games that seemed scary when you were a kid
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2015 1:00 am
The thread about nostalgic game-related stories got me thinking of my experiences playing games as a kid, so I thought this might be a fun side-topic to that. And yeah, I'm aware of tvtropes "nightmare fuel" section, but this is for here.
Probably the creepiest gaming experience I had was going over to my older cousin's house, who had a Ti99/4A (maybe my first experience with a computer?). He was telling me about how fun Parsec was, I remember trying it, and thought it was meh. Then we played Hunt the Wumpus, and that seemed mildly scary to me. I'm pretty sure I never got the Wumpus. But that was just warming me up for the next game.. Microsurgeon. I became fascinated with it. As if seeing an inside view of the patient's eyeball, and moving your character around inside their brain wasn't creepy enough, my cousin showed me that the patient can die (IIRC a nurse walks into the room and says something, memory is kinda hazy). I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure that was my first exposure to mortality. So there I was, frantically trying to figure out how to play this relatively complex game, to save this poor bastard from dying in the hospital bed. That game still creeps me out to this day. On a somewhat related story, on another visit my cousin wouldn't let me play his Ti99 for whatever reason, and I don't know if he was doing something else to taunt me or what, but apparently it made me mad enough to punch him and bloody his nose. He was maybe 8 years older than me and was a fairly big dude. I don't even remember doing that, but my other cousins always reminded me of it, because they thought it was hilarious. Oh holy shit, thinking about it now, I might be confusing it with another time, but I think he might have been insisting that my sister and I have to watch Mary Poppins. Instead of video games? Fuck that.
I used to play Atari games over at a couple of my friends' house (they were brothers), and they had the game Ghost Manor, and that game seemed really scary to me. Not much else to say about it, but looking at the video now I can say holy crap, I'm not surprised. They also had Porky's, and it seems silly now, but for some reason that white dude that chases you around kinda scared me. Maybe it's just the relentless way he chases you. I've never seen the movie it's based on, so I never did (and still don't) have any context to what's going on in that one.
On Coleco, Smurfs: Rescue from Gargamel's Castle seemed a little scary to me too. Maybe it's how the music is all cheerful when you're outside, then you're in a cave with darker music playing and even the jump sound effect changes. Before long, you're using a human skull as a platform to rescue Smurfette. I wonder if kids' games are much like that these days, heheh.
When I got my NES, I received Ikari Warriors with it, and played the hell out of it. I soon discovered the ABBA code (probably the easiest cheat code ever), so I was able to play further into the game. The fact that you can get stuck inside the walls seemed a little disconcerting. Eventually I made it to the end of the game (or what I thought was the end, it's actually not) where you eventually reach a dead end with.. a gigantic corpse sitting behind a desk. WTF. It doesn't do anything, and it didn't seem like you could anything at that point other than sit there and wait to die, or reset the system. Again, WTF.
A friend and I one day discovered the arcade game Chiller, it didn't seem scary though, more like holy shit this is gory and awesome. Sometime later in a used game store I saw an NES Chiller cart on the shelf, and I had to have it. So it became the only unlicensed (well, non-Tengen) NES game I owned as a kid. By that point, I guess I was old enough to where nothing in games really seemed to disturb me. OK wait, I take that back. When I rented the game Uninvited, that lady in the fancy dress scared the shit out of me. Running out of torches in Shadowgate was also kind of intense.
Ooh, I guess there is one more too, for SNES. Drakkhen. Good god, those things that form out of the constellations in the sky, giant deadly shadow people, and the giant black cat head that shoot lasers from it's eyes, if you bump into those things that I assumed were grave markers or something. I'm pretty sure Drakkhen was the last game that truly scared me. I love the music and sfx in that game (coincidentally, IIRC it was done by the same guy who did the soundtrack to Shadowgate and Uninvited).
I saved the weirdest for last. When I was a kid one of the Atari games I was stuck with, was Swordquest Fireworld. It never seemed scary or anything, just confusing. Until many years later, when I was maybe 13 or so, and it made an appearance in one of the most bizarre nightmares I ever had. So in this dream, I was walking in this creek that I always used to play in when I was a kid (Bean Creek, and it now has "Danger: Raw Sewage Overflow" signage around it, but that's Indianapolis for ya), in an area of it that has these steep cliffs on both sides. Suddenly the cliffs rose up to be much higher, and a huge crab rose out of the water in front of me. It looked like I was watching this happen on TV, and I yelled out "Oh my god! It's Samhain!" Then all at once, some "music" from that game started to play, getting increasingly faster and louder as it does in the game, while the crab starts moving towards me while breathing fire. And during all this, Japanese subtitles were appearing at the bottom of the "screen".
Probably the creepiest gaming experience I had was going over to my older cousin's house, who had a Ti99/4A (maybe my first experience with a computer?). He was telling me about how fun Parsec was, I remember trying it, and thought it was meh. Then we played Hunt the Wumpus, and that seemed mildly scary to me. I'm pretty sure I never got the Wumpus. But that was just warming me up for the next game.. Microsurgeon. I became fascinated with it. As if seeing an inside view of the patient's eyeball, and moving your character around inside their brain wasn't creepy enough, my cousin showed me that the patient can die (IIRC a nurse walks into the room and says something, memory is kinda hazy). I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure that was my first exposure to mortality. So there I was, frantically trying to figure out how to play this relatively complex game, to save this poor bastard from dying in the hospital bed. That game still creeps me out to this day. On a somewhat related story, on another visit my cousin wouldn't let me play his Ti99 for whatever reason, and I don't know if he was doing something else to taunt me or what, but apparently it made me mad enough to punch him and bloody his nose. He was maybe 8 years older than me and was a fairly big dude. I don't even remember doing that, but my other cousins always reminded me of it, because they thought it was hilarious. Oh holy shit, thinking about it now, I might be confusing it with another time, but I think he might have been insisting that my sister and I have to watch Mary Poppins. Instead of video games? Fuck that.
I used to play Atari games over at a couple of my friends' house (they were brothers), and they had the game Ghost Manor, and that game seemed really scary to me. Not much else to say about it, but looking at the video now I can say holy crap, I'm not surprised. They also had Porky's, and it seems silly now, but for some reason that white dude that chases you around kinda scared me. Maybe it's just the relentless way he chases you. I've never seen the movie it's based on, so I never did (and still don't) have any context to what's going on in that one.
On Coleco, Smurfs: Rescue from Gargamel's Castle seemed a little scary to me too. Maybe it's how the music is all cheerful when you're outside, then you're in a cave with darker music playing and even the jump sound effect changes. Before long, you're using a human skull as a platform to rescue Smurfette. I wonder if kids' games are much like that these days, heheh.
When I got my NES, I received Ikari Warriors with it, and played the hell out of it. I soon discovered the ABBA code (probably the easiest cheat code ever), so I was able to play further into the game. The fact that you can get stuck inside the walls seemed a little disconcerting. Eventually I made it to the end of the game (or what I thought was the end, it's actually not) where you eventually reach a dead end with.. a gigantic corpse sitting behind a desk. WTF. It doesn't do anything, and it didn't seem like you could anything at that point other than sit there and wait to die, or reset the system. Again, WTF.
A friend and I one day discovered the arcade game Chiller, it didn't seem scary though, more like holy shit this is gory and awesome. Sometime later in a used game store I saw an NES Chiller cart on the shelf, and I had to have it. So it became the only unlicensed (well, non-Tengen) NES game I owned as a kid. By that point, I guess I was old enough to where nothing in games really seemed to disturb me. OK wait, I take that back. When I rented the game Uninvited, that lady in the fancy dress scared the shit out of me. Running out of torches in Shadowgate was also kind of intense.
Ooh, I guess there is one more too, for SNES. Drakkhen. Good god, those things that form out of the constellations in the sky, giant deadly shadow people, and the giant black cat head that shoot lasers from it's eyes, if you bump into those things that I assumed were grave markers or something. I'm pretty sure Drakkhen was the last game that truly scared me. I love the music and sfx in that game (coincidentally, IIRC it was done by the same guy who did the soundtrack to Shadowgate and Uninvited).
I saved the weirdest for last. When I was a kid one of the Atari games I was stuck with, was Swordquest Fireworld. It never seemed scary or anything, just confusing. Until many years later, when I was maybe 13 or so, and it made an appearance in one of the most bizarre nightmares I ever had. So in this dream, I was walking in this creek that I always used to play in when I was a kid (Bean Creek, and it now has "Danger: Raw Sewage Overflow" signage around it, but that's Indianapolis for ya), in an area of it that has these steep cliffs on both sides. Suddenly the cliffs rose up to be much higher, and a huge crab rose out of the water in front of me. It looked like I was watching this happen on TV, and I yelled out "Oh my god! It's Samhain!" Then all at once, some "music" from that game started to play, getting increasingly faster and louder as it does in the game, while the crab starts moving towards me while breathing fire. And during all this, Japanese subtitles were appearing at the bottom of the "screen".
)
