Some of the scariest moments in gaming never came from a horror game. Jess and Break dig into the ones that got under our skin anyway.
Horror games are supposed to scare you. That’s the deal. But some of the creepiest moments in gaming showed up in places that had no business being unsettling such as a kids’ RPG, a cartoon platformer, a game about catching cute monsters.
This week Jess and Break go through the moments that stuck with us: the Lavender Town music and the ghost of Marowak, the moon hanging over Termina in Majora’s Mask, the empty hallways and that eel in Super Mario 64, Giygas in EarthBound, the SA-X stalking you through Metroid Fusion, and the hidden message screen in Sonic CD that nobody asked for. Plus the urban legends that grew around them like Lavender Town syndrome, L is Real, Herobrine.
We also get into why it works. A deliberately creepy moment is one thing. An accidentally creepy one, early 3D jank, an empty room, a sound effect that’s just slightly wrong, hits different, because the game isn’t trying to warn you.
What’s the first game that scared you when it wasn’t supposed to? Let us know in the comments.
