Top 5: Spooky Gaming Moments

by Kaes Delgrego { Oct 27th 2008 at 10:50AM }

In order to survive on these tough tubes, one usually needs to develop a biting sense of sarcasm. You know, where we make a statement and then italicize the second part of the sentence to indicate that this is where the funny is. When you work in cynicism, sentimentality and unfettered joy are difficult to host. You can't be contemptuous one moment but filled with child-like joy the next. Thus, we tend to judge the value of holidays based primarily on if it grants us a day off from work.

Yet one holiday that seems to entertain even the crabbiest of bloggers is Halloween. Around the world, the lead-up to October 31st has us enjoying the orange and black decorations, scanning late-night cable for horror movies, and attempting to rationalize buying abundant amounts of candy at the counter of the drug store. Sure, we can be as bitter and weathered as we allow ourselves to be, but there's no denying the joy of carving pumpkins, piecing together a costume, and perhaps even enjoying a good scare or two.

As gaming is always finding new ways to entertain us, fans of things that go bump in the night have no shortage of spooky games. Developers have been attempting to give us frights ever since the obscenely terrible Halloween for the Atari 2600. Good gameplay can survive regardless of technology, but generating a convincing scare is usually dependent on quality audio and visuals. Since top-notch technology and mature content have inconsistently been attributes of Nintendo, our favorite line of consoles is slightly lacking in good scares. But while the Silent Hills and Fatal Frames of the other guys have given us plenty of sleepless nights, Nintendo's consoles are home to a handful of underwear-changing moments. Here's the Top 5 moments that, speaking in strict technical terms, give us the heebie-jeebies.

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The Top 5 is a weekly feature that provides us with a forum to share our opinions on various aspects of the video game culture, and provides you with a forum to tell us how wrong we are. To further voice your opinions, submit a vote in the Wii Fanboy Poll, and take part in the daily discussions of Wii Warm Up.

Tags: boo, eternal-darkness, friday-the-13th, halloween, horror, jason, joystiqfeatures, mario, regenerator, resident-evil, resident-evil-4, scary, super-mario-64

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

DaisukeKiriyama @ Oct 27th 2008 11:21AM

Regenerators themselves never really did much to scare me.

Iron Maidens, however, scared the crap out of me the first time and continue to do so.

Kaes Delgrego @ Oct 27th 2008 11:34AM

Ahh yes, the Regenerators' close cousin. Those things are equally freaky.

scissors125 @ Oct 27th 2008 5:38PM

They both made me piss my pants as an eleven year old.

They still make me piss my pants as a 15 year old.

I bet they both will continue to make me piss my pants as a 40 year old.

MowDownJoe @ Oct 27th 2008 11:32AM

Chozo Ghosts were more scary to me than all of Big Boo's Haunt. Seriously.

But, yeah... Eternal Darkness was great. Bathtub scene, anyone?

Kaes Delgrego @ Oct 27th 2008 11:35AM

Ahh, don't remind me! That'll give me nightmares. :)

Markez @ Oct 27th 2008 10:50PM

Without a doubt, I squealed like a girl at that part. Loved that game.

Antonio @ Oct 27th 2008 11:33AM

I'm sorry but this list flat-out sucks. For one thing, your top two "moments" avoid naming one singular instance in Eternal Darkness or Resident Evil that supercedes them all, referring to the whole games as "spooky". Secondly your bottom two aren't spooky at all, compared to much more gripping stuff on Nintendo consoles. How can you make a list of "spooky" stuff on Nintendo systems and fail to mention Metroid OR Zelda, yet Mario makes the list? Here are my quick picks for overlooked moments that could/should've made the list (especially over the bottom two)

WARNING: SUPER METROID AND ZELDA:OoT SPOILERS

1. Super Metroid, in Tourian, when you walk into the room with enemies drained of their life by the mutated Metroid baby.
2. Super Metroid, watching the skin melt off that boss in Norfair, and then being assaulted by its skeleton a few seconds later.
3. Zelda: OoT, when you encounter the zombies that make Link freeze in place with their screams.
4. Zelda 1, hearing the roars of the first boss when you're in the adjacent room.
5. Resident Evil 4, that part where it's dark, raining, you can only see five feet in front of Leon, and you must protect the girl while the villagers come at you from all around.

And would it have been hard to pick out one sanity effect that stands out above the others? And one moment from the Resident Evil remake? How about when you read the "Itchy, Scratchy" letter?

I hate to be bitchy but when you make a list of "Top 5 Spooky Gaming Moments" and cop out of naming two specific moments and list two really weak entries it just annoys me.

Kaes Delgrego @ Oct 27th 2008 11:38AM

Sorry for my list's suckery. You're right about the last two. I mentioned that it's hard to pick a specific moment from Resident Evil since the whole thing is so darn scary, but I did mention the zombie / globe under the blanket scene as an example. And as for Eternal Darkness, I really wanted to mention a few of the better sanity effects, but to give those away would go beyond the normal spoiler as it's so cool to have those moments where you say "Wait, was that creepy thing that just happened the game? That was the game, right???"

Those were good moments you mentioned, too. Sorry you didn't like the list, but thanks for reading anyway! :)

Thanatos @ Oct 27th 2008 11:42AM

I dont know about the rest but i do have to agree with you on the ReDead from Ocarina the first time they screamed and raped Link was pretty freaky but that might just be the rape part.

zchry @ Oct 27th 2008 7:48PM

The very worst part of the ReDeads was the freezing. You were helpless.

And I thought it was SO cruel how they made you face a tight room full of them to get the Sun's Song to be able to stand a fighting chance. (It is also cruel that the Gibdos catch on fire when you shoot them with Fire Arrows, then turn into ReDeads with like full health.)

Twilight Princess's ReDeads weren't scary at all. Tough, but not scary.

Ty @ Oct 27th 2008 11:36AM

silent hill 2. running through the streets. and then you oh so happen to walk past a car. and RARRR. a fuggin crawling manequin torso crawls out after you.

or Resi 2. when the dogs burst through the window.

Thanatos @ Oct 27th 2008 11:37AM

So i own almost all of the gamecube iterations of the RE games (missing RE2 and i think one more) but have never actually played any of them. In my defence i got most of them with the used camecube i bought in 05 and got RE4 for cube and Wii both as gifts, but i still need to at least play the Wii one. The carousel in Mario64 was always kind of freaky to me and the Piano did get me all my friends that were watching the first time. I'll have to look into Eternal Darkness ive heard nothing but great things about it.

Evil Bastard @ Oct 27th 2008 11:39AM

Spoiler:

Durning one gaming session of Eternal Darkness I was rapidly saving everytime I accomplished something. At one point I saw the message Erasing Saved Games, along with an accompaning graphic showing the status. Then another message, All save games erased.

I started to panic. I thought I have to be able to plug the memory card into my pc to unerase the games, thinking "What did I just do" Only moments later to learn it was one of the Sanity effects.

Mr Khan @ Oct 27th 2008 12:36PM

The Federation Ship in Metroid Prime 3 that you have to board, the one that's gutted and littered with corpses and little phazon monsters.

The whole of Dead Space (which i've actually tried on the 360, and have found to be pretty good for a horror game, which i generally don't like, but could've been better if they expanded the action elements out more) is like taking that scenario and making it into a whole game

And yes, Big Boo's Haunt was scarier than the whole of Luigi's Mansion, by a long shot

Antonio @ Oct 27th 2008 1:09PM

Here's a few more spooky Zelda moments:

The Mask salesman shaking you to insist that you must retrieve his stolen masks in Majora's Mask.

The final six hours before the end of the world in Majora's Mask. Seriously the whole game has a dark, whimsical feel that's unnerving.

Tingle. just kidding (kinda).

Kaes Delgrego @ Oct 28th 2008 11:26AM

Yes, the mask salesman almost made the list. That dude = FREAKY.

WatATwist @ Oct 27th 2008 6:54PM

Friday the 13th gave me a nightmare the 1st time i played it....never put it back in my console since...

Dustin @ Oct 27th 2008 2:43PM

The piano from Super Mario 64...

I was 9 years old...

I pissed my pants.

scissors125 @ Oct 27th 2008 5:40PM

THIS THIS THIS

I swear, I was like "WTF is a piano doing in the middle of the room"

I walked up to it, it tried to bite at me, and I swear, I screamed bloody murder.

Of course, this happened when I was four. Mario 64 was the greatest game ever to me back then.

Tom @ Oct 27th 2008 2:56PM

Redeads. Nothing scared me more than the first time I encountered them as Child Link in OoT. Not only that. They HUMP YOUR FACE. Its like a fat exgirlfriend who cant take no for an answer...

Robert27 @ Nov 1st 2008 12:50PM

Fat Girlfriend xD!

outkastblast @ Oct 27th 2008 6:20PM

Resident Evil: when the damn crows bust through the windows suddenly!

Or the entire level "Ravenholm" in HL2, jeezers! I still enable cheats just to skip that level. Once was enough for me!

zchry @ Oct 27th 2008 7:43PM

Redeads redeads redeads redeads.

I don't care how many times I have to say it.

Redeads.

God, the screams. They still make me shudder.

Also, Queen Gohma to a lesser extent, and Bongo if you ever ran out of magic. :)

zchry @ Oct 27th 2008 7:44PM

Heh. This never happened to me until 64 DS, and I almost screamed.

Also, I'm seventeen.

buffalo_aaa @ Oct 28th 2008 12:02AM

not to be a buzzkill, but planet terror and 28 days later are not zombie movies. 28 days later is full of living humans who are infected by a virus and planet terror is a bunch of mutated humans infected by a "something." I can forgive planet terror because it has more traditional zombie elements but 28 days later is NOT nor could it ever be a zombie film.

Good article, though!

Kaes Delgrego @ Oct 28th 2008 11:27AM

Ahh, I should have known there would be a zombie connoisseur reading this. :) Thanks for the heads-up!

buffalo_aaa @ Oct 28th 2008 10:43PM

haha. no problem. I've spent the better part of my life watching, working on and researching zombie films (and the mythos that goes along with them - from Haitian lore to Hollywood fictions) so I probably should have just kept to myself. I'm happy you recognize though!