There's another genre of scary that most people don't consider, though. It's when something is scary in a video game that's not meant to be scary. You know, something E-rated you played when you were six that sent you diving for the Power Off button. Some of the games on this list are T-rated or received E10+ ratings when surveyed at a later release, but for the most part these are all ventures for Everyone. And they unnerve us.
So in no particular order, here are ten scary things in video games that aren't supposed to be scary. Enjoy the frayed nerves it has caused those of us who have played them.
#1: Mysterious wind (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series). The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series is a spin-off of Pokemon that branches into the roguelike genre. Each game is composed of "Mystery Dungeons," which, in typical roguelike fashion, are broken down into various floors that are randomly generated, meaning each expedition into one is going to be a little different. Your goal in each dungeon is to find the stairs leading to the next floor until you reach the end, where you may sometimes fight a boss.
While each Mystery Dungeon is connected to a small, loose overworld, the real action takes place in the dungeons themselves. Everything is completely turn-based; you take an action (including an ordinary step) first, your partner(s) take an action second, and all the enemies act third. Dungeons being laid out on grids makes movement a bit simpler.
What you're never told upfront, however, is that you have a limited amount of time to spend on each floor. It's usually a pretty generous amount, but the longer you stick around before reaching the stairs, the sooner you'll get a message that, for me at least, shot my larynx into my cranial cavity, where it refused to come down voluntarily for the next ten minutes or so. Spending too many turns on any given floor will spontaneously silence the music, blow a gentle breeze across the screen, and the game will give you an ominous "...Something's stirring." What's stirring? A Pokemon? A monster? An unseen force to right the wrongs of nature? What!?!
The music returns soon after, making it feel like the moment in a horror movie where the main character witnesses something terrifying about to happen and everybody else is too busy laughing it up to notice. The first time I received this message, I thought the boss was getting tired of waiting for me to come to him and decided to take the fight to me early. What the heck was I supposed to think?
And from this point on, you'll frequently receive more messages on how this...thing is getting closer and closer. You don't know who it is or what it wants, and unfortunately, your special set of skills isn't going to help anyone here. The only thing that can save you is a prompt field trip to the stairs, where the effect resets itself. Of course, you don't know that the first time through. All you know is that some sort of demonic entity from The Ring or The Grudge is coming for your head.
If you take too long to reach the stairs, the game gives you one final message and simply whisks you out of the dungeon as if you'd been defeated. This means you lose your money, most of your belongings, and, of course, your progress. Although I haven't tested this in person, I suspect it's a lot like Jack the Ripper with a butcher knife stalking you to a back alley, threatening you and your loved ones, taking everything you own, and leaving. You just have that violated feeling like the next course of action to take is sitting in a corner and crying.
Gameplay-wise, the mysterious wind is also a bad idea. Your basic survival already hinges on how well-fed you can keep yourself; why add a thoroughly-creepy time limit to each floor and then not bother to tell any of the players about it? It's particularly aggravating in the bonus dungeon Meteor Cave because of how poorly-designed the dungeon is in the first place. You're only allowed to bring three items with you, and the stairs only appear when you've killed the wraith of Deoxys. Oh, did I mention there are twenty floors, and all of them are huge? With only three items and only one to be equipped, you run a high risk of either starving to death or taking too long to find the wraith. Or both. Should Chunsoft continue with the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series, this unintentional nod to the horror genre should be done away with. It's bad for gameplay and it's inappropriate.
#2: The Dead Hand (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time). Yeah, a lot of you probably knew this monstrosity was going to make the list.
For those Ocarina of Time players who either haven't played the game long enough or aren't familiar with the names of enemies, the Dead Hand is not one of the giant shriveled hands that try to drop on you or ram you. No, those are creepy, but they're not the Dead Hand.
The Dead Hand is a mini-boss that shows up in both the Bottom of the Well and the Shadow Temple. These two dungeons are notable for being starkly different from the rest of the game. Ocarina of Time is generally a lighthearted experience, so the torture chambers, execution devices, blood-spattered walls, zombies (otherwise known as ReDeads), and skeletons propped up against the walls feel a little out of place.
In both of these dungeons, you will eventually enter a room where a bunch of long, white, clawed hands extend out of the floor and stretch toward the ceiling. When you step near one, it suddenly lunges out and latches onto your face, forcing you to stand still and struggle to break free. And out of the corner of your eye, something white, lumpy, and stained with blood bursts from the ground, making an unsettling waddle to where you're immobilized.
Let's back up and assess the situation. The dungeons themselves are creepy and isolated from the world as you know it, already providing a point to the horror. Then you enter a room where a bunch of white hands are sticking out of the ground. You've never seen anything like this in the game before - and at this point, you've probably beaten 70% of the game. Then one grabs you, and while you can't move, something else you've never seen before appears and makes it clear it wants to invite you for dinner.
This white, lumpy, blood-stained creature is the Dead Hand, and it is notorious for being one of the scariest aspects of the usually happy-go-lucky Legend of Zelda series. There are just so many things wrong with the Dead Hand - the way it moves, the deep grunts it constantly emits, all the freaking blood in an E-rated game. It also plays on the classic (and effective) horror trope of watching your terrifying death slowly come toward you while you can't do anything about it.
And the scariest part might also be its face. Its eyes are huge and completely black, set above a tooth-lined mouth that stretches unnaturally wide like a snake's, the better to swallow a Link whole. Going further, the Dead Hand is a perfect example of the uncanny valley theory, which suggests that something that almost looks like a human but clearly isn't one is much scarier than most other intimidating things. The Dead Hand has a near-human head, but, well...butchered into a monstrous visage. Yep, the uncanny valley works.
Another large part of the Dead Hand's scariness is just how out-of-place it feels in Ocarina of Time. It shouldn't exist. It doesn't gel with the rest of the game. It's an aberration. And yet there it is, staring you down and threatening to bite your head off. It's very much like a monster on television crawling out of the screen and attacking you. It's just not supposed to be there!
Incidentally, you can also kind of cheat and set a bomb right above the Dead Hand (which can be seen using the Lens of Truth) before the battle to bring it up without the hassle of being grabbed by a tall white hand. The first time through, though, you're probably just going to run forward and get yourself trapped.
#3: Baron Samedi (GoldenEye 007). Baron Samedi is a character some GoldenEye 007 players may never encounter if they're not dedicated to beating the game 100%. He's located in the bonus stage Egyptian, which is unlocked only after beating every other level on 00 Agent difficulty. The premise is simple and obviously did not require years of deliberation on a cold mountaintop to conjure up: Baron Samedi, a villain from the Bond movie Live and Let Die, has somehow returned from the grave (a common occurrence, I hear) and challenged Bond to a rematch in the el-Saghira temple in Egypt. Not without a reward, of course; Samedi has the legendary Golden Gun hidden away within the bowels of the temple, and it's Bond's to keep if he can find it.
The level only has two objectives, and you can tell how spooky things are going to get when the list lets you known in advance it's not even sure you can kill Baron Samedi. The first objective is to locate and retrieve the Golden Gun, which, in this game, lets you kill almost anyone in one hit (a testament to its original wielder, Scaramanga, who was so talented that he only needed one bullet to finish his enemies). This in itself is a daunting task, as after finding its room, you need to walk across the tiles in a certain order to lower the glass case surrounding the gun and prevent a bunch of turrets from blowing you to kingdom come. No, I'm not sure how you're supposed to figure that out aside from trial and error. It's been years since I played the game, and it's probably not coming to the Wii's Virtual Console.
But the real spookiness comes from Baron Samedi himself. When you enter the room he's in, he lets loose with a deep, intimidating laugh and starts firing at you. He takes a good bit to bring down, and he's the only enemy in the level that doesn't die in one hit from the Golden Gun. Then you finally kill him and his body fades away. Mission accomplished. Let's go grab some martinis and femme fatales.
Only Baron Samedi's not dead, as his subsequent laugh tells you. He's just warped to another location in the temple, and you must track him down and kill him...again. Things get even creepier when you "kill" him the second time; the lights go out, forcing you to find your way to his new spot with little visibility. The third time's the charm, though, and despite his eerie laughing, he goes down for good.
GoldenEye 007 was a game I grew up with, and it was probably the video game that showed up most on our television screen, especially with how many versus matches were held between my siblings and I. I'd seen my older brothers clear the level before, but never tried it myself. One day, little seven/eight/nine/whatever-year-old me decided to try the level himself. As soon as I entered the level, Baron Samedi laughed. I quit on the spot.
Admittedly, GoldenEye 007 is a T-rated game, so you can't really blame it for the suspense. I eventually beat the level myself (though never without cheats) and proved Baron Samedi was no match for Bond dual-wielding a couple of rocket launchers with infinite ammo. Yeah, what better way to face your fears than with invincibility and a watch stuffed with every weapon in the game?
In conclusion, I'm going to give you a little spoiler. Baron Samedi's not dead. You never killed him. As Bond calmly walks out the temple, the guy runs up behind him, uttering his creepy laugh and baring his chest as if to say, "S'up, Jimmy, I'm still here!"
#4: Blurp (Yoshi's Story). Yoshi's Story was the spiritual successor to the Super Nintendo legend Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. It had basically the same style of gameplay, only instead of surviving tenacious onslaughts of enemies and saving the brother of a future hero, your goal was to eat fruit. In order to make you happy. Which would overrule the depression covering the land. Or something.
In all seriousness (if that's possible), Yoshi's Story doesn't involve Mario or Luigi at all - hence the title Yoshi's Story. Bowser is still a little tyke, and feeling jealous of the Yoshis living joyfully on their island, steals their Super Happy Tree, which gives him eternal happiness but plunges the island into despair. To add insult to injury, he casts a curse on the island to turn it into a giant storybook. Only six little Yoshis who were still in their eggs at the time escaped the curse, so unwilling to settle for living with a bunch of 2D moping dinosaurs, they head out across the island to defeat Baby Bowser and take their Super Happy Tree back. And yes, the goal of each level is to eat thirty pieces of fruit. That's it. A select few levels feature bosses, but your primary objective is to stuff your tummy.
With only twenty-four levels and extremely simplified gameplay, it's no wonder Yoshi's Story was met with mostly negative reviews, especially coming after the classic Yoshi's Island. It was also viewed as childish (nothing but hearts, flowers, and fruit all around) and insultingly easy, as the trickier portions of each level could be bypassed entirely if you found enough fruit early enough.
But there's one level that sticks out like a sore thumb and defies both of those predispositions. The Story Mode is segmented into six "pages," and each page comes with four courses. Beating a course in one page automatically advances you to the next page. The number of Special Hearts gained in the previous level (a total of three) dictates how many of the next world's levels will be available for you to choose. I'm referring to Page 4, Course 2, Jungle Puddle, one of the only levels in the game that genuinely scares or at least unnerves its players.
The defining feature of this level is the Big Blurps, giant fish dwelling in the water that enjoy the taste of baby dinosaurs. Sure, they look all cute at first, but you'll be singing a different tune (one probably filled with swear words) when they leap out of the water viciously and attempt to swallow Yoshi whole. If the little lizard gets caught, it's instant death.
Kind of unusual in a game where your primary goal is to stroll through each level and eat fruit, isn't it?
This kind of phobia goes back to enemies like Bubba from Super Mario 64 (who I also considered putting on this list), who chase players within their vicinities and spell instant death to whoever touches them. It's like the nightmare where you're running from some monster, and you just can't get away fast enough.
There's also a special kind of Big Blue Blurp that tries a more tactical method of spraying Yoshi with water from beneath, potentially carrying him into the drink where the big fish can have its meal without much of a fight. These are less intimidating than their red cousins, but they still mark Jungle Puddle as one of the trickiest courses in the game.
#5: Precious the Poodle (Army Men: Sarge's Heroes). Alright, who here has played Sarge's Heroes? Anyone? No...? Oh, okay, didn't think so.
Sarge's Heroes was never that popular, nor was it very well-received. In truth, it's kind of a generic game where you play as the intrepid plastic soldier Sergeant Hawk, nicknamed "Sarge," and blast through hordes of tan troops to thwart a dastardly villain who goes by General Plastro. You don't really need to know a whole lot more than that, although it might be worth watching a playthrough online to see the humorous animated cutscenes.
The final level of the PS1 version in particular is poorly designed, and it's clear the developers didn't know how to create a challenge other than "shove as many overpowered enemies into the same area as you can and see what happens." Mortars rain down from tan soldiers up above - soldiers that are almost impossible to kill - and each mortar has the capacity to end you in one hit. It's also impossible to predict where they'll land, and the explosion is instantaneous. So basically, it's a frantic run to the finish line, blowing away dozens of tan troops and praying you don't explode. It's terrible.
Sarge's Heroes occasionally employs living animals as a threat, and the final level sends you a rather unsettling one in the form of Precious the Poodle. It's supposed to be an average, cute, fluffy poodle (life-sized to dwarf Sarge), but the wooden animation and creepy graphical design make it feel like one of those horror B-movies with special effects so crappy they're scary. The instruction manual labels her as "one of the most dangerous enemies in the game," and rightfully so, as she takes up a lot of space and deals a lot of damage in a fairly short time frame. She's also invincible. That's just another reason to give her a wide berth.
The game isn't popular and the version of each system is different, so it's hard to find a video or image that gives the disturbing impression most players will feel from Precious. This is one time where I'll leave the hunting up to you. If you type in something along the lines of "Sarge's Heroes Playstation Final Level" on YouTube, you should probably be able to catch a glimpse of the poodle.
#6: The Haunted Piano (Super Mario 64). Bubba may not have made the cut, but another infamous scare tactic sure did.
Super Mario 64 is not a scary game. That much is clear. With all the bright colors, goofy enemies, and the cliché premise, it's hard to take anything in too much seriousness. Which is why the average player has dropped their guard to the floor, making them all the more vulnerable when the right scare tactic comes along.
For those of you honestly not familiar with how Super Mario 64 works, I'll summarize it for you. Ever played Super Mario Sunshine or Super Mario Galaxy? Same basic principle. Bowser kidnapped Peach 'cause he's evil, and it's up to you to save her in order to get the cake you were promised (leave your Portal jokes at the door, people). Bowser has also stolen the 120 Power Stars of Peach's Castle, leaving the place defenseless. In order to advance up the castle to challenge the Koopa King to his face, you must enter the 15 worlds in the castle and complete missions therein to gain Power Stars.
Most worlds are accessed by jumping into magic paintings, but Big Boo's Haunt is unique in that it's the only world you can see while still inside the castle. After a certain point in the game, the courtyard becomes infested with ghosts, a problem that never clears up before the credits roll. A particularly big Boo carries a cage with a miniature mansion inside him, so by defeating him, you get to turn microscopic and enter the cage...into Big Boo's Haunt.
Big Boo's Haunt really isn't scary, either. It's just a collection of "horror" themes like giant eyeballs (lovingly dubbed "Mr. I") and falling bridges. Even the little ones aren't going to scare at something this tame.
Except for one part on the ground floor of the mansion. The only two notable things in this room are a piano and a red coin, inconveniently located behind said piano. Collecting eight of these red coins produces a Star, so you're going to have to get it eventually. So, not expecting anything scary in the slightest, you run behind the piano and grab the red coin. The piano then grows teeth and starts snapping at you furiously, creating a loud sound like someone's banging on the keys.
Cliché? Yeah. Frightening? Yeah. In all honesty, it's something you get used to pretty quickly - piano sprouts teeth and tries to kill me. Got it memorized. I have no problem with it these days, just like many of the things on this list became less scary with time. But at the time, who the heck was expecting it? By the time you could even be thinking, "Gee, that piano sure looks suspicious," it's already snapping at your face.
It also takes away three pieces of your eight-piece health meter with one hit. Few other things in the game can deal that much damage. Just take your red coin and go.
#7: The Shadow Queen (Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door). This one's got a very heavy amount of spoilers in it, so if you intend to play the game but haven't beaten or seen the end of The Thousand-Year Door, I'd recommend bookmarking this for later and skipping ahead to #8.
The Paper Mario series takes off of the classic Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars for the Super Nintendo. As you may have guessed, it's an RPG. It's also made almost completely from paper. Everything from the characters to the landmarks to the items are composed of two dimensions. Mario's a pretty sturdy guy, though, so being made of paper doesn't bother him at all.
The only real explanation you're given as to why everything is made of paper is in the beginning of the first two games, where it vaguely implies the whole game is being read like a storybook. It's not an important plot point, and it won't come up again. Do not trouble your mind with it.
For the most part, Paper Mario is standard RPG fare. You traverse an overworld, solving puzzles, collecting items, and talking to characters to progress the story to a dungeon, where the whole formula gets condensed a bit. Touching an enemy starts a battle, one that's actually pretty unique. By pressing a button with good timing, you can achieve benefits like extra damage caused to enemies or decreased damage taken.
The Thousand-Year Door is the second game in the series and, while still lighthearted and goofy, has a darker, more intricate plot than the first game. Peach has been kidnapped - again - but by a strange group calling themselves the X-Nauts. They're also looking for the seven Crystal Stars scattered across a foreign land, but to what end?
It turns out the Crystal Stars were used in sealing away an ancient demon behind the Thousand-Year Door buried underneath the central town of Rogueport. The seal is set to break in a thousand years, and guess what? It's year one thousand. The X-Nauts want to revive the demon a little early, though, as they believe doing so will subject the demon to their will. The Crystal Stars are also capable of sealing the demon away again, something they don't want Mario to do.
In a brilliantly-paced game, Mario and friends, who gather all the Crystal Stars first, are tricked into opening the Thousand-Year Door early and descend through its depths to face a brutal onslaught of boss after boss. The icing on the cake, of course? The demon is at the end, and the X-Nauts are successful in reviving it. Does it want to do their bidding? Of course not!
Just like the Dead Hand, this demon, the Shadow Queen, seems completely out-of-place in a Mario game. The game's had its tender moments and epic fights, but the Shadow Queen just defies all expectations and sends chills down your spine. She's not goofy, unlike EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE GAME. She doesn't possess a shred of humor. When she awakens, the world goes dark, and all the people you helped are once again trembling, fearing for their lives. Pretty deep crap for a Mario game.
Queenie's also understandably one of the toughest enemies in the game, although still not a major concern to anyone who levels properly and takes advantage of the game mechanics. Her power will probably kill you the first time around, though, and you'll have to sit through a boatload of cutscenes all over again if you lose. The haunting music also sets the mood for this being the final battle with something that shouldn't exist. It's not "epic," but it's haunting.
In addition, she initially possesses Princess Peach and turns her into some dark-clothed woman from a fanfic. Possession, once again, is pretty deep for a Mario game. Not goofy, run-of-the-mill possession, but true demonic possession. This is what Peach was kidnapped for; to serve as a vessel for the Shadow Queen.
Oh, and she also eats your audience at some point. Unlike the first time this happens in the game, they're never seen again. Your audience is used to grant you star power, which, when saved up, can be used to execute special maneuvers. So for the moment, you're left with no audience to call on, because the Shadow Queen dragged them all into the abyss. Reeeeeal comforting.
The Shadow Queen can be viewed in the video below from the beginning to about 24:00. The rest is the ending and credits.
#8: The SA-X (Metroid Fusion). It's pretty common for video game heroes to have some sort of dark side that gives them grief at one point or another. Dark Link from The Legend of Zelda comes to mind, and even Doopliss in the aforementioned The Thousand-Year Door fits the bill. Samus has to be real tired of it by now, though; the SA-X is chronologically only the second doppelganger to get in her way.
Metroid Fusion is currently set at the end of the Metroid timeline, and it's unclear if any games will come that take place later. After destroying all Metroids in the universe (save one, which sacrificed itself to help Samus in the last game), Samus's troubles with the Space Pirates and those eerie parasites called Metroids seem to be over. Her grand adventures now consist of protecting scientists as they descend to planet SR388 to collect life-forms and study them.
While on one such mission, Samus is attacked by some sort of cafeteria jell-o that absorbs itself into her Power Suit. She doesn't think much of it until, on her way back to the Biologic Space Laboratories, she goes unconscious and her ship drifts into an asteroid belt and explodes.
Tough day at work, Samus?
But thankfully, her ship's escape pod ejected just in time, and she's now in the hands of the people at B.S.L.. Her chance of survival is still less than 1%, so she's not progressed very far. One of the scientists realizes the jell-o parasites, now called the X, used to be devoured by the Metroids on their home planet SR388, but ever since Samus killed all of the latter, the X have multiplied enormously. By injecting what little Metroid DNA they have left into her, her X cells are vaporized, and her life is saved.
What she wakes up into turns out to be a nightmare. Parts of her Power Suit had to be surgically removed, scattering her abilities across the station in classic Metroid fashion. As it happens, X absorb DNA from their hosts and use it to turn into clones of the host. Then they reproduce asexually, and you have lots of problems on your hands.
Long story short, B.S.L. is in chaos and Samus is the only human survivor. Her new Metroid DNA makes it impossible for X to affect her again - actually, they just heal her and restore her weapons now. As if all this wasn't crazy enough, we soon discover the biggest threat aboard the ship: Samus's infected Power Suit parts have cloned themselves into a twisted version of her at full power, and this thing, dubbed the SA-X (Samus Aran-X) haunts you throughout the game.
The premise alone is scary. You've lost all your abilities, but as Samus puts it, "The SA-X is [her], only heartless." It can kill you very quickly should you stumble into each other. Now don't misunderstand. This isn't Clock Tower, and you are not actively pursued by this thing in actual gameplay.
The real scariness comes from its presentation every time. It enters the scene during predetermined parts of the game. The first few times it happens, it enters into the room behind you, forcing you to find a spot and hide before you become toast. If you are spotted, you have to run like heck until you lose the SA-X or find a decent hiding spot and it gives up on looking for you. You can't even hurt the SA-X until the final battle, and it can kill you quite easily. You're just going to want to run. And jump a lot.
Later encounters actually force you to confront this thing, but again, you can't hurt it, so your only choice is to run. You can freeze it in place briefly using Ice Missiles, but the effect won't last for long, and the rugged terrain usually reproduces the horror movie effect of tripping over everything you come across.
You do get to defeat this thing at the end of the game, and oh, is it so satisfying after all the close encounters from before. The SA-X's payment took a long time in coming, but it's finally here, and you're going to enjoy it. Of course, the final battle itself is perfectly difficult (and I do mean perfect), so victory won't always come easy. Here's to one of the scariest (and most fun) things you will ever find in a Metroid game.
Oh, and a bit of trivia for you: you eventually discover the SA-X has been asexually reproducing just like any other X, and now there are at least ten of your evil cousins running around the ship. Good luck with that happy thought.
#9: The "Get out" voice (Donkey Kong 64). Looking back, the developer company Rare made some absolute legends back in the day. Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, GoldenEye 007, Killer Instinct, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and essentially every Donkey Kong game from Country to 64 all came from Rare. Here's another bit of trivia for you: the "C-C-C-Combo breaker!" meme used across the internet today came from Killer Instinct. You're welcome.
Rare was never exactly known for its subtle sense of humor, and at times it was just flat-out inappropriate (Conker's Bad Fur Day being a perfect example). Still, it was this sense of humor that defined Rare to an extent and made us love their games.
Donkey Kong 64 was the child produced when Banjo-Kazooie and Super Mario 64 got together and had a baby. It controls very similarly to the latter, but the gameplay is derived heavily from the former, with little bits of Donkey Kong Country thrown in there for good measure. The evil King K. Rool, some sort of big crocodile tyrant ruling the Kremlin Krew, has kidnapped Donkey Kong's friends and taken over the island. But worst of all, he's messed with DK's Golden Banana hoard, an act that usually spells a violent death for the perpetrator.
The game is incredibly loose and doesn't follow much of a story, preferring to let you experience the game at your own pace. Each level is attached to a different point in a sizeable overworld which has its own secrets to explore. The levels themselves are jam-packed with content to collect, from Golden Bananas to ordinary bananas to new abilities to, of course, your Kong buddies. If you're the kind of gamer who just likes to get to the end of the story without any distractions, you're probably not going to be taken with this game, as replay value is what defines it.
In some levels, you can enter a building and earn a prize of some sort, like a coveted Golden Banana. It's in these buildings that Rare decides to show its peculiar sense of humor, and it's pretty safe to say it emotionally scarred most of us that played it in our childhoods. After acquiring the prize, a crosshairs appears out of nowhere and locks onto your body, and a deep, menacing voice growls, "Get out." And if you don't leave the building within the time limit, you die.
To anyone over the age of fifteen, this is probably going to come across as more goofiness. Startling, yes, but fun all the same. To an eight-year-old, it's a nightmare come to life, as anything with a deep voice and a sniper rifle is liable to do. You don't know exactly what's going to happen the first time around, and it's sometimes easy to get lost on your way back out, so the timer's going further and further down, and whatever the guy with the deep voice is going to do is getting closer and closer....
#10: The Sinistar (Sinistar). The final game on the list is also the oldest on the list. Meet ol' Grandpa Sinistar, an arcade classic that distanced itself from the normal space shooter genre in just about every way.
I actually debated whether I should put the Sinistar on this list, as I'm not sure whether the game it came from was intended to be scary or not. For now, I'm under the impression it was supposed to be very suspenseful, but not a horror game. We're going with that for now, and I don't feel like thinking anything else up for the #10 slot at this point.
No real background is given on what the Sinistar is or why you're trying to kill it. You control a small fighter ship in the reaches of space, and your goal is to collect crystals by shooting nearby planetoids. Each crystal makes a Sinibomb, and the Sinibombs are the only thing capable of destroying the Sinistar.
So what is the Sinistar, exactly? Well, let's just say you're not the only one busy harvesting crystals. Enemy workers can take them and use them to piece together a giant warship with an animated face, a loud voice, and a dark sentience. Your goal is to gather as many Sinibombs as you can before this weapon of doom, the Sinistar, is completed and comes to obliterate you. Every time you die, you'll come to a screen showing you how complete the Sinistar is, including how much of it you may have blown off while it chased you around. It's a war of attrition, and just a heads-up, the Sinistar always wins. The game continues and gets harder until you die and it's just the Sinistar. You've only bought time for whatever it is you were trying to do.
As if a giant warship with a demonic face wasn't enough to perturb you, it also talks to you. You'll know the Sinistar is complete when a voice announces, "Beware. I live." It's also very fond of calling you a coward. One of its trademark voice clips is its loud roar, which still chills me to the bone to this day. It's inhuman, which is expected from a living spaceship, but that's the point. You don't really know what this thing is. Remember the uncanny valley theory? Works here, too.
It's also not subtle about showing itself. When it's complete, it comes zooming through the space field and eventually onto your screen, roaring and insisting you're a coward. The game doesn't just pause and slowly let it fade into view. One second he's not there, the next he is, and you'd better pilot your ship like a pro if you don't want to wind up in pieces.
Also of note is how he destroys you. He doesn't shoot you with lasers, ram you with his hull, or send you spiraling into a black hole. He EATS you. That's just how hardcore he is. And you know what? It works. It really, really works. No lasers needed.
I know this was a long article, but there's just so much to tell about these enigmas in video games. So what did you think of these ten scary things in video games that aren't meant to be scary? What else scared you in a lighthearted or fairly neutral game? Be sure to leave a comment, and I'll see you (or write to you?) in the next article.
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