pit because I had no idea it was there.

The fat enemies also scared me because they moved so quickly that I could never fend off their attacks. Whenever I saw one, I’d run back the way I came and then fall into a pit. I don’t think I ever beat that game.

 

Siliconera Speaks Up: What Scares You?Jenni: I was absolutely terrified by the first Fatal Frame. It was right around Halloween, my second year of college. Shayna, one of my closest friends had found out about the game and was telling my other close friend Vivi and I how amazing it was. So that night, after our Japanese class, we went to the local Blockbuster and rented it.

We then all camped up and played the game all night at Vivi’s apartment. When I say we, I mean that Shayna played the game, while Vivi and I watched, cowering behind pillows in case one of the ghosts would suddenly decide to pop up.

Even now, playing Fatal Frame or Fatal Frame 2 late at night and alone can freak me out.

 

Siliconera Speaks Up: What Scares You?Spencer: Eternal Darkness had an awesome way of scaring players with mind tricks like soft whispers and pretending to delete your memory card. Most “scary” games go for shock value like sudden loud noises and zombies that jump out of nowhere. I can’t think of many games that I played that had memorable scary moments.

Shadowgate was one of them. It’s an old text adventure game with simple graphics, but almost everything in Shadowgate kills you. A floating quill describes your death in great detail then an eerie reaper shows up before you restart the game at your last save point. Games didn’t have ratings then so I played it when I was real young and it was a rather grisly game to beat.

 

Siliconera Speaks Up: What Scares You?Ishaan: I’ll admit I can be a real wuss when it comes to scary games. Quake 2 and Doom 2 both scared the crap out of me when I first played them. The sewers in Quake 2 had close to no lighting in places and the parasite dogs always made my blood freeze.

The first game that really had a long-lasting effect on me though was Nightmare Creatures, developed by a French developer named “Kalisto Entertainment.”. It was an action/horror game set in England. Depending on your choice of character, you were either given a staff or a sword and a lousy revolver, and had to make do with these items while fighting off hordes of demons and traversing through graveyards, creepy underground passages and abandoned streets and alleys. Nightmare Creatures capitalized on the concept of surviving with a limited arsenal of weaponry extremely well. The game’s story was pretty solid for its time, too, and for about a month after I played the game, every time I went for a walk by myself, I’d expect a werewolf or something to jump out at me from behind a tree.


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  • maxchain

    Are readers allowed to chime in, too? Because my memory of setting foot in Ocarina of Time's run-down, ReDead-infested Hyrule Castle Town against that gray EVERYTHING HAS GONE WRONG sky for the very first time will haunt me for the rest of my life.

  • http://www.infinite-bits.com NickyD

    Ishaan! Nightmare Creatures! You are instantly awesome. That game was excellent in every fashion… insane combos, solid difficulty, and yeah, it was really freaky.

    My personal scares come from the Fatal Frame games. I mean, Silent Hill is creepy, the original Resident Evils were nerve-wracking, but Fatal Frame is just plain frightening. I recall a certain part in Fatal Frame 3 that really got me… well, several parts. In your apartment, with the bathroom mirror… or in the “other building” when you're crawling under the floor… anyone? Good lord, I had to pause the game for a few seconds.

  • ShadowYuri

    When “playing” an horror game, I have big trouble to actually PLAY it, and so I play for half an hour, and I may not be doing this again unless some weeks have passed. Project Zéro (Fatal Frame if you like) is one of them. This is troublesome, as this keeps me from enjoying its story to the fullest… But anyway, the mise en scène in this game is SO great, even while playing the third one I was scared like the first time.

    If you feel like it Jenni, you should really try Fatal Frame III out ! Hope that the Wii spin-off will make it outside Japan some day…

  • http://anosou.blogspot.com/ Anosou

    Ocarina of Time, grown-up Hyrule Castle Town. That's terror right there. Good choice for sure :)

  • Nika

    I agree on Eternal Darkness, way more creepy than the real scare moments were the out-game scare effects. like MUTE suddenly appearing on screen or the memory card trick spencer mentioned. and the voices, the voices >__<

    other than that, I've had plenty of moments where you are in the middle of a dungeon, miles away from the nearest save point, out of heling items and MP/SP/PP/whatever and of course, you haven't saved in over an hour. fighting your way back to the nearest save point is nerve racking at such a moment…

  • matty

    Siren for the PS2. I was really fusturated when I first played it. It was way too hard for me at the time, but once I got the hang of it – WOW it was scary. You're constinitly in dark areas. You have creatures that took humans and changed their forms dramatically. All though a lot is happening you still don't understand what exactly is happening around you. It turned out to be one of the most memorable horror experinces I've had in general. It was just that some f the game features were holding it back from it being a completely enjoyable experince.

    Honorable mention: The Clock Tower series. Even CT3 had it's moments, but the first two games, when you hear the CLANG CLANG CLANG – I don't see how you can NOT get chills every time you hear Scissorman coming to get ya! I really wish someone would bring this series back in some way. I did hear a movie was being planned, but that was years ago.

  • http://www.siliconera.com Jenni

    I still haven't found Fatal Frame III. I think I just got a DS or PSP at that time, and just completely missed it. Now I can't find it anywhere for a reasonable price. :P

    Sounds like we play horror games the same way!

  • http://www.siliconera.com Jenni

    I totally second Siren and Clock Tower. I found out about Clock Tower when a friend gave me her copy of the PSN Clock Tower, then I went and found the other two.

    Clock Tower 3 would always get my heart pounding. Same with Siren sometimes.

  • Mr. Mee

    Those head-humpers from Ocarina of Time scared the s*** outta me back in the day, now i think of them as just a nuisance. Resident Evil remake on the GC had a good number of moments as well as Eternal Darkness. Both were scary in their own way. Other than that I can't think of any other games that ever really scared me.

  • blueblazer64

    i love clock tower!!!!!!!!! it was so scary when someone just poof out of nowhere and starts searching you=) the fact that we couldnt hurt the monsters was freaking awesome

  • http://myanimelist.net/profile/Kuronoa Kuronoa

    As a kid, I was scared of Bowser from Mario World. The clown copter and the lightning. D:

    Now, I would say Fatal Frame like the rest of the people.

  • http://www.micahglenn.com Divals

    Here's a new one for you guys. The game that first scared me (and I still remember it as far more terrifying than it actually is) was The Scarab of Ra for the Macintosh back in the early 1990s. My parents' computer only had a black and white screen, but I could swear when the mummy came for me its eyes would glow red as it reached out of the computer to kill me… Yeah, I had an over-active imagination. I would always avoid the Scarab like the plague, even though picking it up along with the Staff and Crown would have allowed me to win the game…

  • EvilAkito

    I bought Fatal Frame III from Game Quest Direct about a year ago. There was an article here on Siliconera about the re-print of FF2 and FF3 (right after I payed the same amount for a used copy of FF2 in shoddy condition). According to GQD's website, FF3 is still in stock for $45. That's only $5 less than the original MSRP, but it's still well worth it in my opinion.

  • EvilAkito

    You know, while I enjoy some standard horror games (such as Resident Evil, Fatal Frame, and Silent Hill) they don't exactly scare me. The horror atmosphere appeals to me, but it doesn't invoke any true sense of fear or discomfort. My idea of a creepy video game is a bit more unusual.

    Coincidentally, I had a similar experience as Louise when it came to Prince of Persia. The SNES version was one of the first video games I've ever owned, and I played it a lot. But as a kid, there were some levels that I just couldn't play. I was just so afraid of those snap-trap guillotines that could cut you in half. My strategy was to take a careful step through them as they were opening, which would usually work, but the risk of dying instantly would make me feel really tense. And about 10% of the time, my timing would be off, and then SNAP! The loud sound effect would always make me jump and leave me feeling a bit shaky afterward. It got so bad that I eventually had to start muting my TV when such challenges were presented.

    I also have to agree with Spencer about Shadowgate, as well as its sibling games Uninvited and Deja Vu. In fact, text adventures in general always made me feel uneasy. Famicom Detective Club 2 was another example. The creepy music, and sometimes even the complete silence, coupled with the text-box sound effects during dialogue scenes was enough to give the game (and similar games) an unsettling atmosphere that you don't really find in action-packed survival horror games.

    Finally, one of my sources of fear came from a very unlikely source: Pokemon for the original Game Boy. That may sound strange, but apparently somebody from Square Enix had the same train of thought. Remember the DS horror title Nanashi no Game? It's a creepy J-horror inspired adventure game that centers around a glitchy 8-bit RPG, which is exactly what Pokemon became once you caught Missingno. The whole idea of triggering junk-data and glitching up the game world just mixed well with the 8-bit quality music to create an unsettling feeling.

  • rowd149

    I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. I suggest you don't look it up.

    And, though I never played it, my friend sent me a link to a video of the Bloody Mary boss from Terranigma. Dear god, how did that NOT inspire fear in people?!

  • thaKingRocka

    silent hill 1 and clock tower 1. those games freaked me out.
    the static and the surround sound approach of the winged enemies. the clipper-wielding man's lilting, but relentless approach. these are things that still freak me out.

  • Aoshi00

    I've always wondered how people could play survival horror games or some FPS w/o breaking a sweat. Just about everything scares me, I've tried the Silent Hill series and Clock Tower 3, but stopped at the beginning because the monstrosities are too grotesque and the atmosphere just gets to me. I have to push myself to play Bioshock because I was really intrigued by the story. I even found the huge galaxy setting from Mass Effect “eerie”, makes you feel alone in the vast space, so Dead Space is certainly out of my league. I could watch movies fine though, like the Dead Space cartoon.

    I'm playing RE5 now and people say it's not scary at all compared to previous games, which I suppose is true since even RE4 felt a lot scarier. I guess the action gets one pumped rather than scared. Still, the time limit makes me uncomfortable, sharing items w/ Sheva in real time while the chain saw guy is hunting you.. I tried playing the first RE remake on gamecube but couldn't do it either (limited save ribbons frightens me..). This morning I finally got back to RE4 on the Wii since I've gotten used to the control, I tell myself if I can play RE5 I can play 4 :) I just fend off hordes of zombies while trapped in the house w/ Luis. Right, it's the limited ammo and enemies that don't go down easily, the tentacles.. The head shots feel really good w/ the remote though, I don't know about the original GC controller, been too long..

  • Ishaan

    Hell yes! I loved the combos from NC, too. I spent so much time as a kid playing through the PC demo. Then, I finally managed to get my hands on a copy of the full game years later, and it was still as scary as when I first played it.

    The game managed to do something I haven't seen many others do…make effective use of fog and an “outdoor” environment for thrills and scares. I still remember freaking out when you'd walk past a grave and a succubus or something spring out from underneath. Goddamn.

    Unfortunately, I haven't played a single Fatal Frame game…and I really, really want to change that with FF4. Just waiting for NOA or someone else to localize it. It looks gorgeous. It's got some really interesting design choices from what I hear. Apparently, you need to hold down a button to pick up an item. Your character bends over/reaches out to grab it, and if you take your finger off the button halfway, your character withdraws her hand. I can imagine that being used to create a fair bit of tension.

  • terracannon876

    I can't remember anything off the top of my head…

    I actually think I've been weirded out in Shadow Hearts once… If you think about what some of the monsters look like… I think there was this one called Mailman who was a dog with a hand coming from its mouth? It was morbidly amusing, yet just …eech…

    On another note, I HAVE had several errors of the memory card variety. For Final Fantasy 7 (oh, back in the day), I'd gotten almost all mastered materia, gold chocobos, knights of the round, and all I had to do was go into the Crater to kick Sephiroth butt … and I couldn't find the data one day. Yeah. Then, maybe 3 years later, I found it again … in block 57 or something, instead of block 1 or 2 >___>

    The same happened to FF8, but that was because my entire memory card got deleted as well… It didn't bother me QUITE so much, because my copy of the game would actually freeze every time I tried to go into the Ragnarok to talk to Laguna so I could go get Eden. (On another note, when I used the same copy to play the game with my friend, it worked with her…) WAS freaked out because i HAD worked hard on the game and it went POOF, …but yeah, aside from FF8, I think Monster Rancher 2 was also lost, all 14 or so blocks of memory. …Wow, that was so long ago…

  • Aoshi00

    I thought the creatures in the first Shadow Hearts were disgusting too. I was quite spooked when the villagers' true monster form was revealed and the place turned into a sea of blood at the beginning. I think the partial realistic history has something to do w/ it too. The Far East setting during the WW1 period was very exotic, plus the reimagined historic characters, like Kawashima Yoshiko. Oh, the bad voice acting too, remember the Sea Mother telling a horror tale w/ full sound effects? That gave me goosebumps!

  • Titanis

    The Lost World arcade game. You're driving along this floating bridge, suddenly OH SHIT CROCODILE THE SIZE OF A FUCKING BUS.

  • http://www.nakedsushi.net/ Louise

    Of course readers are allowed to chime in. That's the best part of Siliconera Speaks Up.

  • http://www.nakedsushi.net/ Louise

    Darkness really scares me in games. That's why I never played Doom 3. If I can't see what's going on, I stop playing.

  • http://www.nakedsushi.net/ Louise

    Oh man, I forgot about the guillotines! Those scared me too. I had the same tactic as you, running into them as they started to open.

  • terracannon876

    Haha, the bad voice acting gave me chills too, but in a different way.

  • matty

    There are parts in Siren where you HAVE to walk/advance in the darkness, otherwise the enemies will just devour you. I'd say 60% of the game is much like that. Think Silent Hill's “Otherworld” just 5x more difficult. Very unforgiving. I mean, some challenges in general are just bogus, but that's what makes Siren really terrifying since it forces you in these situations where the odds are always against you.
    But, you should check it out sometime!!!

  • matty

    There was a Clock Tower for the Famicom, too. Most people consider that a horror classic, but CT for the PS1 drove me insane. CT2 (aka Ghost Head) was cool and 3 was cool for having a legendary director in charge of the sequences.
    “Chris' Survival Horror Quest” is a great site for horror game fans. Lots of great stuff people miss out on are listed there for when you want to freak yourself out!

  • matty

    You should check out “Calling” and “Winter” for the Wii. Both sound up your alley, but I have no idea if these games are coming out anytime soon. It's a shame, really. One of them can't find a publisher to take a chance on a horror title for the Wii.

  • matty

    The CHOMPING piano in Mario 64 scared me as a kid, mainly because it just kept jumping on you. Oh, and the eel in the Jolly Ranger Bay …I hate giant sea creatures!
    I'll add Ecco The Dolphin for those with fear of the deep blue sea creatures.

  • Ishaan

    Already seen both of them! Calling actually looks a little more interesting in its current state. I'm actually very curious about that horror project Suda is doing for EA. I hope some news comes out on it from GDC.

  • MisterNiwa

    Clocktower, Fatal Frame and Nemesis from Resident Evil 3.

    Those are the ones who let me dream bad.

    Oh and clowns, i hate clowns… (DAMN YOU DEAD RISING!)

  • Kaoro

    I am terrified that anyone in Konami thought the voice acting in Suikoden Tierkreis was acceptable. Absolutely horrifying ;p.

    Actually I got spooked playing Oblivion, I hate when enemies pop up on me in the dark caves…

  • Kotat

    When I was very young I played Resident Evil 2 at my uncles house, this was when the game was first released. That scared the pants off me. But lately, I find most scary games aren't that scary at all. And those that are creepy tend to only be so for a little while. Fatal frame is a perfect example of this. The first half had me extremely nervous, but by the time I had upgraded my camera a few times it felt like the gimmick wore off. I felt i could handle anything that poped-up and it stoped being scary.

    The only OH CRAP moment I had with memory cards was when I was playing Tony Hawk 2 with a friend and he started a new game with auto-save on. He beat the first level and hit yes to the overwrite warning. I dived across the room and did something that every game ever tells you explicitly not to do… I pulled the card out while it was activly saving. Turns out, nothing happened and I retained my super sick fat skater guy.

  • daizyujin

    Never played a game that really scared me. Perhaps I am not human. Will admit have played games that have elicited other emotions like crying, but no scary stuff. I think the closest I have ever came is being spooked by something that I didn't expect, but I wouldn't really call that “scary”. Nothing that made me stay up at night.

  • jarrodand

    Not usually scared of “creepy” games, but my irrational fear of sharks totally kept me from playing Ecco on Dreamcast. I also freaked out in The Wind Waker when I first encountered the sharks and they knocked me out of my boat… I screamed and had to turn off the game, lol.

  • Justin Bailey

    I'm with Spencer on Eternal Darkness. The first time I played it I was in a dark room all alone and the volume started going down. I looked everywhere for who had the remote before realizing that it was right in front of me. Still makes me laugh to this day ^_^

  • daizyujin

    Hey man, I have a question and I ask this with all due respect, were you trying to be silly or are you serious?

  • daizyujin

    Never have played it but have heard great things. Seriously though that bit about corrupted save files would have made me cuss and scream. I can only imagine how the developers would have been laughing if they had been on the otherside of a two way mirror.

  • jarrodand

    Serious. My fear of sharks is phobic and irrational. Logically I understand there's no danger, but that doesn't impede my automatic fight or flight response.

  • daizyujin

    Interesting. Sounds like my mom and snakes. I just asked because it sounds like something I would say on here to try to drum up laughs.

  • EdgeKun

    For me it was Dark Troopers in the original Star Wars: Dark Forces. (PC) I could kill stormtroopers all day, but there was something about those sleek black machines designed only for murder that chilled me to the bone.

    Even scarier was the fact that the Phase 1s did only direct health damage. This meant in turn that anyone using the “god mode” cheat (which only gave infinite shields in Dark Forces) could still be cut down by these nightmares.

    I'm a bit saddened that I never got to play Eternal Darkness before reading about it. I figure that at this point if I ever do get around to playing it, I'll already know most of the tricks just from reading random posts online. =(

  • memoryofwater

    Oh man. The school segment of Siren had me physically shaking by the time I was done there. The way the whole situation keeps escalating and changing a little too quickly for you comfortably keep up, the way the shibito start calling your companion character's name during the search…. Brrr! That's definitely the tensest gaming experience I've ever had.

    The first Silent Hill is up there, too. Nothing specific even. The whole game. Although the school (what is it with Keiichiro Toyama and horrifying schools?) stands out as particularly terrible since I accidentally overlooked the map and missed my only chance to go back and get it. So I spent ages stumbling around in both literal and figurative darkness, with the landscape rapidly warping and decaying, sometimes lingering somewhere, afraid to move on since I had no idea what was in the next room. Good times!

  • eladbrit

    altered beast. when the boss says “welcome to your doom!” it was the first time i heard voice from a game. i turned off my console right after that scared…
    i was in 2nd grade. not the scariest game but the first time i was scared from a video game. sega genesis memories :)

    2nd, a game i could't play alone was…a bit cliche but silent hill. i thought “man were the dev crazy or something how could they make something like this?” and dragged in a friend who happen to love watching people play games (me too) just to beat it.

  • 28121986

    Anyone heard of Phantasmagoria and I've no mouth and must scream?

  • Bitch

    Things that scears me is every1 thats ugly and a lil boys thats named Kavon

  • Bitch

    Things that scears me is every1 thats ugly and a lil boys thats named Kavon

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