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Episode 648: The First Games That Scared Us (Patreon)

Published:
2024-10-28 11:00:09
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Nadia: Happy Halloween! When is a horror game a not-horror game? Pardon the tortured phrasing, but the answer is thankfully elegant: When the game scares you out of your pantaloons. Even the friendliest, most gentle video game can feel like a screaming read of the Necromonicon if you're a kid with an overactive imagination. But as Nadia discovers alongside her special guests Ash Paulsen (of Good Vibes Gaming) and Victor Hunter (of The Axe of the Bloodgod podcast), there are more than a few cheeky developers who purposefully slipped some devious little scares into otherwise innocuous games. And sometimes the ghost in the machine itself can make you see and hear the language of demons. Man, video games are supposed to be relaxing, not bridges to the netherworld.

Edits by Greg Leahy. Art by Nick Wanserski.

07:57 - Santana ft. Rob Thomas: "Smooth"

16:40 - Game Boy Camera: Run! Run! Run! Menu

27:31 - Chrono Trigger (SNES): Red Time Gate

34:56 - Banjo-Kazooie: Clanker's Cavern (Deep Underwater)

44:18 - Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards: 02 Battle | Castlevania II: Simon's Quest: Castle

54:44 - Super Mario Bros. 3: World 8 Map

1:03:14 - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: The Silly Pink Rabbit

1:14:25 - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Shadow Temple

1:26:23 - Breath of Fire II (SNES): God of Decadence

1:35:25 - Final Fantasy XI: Vision of Abyssea: Scarlet Skies, Shadowed Plains

Closing - Megami Tensei: Hellfire & Rotting Sea of Flames

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Comments

Wood Duck [Legacy Edition]

Ski. Free. Yeti. (OoT and Shadow Temple also way up there for those of us who were ten in 1999)

Tentomon4

The "Fire Birds" from Hexen that I watch a friend's dad play.

TheLupineOne

Two terrifying childhood gaming memories come to mind. The first was Spyro the Dragon on the PlayStation; in the High Caves level, I came across a cave filled with terrifying giant metal-plated scorpion-like bugs. I got jumpscared! In 1998! And of course, being big AND metal-plated, there was no way to defeat them by convention means (you had to carry a supercharge to said cave to defeat them). Number two was Majora's Mask. Not the game per se (as mentioned earlier, I was a PlayStation kid), but the boxart, the publicity, and the titular mask itself. My local independent video game shop (now long since gone) had a Majora's mask sticker on the door or window to advertise the game, and the ghastly visage of the mask with its big scary eyes scared the heck out of 9-year-old me.

Patrick McClafferty

I forget what the first game to terrify me (might have been Curly's scream as he reacted to the oysters going away in the NES 3 Stooges game). The earliest that really sticks out in my mind is not a game but a logo (because of the game that followed it). In 1996 I would visit my cousins who were my neighbors to play their Playstation. The main game they were playing was Resident Evil so just the cubes and lasers forming the Capcom logo terrified me for several years anticipating what came after. Think I got over it by the time I got my own Playstation and my copy of Megaman Legends.

John Simon

"What has to be wrong in your heart to hate Tails?!" Well he's kind of a precocious dork, like the Chadley character in FF 7 Remake. Just asking for an instant wedgie the second he turns every conversation towards technology. Run along now, kiddo. Anyway - end areas of Earthbound chilled me to the bone in ways I can't quite explain. Giygas is 'attacking from "the past" '. So in an impossible hope-against-hope effort, our soul is transferred to a robot and sent to "The Past" '. But instead of ''Pre-civilization" you wake up in a gray limbo that must be impossibly cold, like a few degrees above absolute zero. This place ain't earth. What the hell is even going on here? And inexplicably, Pokey turns up, completely intact and acting as a kind of Renfield to a formless mindless cosmic horror. It'd be even more spooky if the game didn't go the 'everything returned to normal' route - "Their souls returned to their bodies in the present time and they all lived happily ever after" Instead "After defeating Giygas, Ness and friends had no way to return and lingered for a few hours to grapple with their own deaths until the batteries in their robot bodies ran out. But, despite falling out of history, the planet survived." I guess I like the idea of the hero being drawn into a world where the laws of physics "aren't all there" and operates under its own internal logic to accomplish some unexplained goal. Say - did I mention I really like Twin Peaks Season 3?

Rasheen Jordan

The drowning music in Sonic was the first thing to scare me as a kid and it’s still terrifying.

littleterr0r

Please do something on Omori, my favorite game of the last few years. Maybe I'll pay for the tier where you get to pick a topic for an episode once that game is old enough.

Thomas Anderle

Watson in the old First Person Sherlock Holmes games scared me the most. He always teleports behind you so that you cant Lose him. Wenn you turn around Spooky Watson is always there

CapNChris

I haven't listened to the episode /yet/, but I wanted to share my own. The first game that legitimately scared me was System Shock 2, which was a fantastic RPG-esque FPS set on a spaceship with sci-fi/horror/cyberpunk themes. I played it in the early 2000s in the basement with the lights off to add to the fright. It's all the more remarkable that the game accomplished this at 640x480 resolution (I believe). They did a remake very recently, which I hope to get to eventually.

Joe

The pinkie demon in e1m4 in the dark maze near the beginning made me jump off my seat when I played it in '93.

Chris (not Benoit)

I feel so old - the first game that scared me was the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game for Mattel’s Intellivision. I remember playing in our dark basement and had a few jump scares when I found the dragon when wandering around inside the mountains.

PurpleComet

Like the drowning animation in Mario 64, the animation for when Mario sinks in quicksand is disturbing. His eyes are the last thing you see before the sand swallows him. First game that scared me is a toughie. At church growing up the preacher railed against the "occult" influences in pop culture, so anything that mentioned magic was liable to get my heart racing.

Wood Duck [Legacy Edition]

In addition to the SkiFree yeti being a terror for six year olds (for anyone who was a kid in the 90s and had a family Windows 3.1 machine) I'll spruik a childhood favourite of mine. Ultima The Savage Empire is a stand-alone Ultima game set in a jungle lost-world of primitive human tribes, buried cities, lizard people, insect warriors and of course WILD DINOSAURS. While following paths between villages or just stumbling blindly around the jungle you might miss a warning in the text feed saying "You hear something moving to the east!" and all of a sudden the wonderful, peaceful ambient jungle music is interrupted with the terrifying opening sting of the SOMETHING NEARBY music. Over and over and over I was jumpscared by this sudden switch as a ten year old. Would there be a panther, a t-rex or just a lowly snake lurking a screen or two away? Mainly I posted this in the hope someone might be inspired to try The Savage Empire, I still think it's the most accessible old Ultima game. It's mostly self contained, has a classic 16 bit grid based sort of look and you can craft black powder grenades then throw them at a Gigantopithecus! It's fully FREE on GoG. Just don't over-read the manual, they all seemed to be full on walkthroughs back then which rather spoils the game.

Daniel Worthintendo

G'day all, First game that scared the hell out of me was Aliens on the C64, the UK version. The game was a very early first person shooter that has you exploring a huge maze of rooms, you had 6 playable characters and when one died they were gone. As you explore the rooms, sometimes you would enter one and then your motion detector would go off signalling a Xeno or a face hugger was in the room with you. You then need to try to slowly move the joystick to scroll around the room, find the Xeno and kill it before it got to you. Just entering the rooms and hearing that sound would have me freaking out and not able to play anymore despite how much I loved the series as a kid. just the speed of the cursor and once you found the Xeno and saw it slowly moving towards you and that beeping sound getting faster and faster gave huge nope energy to 8 year old me. Never finished the game, don't think I made it more than 20 rooms in and usually ran our of ammo and got killed. Anyway first time commenting, great episode guys, keep up the awesome work as always.

James Krusling

I have kind of a weird one that nobody has mentioned yet…I rented Splatterhouse 3 years ago from the video store, and there’s a timer that counts down in each level. If you don’t finish a level before it hits a certain point, nothing happens to you but you may get a cutscene showing something happening to one of your family members. Look up “Jennifer becomes a mindless beast” and you’ll see why I was scarred for life!