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As a kid, what (non-horror) games terrified you?
- Thread starter MrConbon210
- Start date
I just played as kid link forever because the zombies scared the shit out of me
For me it was Floormaster and Like Like from Ocarina of Time. Those two scared the shit out of me:
Not the whole game, but the slimers in Duke 3D. I hardly ever played past the first episode because of them. They *still* make my hair raise on end.
The Octobrains can be freaky if they get the jump on you, but I could manage to deal with them....not the slimers though.
The Octobrains can be freaky if they get the jump on you, but I could manage to deal with them....not the slimers though.
Friday the 13th game for NES. The first time Jason ran across the lake scared the hell out of me.
Thanks for doing the work for me.
Aliens on the C64, the kinda proto FPS one, you'd go into a room and hear the motion sensor go off and have to try and slowly move the cursor around the screen to find the Xenomorph before it killed you. Always freaked me out.
Also Castlevania on the N64, I was playing it with a guide I had from a mag, I read ahead to the section about the Hedge Maze and it said something about being chased by a huge Frankenstein's Monster and some stone dogs. In my head I pictured this as a terrifying intense chase and I really wasn't keen to experience it so I got no further on my rental. It wasn't until many years later when I played it again I learnt it was nothing to worry about in the slightest.
Also Castlevania on the N64, I was playing it with a guide I had from a mag, I read ahead to the section about the Hedge Maze and it said something about being chased by a huge Frankenstein's Monster and some stone dogs. In my head I pictured this as a terrifying intense chase and I really wasn't keen to experience it so I got no further on my rental. It wasn't until many years later when I played it again I learnt it was nothing to worry about in the slightest.
I don't remember ever being scared playing games as a child. Mostly I got to play games only when we were on holiday so it was arcade games and the like, it wasn't until I was 12 that I got a C64 and I don't recall being afraid of anything I played on that. But then, I honestly can't remember what is the first game to scare me, either. I want to say the Ocean House Hotel level from Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, but that's quite late in my gaming history. Possibly the well in Ocarina of Time.
Edit - Actually, it may have been this scene from Elvira II - Jaws of Cerberus. This .gif is from the Amiga version but the C64 scene is exactly the same. It's a slow moving adventure game so this was quite a shock when I first saw it.
Edit - or when you come across the severed head on the table and it wakes up and smiles at you -
Edit - Actually, it may have been this scene from Elvira II - Jaws of Cerberus. This .gif is from the Amiga version but the C64 scene is exactly the same. It's a slow moving adventure game so this was quite a shock when I first saw it.
Edit - or when you come across the severed head on the table and it wakes up and smiles at you -
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Aliens (C64). Between playing that and watching the film at a tender age i think i lost about a weeks sleep. Good times.
Bloody Roar... that creepy voice over "Bloody Roar 2: The New Breed" along with the feral transformations made me flip out.
As a child, I was pretty scared of beating Star Fox 64 because Andross would show up after the credits in a pretty scary frame. I would leave and ask one of my parents to turn off the N64 lmao
Yeah. That's something that I've appreciated more with the better graphic capabilities as games got more advanced. I've been waaaay more unsettled as an adult than I ever could have as a kid because of it. Kids who grew up around most of the games listed in this thread are kind of lucky in that way.
My oldest son, who is 25 now, still can't stand to be in the room with me when I pop in the original Silent Hill. Just the intro music scares him, and as he's leaving (while flipping me the bird), he'll tell me as much.
From Software's Armored Core 1.
The dark gray levels with a thick black limited draw distance accompanied only by the loud sound of the Ravens clanking and banging really unsettled me. There's something creepy about mechs in general too, as any viewer of Neon Genesis Evangelion could tell you. They are these menacing humanoid, weaponized behemoths that like Godzilla and kaiju are obviously metaphors for nuclear weapons in part, and it all harkens back to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Kid-me wasn't versed in all this, but I think could sense what these things were meant to represent.
From Soft's authorship also clearly plays a role in the spook-factor here. It's not at all surprising what they made with Soulsborne and Sekiro when you look at the ambiance their older catalogue has and that they made other explicitly spooky games such as Echo Night and Kuon.
The dark gray levels with a thick black limited draw distance accompanied only by the loud sound of the Ravens clanking and banging really unsettled me. There's something creepy about mechs in general too, as any viewer of Neon Genesis Evangelion could tell you. They are these menacing humanoid, weaponized behemoths that like Godzilla and kaiju are obviously metaphors for nuclear weapons in part, and it all harkens back to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Kid-me wasn't versed in all this, but I think could sense what these things were meant to represent.
From Soft's authorship also clearly plays a role in the spook-factor here. It's not at all surprising what they made with Soulsborne and Sekiro when you look at the ambiance their older catalogue has and that they made other explicitly spooky games such as Echo Night and Kuon.
Not the whole game, but the slimers in Duke 3D. I hardly ever played past the first episode because of them. They *still* make my hair raise on end.
The Octobrains can be freaky if they get the jump on you, but I could manage to deal with them....not the slimers though.
Oh man, how did I forget Duke Nukem. A lot of scary sounds and images in those games. And the whole kidnapped women thing ..yikes.
Chalk another up to Harry Potter (2) lol. For me me though those knights freaked me out. There is one segment where there's a knight slowly walking towards you from the side when you first enter the area, if you don't turn your camera like the one time I didn't as a kid he'll surprise you.
It seems super silly now, but when I was pretty little, we had this early Lucasarts game called Rescue on Fractalus, kind of an amazing technical achievement on a platform that was outclassed even by the NES. You played a rescue pilot viewing out of your cockpit, dropping out of a mothership in orbit, and rescuing downed allied pilots on a hostile planet, while dodging enemy fire, managing shields, etc.
When you got to a downed pilot, you'd have to shut the engines off, wait for the pilot to run over to you, you'd hear them climbing the ladder, and you had to disable the shields or you'd fry him. Anyway, there was absolutely no hint previously that some of them were no longer human. So, kid me, sitting in front of a fuzzy CRT TV, playing this thing with my brother, when all of a sudden the damned "pilot" jumps onto the windshield with a jumpscare and starts beating the cockpit window in. I probably would have crapped myself if I had to go to the bathroom lol.
Nowdays it's entirely tame, but back in the day with the right ambience, youth, and there was just something creepier about games on old fuzzy TVs.
When you got to a downed pilot, you'd have to shut the engines off, wait for the pilot to run over to you, you'd hear them climbing the ladder, and you had to disable the shields or you'd fry him. Anyway, there was absolutely no hint previously that some of them were no longer human. So, kid me, sitting in front of a fuzzy CRT TV, playing this thing with my brother, when all of a sudden the damned "pilot" jumps onto the windshield with a jumpscare and starts beating the cockpit window in. I probably would have crapped myself if I had to go to the bathroom lol.
Nowdays it's entirely tame, but back in the day with the right ambience, youth, and there was just something creepier about games on old fuzzy TVs.
There was definitely something eerie (perfect word for it) about Duke 3D.
Can't put my finger on it, but it had a different atmosphere to other FPS at the time, without ever being straight-up horror.
Maybe it's because it was all so vulgar that we could feel our innocence slipping away as we played...?
None that I can remember. Oddly enough I was much less of a scaredy-cat when I was an actual kid compared to adult me :/
I mean... I need to take regular breaks playing Demon Souls and every subsequent Soulsbourne games now.
I mean... I need to take regular breaks playing Demon Souls and every subsequent Soulsbourne games now.
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Super Sonic, still to this day I'm not sure why.
Sonic 2 was my jam when I was 5ish, used to love watching my sister play as she was infinitely better. Yet whenever she'd trigger Super Sonic, I'd have to leave the room sobbing.
I had a mute and turn the brightness up to complete those levels, those damn cries haunt my dreams.
Agreed. The encounters are done pretty well, especially the ones where you actually need to run away from it. Pretty intense.
Agreed. The encounters are done pretty well, especially the ones where you actually need to run away from it. Pretty intense.
When I played the game when I was like 10 and arrived to that moment I turned off the GBA and didn't play the game for like a year.
Uh, I always considered it an action-gore adventure game.
Never got scared with 1 or 2. But Nemesis made me jump a couple times.
Yeah those were very well done. I remember stopping the game for a month on Sector 2 escape (after you beat the spider) because it was too scary as a kid. Eventually I overcame it and now I completed Fusion over 50 times somehow :)
Agreed. The encounters are done pretty well, especially the ones where you actually need to run away from it. Pretty intense.
This is the only answer. I refused to swim down into the water with that fucker. I have to this day a deep fear that I'll be swimming, look down and a massive deadly looking creature will be near me staring at me. Humans are so helpless in the water.
I know it's sort of a meme at this point, but I would get super uncomfortable in this level. I don't think I got any stars from it during my first play through.
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It's labeled as survival horror so it doesn't apply to the thread.