Horror, terror, fright, unease, uncanniness, repugnance, revulsion, panic, awkwardness, anxiety, disquietude, malaise, inquietude, queasiness, nausea, ghastliness, etc... What passages from what games have made you feel any of the above and/or related feelings and states of mind?

Now and then, you'll see lists of "scariest games" on gaming sites and forums. Usually, these focus on horror games. But, I thought, let's get away from all that and leave the traditional horror games aside, and talk about moments, passages, scenes, locations, etc. from games designed not primarily to frighten. Indeed, the further away we get from "intentional" horror, the better for the purpose of this subject. Examples of what I'm aiming at could even be from cutesy games that were never meant to be scary or even intimidating in any way whatsoever (so called Nightmare Fuel).

I'm guessing for most people, many of these occurrences are from one's gaming childhood (children being more impressionable, easier to frighten, and less experienced and jaded, simply put: more open). I know that's the case with me. The console that introduced me to the world of gaming was the NES, and most of the games that really made me jump and break out in a cold sweat were on the NES.

One of the earliest was Metroid. Shit, playing this as a 7-year-old really left an impression. It was so deceptive at first, it started out as any jolly 8-bit platforming romp (remember, this was the first game in the series, so I had no prior knowledge of the Metroid "style"). Catchy and upbeat music, a robot with an arm-cannon shooting space beetles and collecting missiles, and all the rest of it. But the game quickly turned out to be something else, not just the non-linearity and open-endedness of the gameplay, but also the fact that the deeper you got in the game, the creepier it all got, the scenery, the music, the enemies, everything. The second Norfair area is where I really understood that I wasn't in Kansas anymore (not that I've ever been to Kansas, but you know... ), but what really freaked me out was the last area, Tourian. f---, this scared me to no end as a kid. It took me a while to figure out how to handle the metroids, but even then, I used to progress through the stage very, very, very slowly, just enough to face a single one of those buggers at a time, my heart pounding like crazy with every reluctant step forward. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Another one was Rygar. This one is perhaps a better example at what I'm trying to get at than Metroid, since even though Metroid clearly isn't a horror game, the latter parts were obviously designed to creep you out in an Alien-sense. Rygar was more of an action-RPG, the style of the game was traditional heroic fantasy with mythological vibes. Most of the locations in the game were bright, but still some of them just freaked me the hell out. The best example is, again, the last stage, Ligar's palace (begins at about 1:10 into the video). It has always struck me (and still does) as one of the more original and cool final stages I've seen in this type of game. Its a castle floating in the sky, and what really frightened me about it was the contrast created by the sunny and colourful look of the place on one side, and the creepy, doom-laden music (seriously, just listen to it!) and empty atmosphere on the other. As a kid, you're very receptive to emotional cues in media, and the usual case is that the visual and the aural elements complement each other and give off the same vibe, be it light or dark. In the case of Ligar's palace with it's sunny, warm graphics and batshit ghastly music and enemies, my compass was just spinning uncontrollably, and it freaked me out to no end. I had nightmares about this place, and I still shudder a bit today when I look at videos of it.

Many of these occurrences also fall into the category "not intended to be scary, and not really scary at all, but I was a nerdy and impressionable kid taking my gaming pastime too seriously, and a stage in a game that was very hard to beat could end up becoming scary simply because my heart started to race so furiously every time I got there". I guess there was some sort of associative effect a la Pavlov's dogs at play: I got my ass kicked so many times at some stage that I started to dread that portion of the game and even sweat in advance, like an abused dog for whom you only have to show the cane for it to start to shiver and whine. The first one that comes to mind is the final stage of The Battle of Olympus, Hades' Lair. I swear, by the time I made it to the boss, my heart was pounding so fast I just became deaf, mute, and dumb. It didn't help that the @${€"#!&!!! guy was almost invisible (that video makes it look way too easy). When I think about it, many of the later areas in that game made me feel the same, most notably Phrygia. Only my love for Greek mythology and the fact that it was a damn fine game made me finally finish it.

Another thing that often managed to unnerve me was emptiness (this trick still works: Silent Hill wears the crown in this category). Most games are so focused on action and stuff going down that sometimes, simple stillness and emptiness can make the player anxious. Parts of the final area in Rygar (mentioned above) utilize this, then there are games like Shadowgate, in which there are parts of just passing through vacant rooms accompanied by uncanny, suggestive music that are enough to creep an impressionable kid out. The completely empty buildings before each boss in Fester's Quest also fall into this category.

So, anything that comes to your mind?

I experienced this emotion at the end of Suikoden V.  This was a reaction not to something that a character did but rather to a perspective that I believe the game endorsed.

MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW

At the end of the game, the spirits of most of the prince's adversaries who had fallen during the course of the conflict appear before him and lend him their support.  They glow ethereally and appear to have found peace in death.  In life, these people were traitors at best and monsters at worst.

To my mind, this scene promotes a concept of moral relativism, the idea being that notwithstanding the atrocities that they had committed, what matters ultimately is that they believed their actions were in the best interest of Falena.  I find this idea--and the image of war criminals smiling serenely from the afterlife--offensive.

I suppose that this scene could be interpreted differently, to mean simply that a higher power had forgiven the prince's enemies for their misdeeds, and they supported the prince as a way of atoning for their sins.  I discount this interpretation because of the absence of Salum Barows.  Barows can be distinguished from the others in that he only ever acted in self-interest.

What I take away from this scene is that one's intentions trump the objective consequences of one's actions, and this I find repugnant.

As a kid I would get extremely tense playing Space Invaders. When the last few invaders reached the bottom rows and began speeding back and forth like a typewriter carriage, I would lose all my concentration and miss like crazy.

I remember the first Tomb Raider creeping me out. Some areas were obviously meant to make you jump, but I was always on edge waiting for the next baddie to pop out at me. The sounds were a definite factor there (and lack thereof).

I liked rein's example. A somewhat similar point for me would be cheap sexual thrills. I'm talking silly stuff like the massage mini-game in FFX-2 (not to mention the whole game itself), or the blouse unbuttoning game in Feel the Magic. I'm thinking, "Is this supposed to turn me on, because it just feels...wrong." Then I picture a ten-year-old boy playing that and hearing the "Ooooooh...mmmm...ahhhhh!" I find that creepy.

Castlevania 2 creeped me the hell out when I was young. Not so bad in the daytime, but man...Night time with zombies in the town with the lights out was downright scary. Add to that the general uncertainty about where to go in the game and the very final area (the deserted castle) I don't think any other game in the series has quite recreated that atmosphere nearly as effectively.

Some of the newer breed of 2D fighting games -the bishoujo ones like Melty Blood and Arcana Heart- are kind of strange to see being played competitively by a bunch of dudes in their early to mid 20's. They're hardcore fighters with a lot of depth (unlike more, um casual fighters like Pretty Fighter or Asuka 120%), but something feels odd about their audience.

And I think everyone has had their "Bridget (from Guilty Gear) is a GUY!?" moment.

And both FFVI and Chrono Trigger were great at creating uneasiness towards the end of the games...The Floating Continent, Kefka's Tower, The Undersea Palace, The Black Omen, The Lavos and Kefka final battles. My hands were shaking the whole time during these events the first time playing them. Absolutely perfect atmosphere there and a large reason these games are so classic.

Telin' it like it is, bro! CV2 definitely had some thick atmosphere to boast about (funny how this aspect never comes up when n00bz who think they know the series because they played a few Metrovanias trash this game). In certain locations, the nighttime really made a difference. The towns were really creepy, and the cemeteries as well. One of the scariest NES memories I have is accidentally stumbling upon the trick where you drop a garlic between a couple of the hands coming out of the ground in one of the cemeteries, and the ghost of a woman suddenly appears out of thin air and gives you laurels or something like that. Happened the first time for me during night, and I almost shat myself right there! The deserted castle at the end that you mentioned was also very cool, another example of the "emptiness" trick mentioned above. I've heard a lot of people complaining about this segment (like the AVGN in his review), but they all completely miss the point. The scenario in CV2 is that Dracula is dead and buried and Castlevania in ruins, right? So in the final location, you just descend into his crypt, clear away debris on the way with the holy water, ressurect that clown and put him to sleep again. Its like some scenario from an old Hammer Horror vampire flick, and it just drips doomy ominousness.

Come to think of it, the original Castlevania trilogy for the NES really had some of the best atmosphere in the series, despite the primitive technology. The first games adhered to the horror-inspired roots of the series, something that has sorely been lacking in the post-Symphony era with its more fantasy-inspired design and over-perfumed, metrosexual-styled characters. The horror-inspired, decrepit, ghastly style they went for with the first three games (as well as SCV4) is one of the things that really drew me in and made me a fan of the series. I mean, look at some of the stages in CV3, like the ghost ship, the underground caverns, or the catacombs under Dracula's Castle - they just drip gothic ghastliness and ooze with undead stench. Just compare those stages with some of the Metrovania locations, which look like they were designed and expensively furnished by a kitsch and hip company only yesterday. Grrr, I'm so filled with nerdy indignation that I can't stop typing here!

No, alright, back to the topic. I was deliberately avoiding mention of Castlevania, since the series is inspired by traditional horror motifs to begin with, and I wanted to get away from that. But since it got brought up, some of the more tense gaming moments I've had come from the later stages in Castlevania 1 and 3 (not 2, since it was infinitely easier than the others). When I played CV1 as a kid, the last two stages were pure hell, as was the final stage of CV3. I remember my hands getting so sweaty that the controller slipped of of them during crucial passages. And there was much cursing heard. Good times, indeed!

I thought The Floating Continent was the end of the game the first time I played it, so I was expecting some sort of epic ending after everyone escaped. Instead, the airship gets ripped apart, Celes is completely alone on a deserted island and... wait, the game is still going? There was a sense of pure isolation and a big pit in my stomach when I realized that the game wasn't over and I had to somehow pick up the pieces and make my way around this new, barren and desolate world.

No game has ever made me experience that level of pure destruction and isolation as FFVI. Once you get comfortable and recruit your party, everyone is gone and you're all alone again. The game reboots itself halfway through! And the music? Ugh, it's so perfect. Uematsu used to nail most of the right emotions with his tunes, but the oppression of "The Dark World" fits the world map so well. It's terrifying.

I'm hoping this reboot coming out in October tries to recapture this original spirit of the game.

Was anyone else freaked out after you defeat Mother Brain in Super Metroid only to find out there was more to the fight? Seeing something that ghastly rise from the ground has got to be the stuff of nightmares. And that screech of hers just tops it off all of much like Kefka’s laugh in VI. Then again, it may be a "oh $h!t" moment as well, a topic that might make a decent, related thread.

Also, is it just me or is one's first playthough of Super Metroid always more special than any subsequent playthough? I remember being struck with awe much like DK was with the original (I played the games in backwards ass order: Metroid II, Super Metroid then Metroid.) the first time I played it. The game is still great but as far as recreating magic of that level when replaying... it's the only case where a case of amnesia might come in handy.

Super Metroid in it's entirety was a spooky experience, due in large part to the inorganic, synth driven soundtrack. My particular favorite. I've never heard such a creepy, menacing bassline before. It wasn't a horror game by any means, but that didn't stop it from scaring the everloving shit out of me at age, what, 12? Maybe 13?

The beginning of the World of Ruin, especially with Celes's attempted suicide, actually made me depressed and almost freaked out.

Super Metroid (SNES)

The vertical shaft you have to wall jump back up. Nuff said.

Drakkhen (SNES)

Traveling at night was tense because sometimes the constellations would come down out of the sky and attack you. Never figured out if there was a trick to avoiding it happening. Equally distrubing was the first time you bumped into a grave marker. A giant black Jaguar head attacks your party with its insta-death eye lasers!

Fallout 3 (Xbox360)

I was exploring (scrap-picking) in the abandoned power plant and I kicked a can on the floor beside to the door dividing the office and the main area of the plant. Well, seems one of the feral ghouls was close enough to hear it and trigger a reaction. They let out this rasping-hiss and then rush you. First time I heard it was a "WTF was that?!" moment, and of course with my back to the door I was destroyed by 6 of them before I could turn around and defend myself.

***

There's was some random path I was following on the western edge of the wasteland north. First I see a dead brahmin. Keep walking... A dead yua-guai. Keep walking... 3 dead raiders. Change weapon to rocket launcher, because I knew something had to be bad on this path.

And there is was: a Deathclaw. Mind you I had shitty equipment, this was the first time in Fallout 3 I had seen one, and my previous Fallout 1&2 exps with Deathclaw is that they are powerful but slow as hell.

And I was dead as soon as I saw it. I sqeezed off one rocket but it was already airborne and took my head off with one swipe. Lost 3 hours of game time XD
I whined like a little bitch the first time I foolishly wandered into Old Olmey, too.

Tibia (PC)

Old German MMORPG I once played when I was younger. This is more of a griefer moment, but still horrible when you were on the recieving end (like me).

There was this hole on the new player island where bug mobs would spawn. Problem is that if you go down the hole and do not tie a rope first you cannot climb back out. So griefers/robbers would lead new players (who don't own a rope yet) out to this hole in the ground, push them in the hole, and yell down to them to drop all your possessions in order to be rescued (because robbers can't just outright kill them on the new player island to loot).

So you were left with the decision: drop everything you've earned so far and hope they actually drop the rope or die by the bug mobs that continue to respawn in the bottom of the hole. I chose the latter and quit playing the game.

Oh come on, I love checking in on the cute little Etecoons!

Yeah, the wall jump is somewhat undependable, but I was having a real easy time with it when I played through the game last week for some reason. Beyond that shaft, I don't think the maneuver is really forced on you is it? You can get some items earlier with it (in lieu of the space jump) however.

Back in the SNES days, my mom returned our rental of Prince of Persia because the spike pits and guillotine gate deaths seriously bothered her deeply.

For my own part, nothing I've seen elsewhere in games has unnerved me quite the same way this did (and still does). Some of the Heart of Darkness death animations are uncomforatably vivid, too.

I was between 4th and 5th grade back when that game first came out, and that was also when I got it; as a 9/10 year-old back then, that was definitely a "WTH" moment for me. It still kind of nagged at me, too, as to what it meant, but I rather dismissed it near entirely, for sake of being able to sleep at night.

Looking back on it, I guess the message is, there's not a lot that you have control of in life, so just go with the flow. An understanding of Zen rather helped me sort it out.

Ahh, now THERE'S a game I missed out on, on the PSX; I remember seeing demos of the game, and wanting to play it, but I'd long since forgotten about it, and I didn't get my PSX until 2000, equivocally, the end of the system's life span.

Looking back on it now, the game looks like it's more trial-and-error, and some of the deaths are pretty random, and just a matter of avoiding stepping in the wrong place...

...

As for my own little disturbing moments, there have been times in games when I just wanted to get the hell out of the location I was in, if only because of an oppressive atmosphere, on account of music, sound effects, or graphics. Can't really remember a lot of those, though; I eventually got over a lot of them, that's probably why.

Chrono Cross: Okay, I was already 15 when this game first came out, and I played it, but the theme "Dreams of Another Shore," the overworld theme for the Another World map, just sent rather passive chills down my spine the first few times I heard it, I just wanted to quickly duck into the next location to avoid listening to anymore of it. I quickly got used to it, though and eventually found it relaxing. But still, not "Island of the Dead," not even "Dead Sea, Ruined Tower," or even "Tower of the Stars." It was "Dream of Another Shore" that creeped me out...and I'm kind of embarrassed that I ever was at one point.

No More Heroes: Okay, I've watched movies like Kill Bill and Planet Terror without so much as even flinching at some of the deaths, but I thought some of the non-chalant murders in NMH were just so...disturbing, because they're killed so non-chalantly; they were far more than gratuitous!

For example, the magician fellow (his boss battle theme was "Violectrolysis," can't remember the character's name), Travis doesn't actual kill him after dealing the finishing blow; SPOILER: his assistants tie him up while he's still stumbling about in a daze, and then send a buzz saw right through him! Maybe they weren't actually aware that that was actually a real device, but if they did, that's just messed up!

And then there was Dark Star, the guy with the dragon-shaped laser whip...you meet him, SPOILER: and then he gets quickly punched through the chest by Jeane. It kind of made me think they were making fun of the gothic dark lord character archetype, and that's what pissed me off more. I like my Darth Vaders, and what-ever-else-have-you, damnit! You can't just go doing that to them!

...

X-Men: Remember the old animated TV series back in the 80s or 90s or whatever it was? I didn't have any problems with the show itself, but I DID once have a nightmare in which I was being chased around a destroyed city - along with other people - by The Sentinels. Somehow, I escaped detection by hiding out in a hollowed out tree in the city park...and then I woke up.

LOL, that game got an E? Wow!

As for having games taken away, I remember my friend's mother taking his copy of MK3 away after he showed her Stryker's Bomb Vest Fatality. Funny thing was, that's a pretty mild fatality.

Not sure if this counts but there is a modern-day gaming phenomenon that freaks me out no end - the glitchy physics engine.

You know when you walk into a room and suddenly items fall into place, as if just dropped? Or a corpse that has a constant twitch or wobble? There was one in Fallout 3 where some items were just suspended in the air. I walked towards them and they all dropped, clattering on the ground. Scared the hell out of me.

But the twitchy bodies are the worst. Even in games designed to have scares, nothing they design scares me more than the glitchy physics.

Totally. Can't remember what I was playing, but I killed an enemy before that continued to spurt blood. The animation was stuck and it just kept leaking. Add to that the twitchy, undulating limb that failed to land properly on the ground.

I've seen video of really freaky physics glitches like you mention. One was from a Tomb Raider game--Legend or Anniversary. Laura's face looked like it was trying to turn inside out, and her eyeballs popped full out of her face before retracting again.

Ohh, graphics glitches, y'say?

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/angry … ack/701484

Check out the graphics glitches in Rocky (PS2) - at the end of the video - and tell me those just don't freak you out just the slightest bit?

Damn, I just remembered another one! A track from Landstalker (on the Mega Drive/Genesis) just came up on random in my player, and it reminded me that, although the game's style was mostly traditional cutesy action-JRPG, there were some portions of it that were just downright unsettling and jarred completely with the rest of the game.

The first example is this underground catacomb under the biggest city, Mercator. You have to go down into it to solve a bunch of puzzles written on ancient gravestones and fight undead monsters and such in order to get some item (don't remember the specifics right now). Some of the puzzles as well as the descriptions of the people interred there are just absurd in a Lynchian sense, the music is creepy as hell, but I think what disturbed me the most about the place was that it was located just underneath one of the busiest streets in the capital. Like, not deep in the bowels of the Earth beneath the city or in some distant forest or wilderness, but just a few feet under a bustling marketplace. You just walk into a building, go down a few stairs, and you're there. The suddenness of it just creeped me out: one second I'm on a typical, sunny fantasy-RPG street with cute music and characters, the next second, BAM!, this place hits. If you wanna talk "horror in broad daylight", RE5 ain't got nuthin' on Landstalker, haha.

There's another place towards the end of the game that also freaked me out. Its just before the last labyrinth. The last labyrinth is a gigantic underground maze built by some greedy ancient emperor to protect all his riches. It was apparently built by a tribe of dwarfs, and what happened when they finished building it? Why, the dick of an emperor didn't want any secrets about his labyrinth leaked, so he just sealed up all the entrances to the dwarf village, and since dwarfs (apparently) live a long time, the poor buggers have been stuck down there with no one to interact with until the hero arrives. What made the place really creepy was that the dwarfs had completely lost any joy in life, so they're completely apathetic, and together with the desolate atmosphere of the place and the creepy-ass music, it really gets under your skin. I just had to get out of there as fast as possible.

Man, Landstalker is such a great game, talking about it makes me want to pick it up again. For my money, best 16-bit action-RPG, every bit as good as the likes of Zelda 3 and Secret of Mana, but with a lot more character, humour, and wackiness to it.