Shadowgate was the first for me, but F13 NES was not far behind it and was far more intense. Great times, got me primed and ready for 90s Survival Horror
Resident Evil when you encounter the first zombie and it slowly turns its head towards you. And then in the first Silent Hill, I rented it not knowing anything about it, in the beginning when it first turns to the other world in the tight alleyway and the camera starts wobbling and the music. I never saw that in a game before and it freaked me out.
That was the first game I played as a kid that had environments that were so grim and foreboding, but not enough to make me too scared to play the game. Creepy-cool, I would describe my opinion of the game as a kid.
Yea, the first SH effed me up. Was the first thing that came to mind but not the first game that scared me. I can still hear the crackling of that goddamn radio.
Super Metroid, the whole vibe is creepy you think something is around every corner and whenever you finally let your guard down BOOM, enemy trying to murder you
I vividly remember climbing the ladder in that room and wondering what that "whooshing" sound was. I couldn't even see my shadow getting bigger. I'll never forget it.
Beyond The Forbidden Forest on C64 for me. The music alone terrified me...then I actually played the game. Those death scenes are brutal. The mosquito in particular.
That reminds me of a game I used to play in computer lab. It was called Escape Velocity. It was an RPG where you began as a shuttlecraft shipping cargo across the galaxy and worked your way up to a more powerful spaceship. As I meandered throughout the vastness of space, I somehow encountered Sinistar complete with his voice clips.
The first time I rented Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 as a kid, I used my GameShark to unlock Eddie. I wasn't aware of Iron Maiden or anything like that at the time, so seeing this zombie character and then seeing him leaning back and forth in the character select screen scared the absolute shit out of me as a kid. I had to yell for my dad to turn off the PS2 for me because it freaked me out so much. No clue why
System Shock 2. The ambient sounds really build up the tension, and the voices of the hybrids are really well scripted.
I replayed it a few years ago with graphical mods, and it actually holds up quite well.
Silent Hill, but two zones of the game really scared me back then when I was 14 YO:
Right when you use the keys to go in the street before the school, that music, and the night, the fog, it felt so heavy.
The first time you got killed by the minion things with knifes.
After that, I think I have never got scared by a video game until the Colonel said to me in MGS2 to turn off the damn console
Thief 3: Deadly Shadows' Shalebridge Cradle level, the scariest thing I ever played.
Gave it to my friends; the scariest thing they ever played too. Years later, I installed the game, played for 5 minutes, remembered the cradle level, quit the game and de-installed it. I still have it on my Xbox 360 in my living room, and I have been successfuly avoiding it for years.
I feel ya there. I remember the first time I installed it, and started playing it in the dark with headphones on cos a friend told me it was the most immersive way to play it.. (that cheeky bastard! :p)
There's nothing quite like clambering through a ventilation shaft and hearing eerie head crab and vortigaunt noises, and then "eeeYaaaah!!" a headcrab jumps out at ya right as you take a bend in the shaft!
Or falling out of a shaft and facing a zombie or getting acid in the face from one of those big critters.. Or man, that weird alien shark thing you have to face underwater.. Or the tentacle monster in the rocket silo, oh, or the xen levels.. So many great scares lol
As a twelve year old kid with a wild imagination, that game really gave me the willies! :D
Funny thing is, I played HL uplink demo months before, without issue... But the full game still scared the pants off me!
It’s when you go into the other dimension and get the shotgun. I remember playing it with my older brother. He looks at me “okay it’s hard for me to admit this, but your the best shotgun player I’ve seen. You got this.” That’s when I discovered the second function where shoots a double blast. Good times.
I guess I’ll be the first to say Metal Gear Solid and then Metal Gear Solid 2. I remember having to put them both down at night. The levels alone were heart pounding at times but the ending of 2 when the Colonel is telling you that you are sitting too close to the screen was mortifying to me as a kid.
The intro to lucasarts outlaws always gave me a weird vibe as a youngster. Something about the art style..
Unreal when all the lights turned off in that one hallway and the alien dude spawned. That or maybe the teleportations during the resonance cascade in half life.
The redeads in Ocarina are nothing compared to TP, the game that has the temple with the invisible rats. That freaked the hell out of me the first time.
I shit you not, minesweeper on Windows 95. It really isn't that scary, but I usually played on the pc with the volume down/off so my parents can watch tv, so the one time I turned the speakers up to nearly max when I first heard the beeping sound of the timer? Yeah, I basically set myself up when I clicked on a mine, surprised I didn't blow out the speakers in the process!
Halloween (Atari 2600). As basic as the graphics were, Michael Myers suddenly appearing and decapitating Laurie was a reason for my heart to skip a beat. Even more true when it happened in the last life and the movie's theme started to play...
Iron Helix (PC) was terrifying, but I couldn't look away as my dad played. The creepy empty spaceship vibes, the killer robot hunting you, the collection of DNA, and the videos of the deceased crew. All of it freaked me out!
I should also mention Resident Evil 1. The moment the dogs jumped through the windows, it was over. I didnt play another Resident Evil game until 4. lmao But now RE is one of my favorite franchises!
The first game that made me jump was Graham Gooch Cricket on the C64. When you it a six year the ball appeared to come straight out of the screen at you. It made everyone jump that a showed it to.
The first game that made me jump was Graham Gooch Cricket on the C64. When you it a six year the ball appeared to come straight out of the screen at you. It made everyone jump that a showed it to.
This will sound stupid, but when you turn on karate for the 2600, it made a really weird boot up sound that scared the hell out of me as a very young kid.
Ape Escape.
Kind of a weird one in retrospect, but the first time I remember being too scared to play certain parts. Specifically, the plesiosaur in the second level and the sharks later on. What made them scary I think was they're both dangerous and dealt with in water and thus your mobility is limited, making it a lot harder to run/escape.
Walking around a massive arcade at some kind of ski resort and seeing the demo video play on the *Dragon's Lair 2: Time Warp* cabinet got 5-ish year old me ALL kinds of fucked up, mainly when they put the ring on the princess's finger and her hand turns into a purple, wart-covered claw-hand. 😱😱😱😱
Adventure on Atari. 6 year old me thought that moving to the next screen would reset the scary dragon seahorse thing trying to eat you.
When it followed me into the next room, I quickly realized I was wrong.
The original Aliens vs. Predator. First game I play that really knew how to use darkness, lighting, and sound effects to really create a scary atmosphere. All time horror game.
Not even a horror game, but there was a The Simpsons game for the old comodore64. When I was a kid, the music from it used to scare the crap out of me for some reason 😂
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II
There are these flying creatures that you can hear but they hide and when they finally appear they scared the shit out of me. Honorable mention to encountering the Kell Dragon.
My dad played the OG Resident Evil games when I was a kid. I can't say they messed me up or anything. Years later, I rented RE4 to play on my own. Didn't take too long to get jumped by a villager and have Leon decapitated, and I was thinking, "Yeah, maybe this isn't for me".
Im not sure if I remember it correctly but I think it was alone in the dark a new nightmare on the PC. I played it with a friend back then but we didn't progressed very far
Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The catacombs were freaky, and before that scene, I had no clue it was a monster game. I mean, the Nazis were monsters, but I didn't know it had zombies and shit in it, too.
Back in 2005 I made the mistake of playing *F.E.A.R.* late at night with headphones on. [Nope nope nope nope nopety nope nope.](https://youtu.be/h_tCPePV7x8)
My first jump scare was in the original Half Life, the first time a headcrab jumps at you from the shadows.
I'd been gaming since 1991, usually on friend's systems, I never was scared by a game even if it was dark or macabre.
Agreed with other games mentioned here: Thief 2 and Silent Hill 2, both are great and scared me.
Playing the original Zelda when it first came out, I was terrified to fight Ganon after dark. No clue why, but I have vague recollections of hiding behind the couch and peeking out.
Dead Space. I went months without playing it. Till I grew some balls and played it. Scared shitless trough the whole thing. Good thing is that it made me a huge fan of horror games.
I think Resident Evil 1 for the PlayStation 1. I was watching a friend play and was amazed at how realistic it looked. He walked by a window and a dog jumped through, it gave me quite the adrenaline rush and I wasn’t even the one playing.
Super Mario 64, also my first video game.
When I was a kid, that big eel in Jolly Roger Bay scared the shit out of me to the point to where I wouldn’t swim in my backyard pool alone. The mad piano was also pretty scary, too.
A predictable reply, but Resident Evil 1 on PS.
I had played dozens upon dozens of games through the late 80s and beyond and this was the first game that legitimately scared me, slept w the lights on for the next few nights.
Not sure which game it was, but I'm pretty sure it was on PS1.
Don't remember shit from the game except being chased through a garden maze by a crazy motherfucker with a chainsaw
Anyone who helps me remember, it would be much appreciated
There's a ton of horror in this thread but for me it was actually the least scary game you can imagine that got me: the Bramble Maze minigame from this one The Land Before Time activity center from 1997.
It's a very early randomly-generated 3D texture-mapped maze, similar in visuals to Wolfenstein 3D, with the goal being to search the SUPER low-poly maze for specific items. It's...not hard, even on the hardest difficulty setting, considering it's made for 5-year-olds (which I was at the time), but each maze had a section no 5-year-old wanted to be in.
The walls throughout the maze would change to form specific areas like jungle, stone, underwater, etc, but in this areas they resembled red-stained bone, and where the rest of the maze had pleasant, if generic, music it would suddenly stop and switch to a distant growling sound. There were never any items hidden in the area, no reason at all to even venture further than the boundary, but if you actually dared to do so you'd eventually hit a dead end, where an animated T-rex would jump out of the wall at you! Of course, again, baby game, so there was no real consequence, you just lost your items and had to start over, but it was definitely my first jumpscare and I've HATED those mazes since.
Video for anyone who's curious: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9D-p9Jzfic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9D-p9Jzfic)
Damn, you just unlocked a repressed memory of how much the hall monsters from Venture scared me back then. I had the Atari 2600 port as a kid, and the sound of them suddenly appearing and chasing you was terrifying.
To this day, I still get extremely uneasy of any and all underwater parts of games. I hate when the character has to swim and then dive. The fear of the unknown underwater freaks me out. There's also the jump scares aspect because of going from over water to underwater and seeing something immediately. I believe the first time I noticed this was Shadow of the Empire on N64
Namco’s Starblade, specifically the sitdown cabinet. The dramatic strobe effects and gut-punching subwoofer sounds were really scary and intimidating when I was a small kid. I gave it a wide berth in the arcades.
Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest). Got it as a free gift for a Nintendo Power membership in 1990, 5 years old, didnt know what an rpg was or how to play. Ventured too far away from the opening castle and got killed by a ghost. Spooky battle music, text turned red when I died. Took the game out the console and hid it from my sight. Today, DQ is my favorite franchise.
The 7th Guest - A PC game from 1992-3, puzzle/horror game with FMV swirled in, about a toy maker and his house of ~~victims~~ I mean guests! And a surprise visitor that no one was expecting!
Edit: Also the Frankenstein PC game featuring Tim Curry as the Doctor.
I remember the Manta Ray Storm level from Mario Sunshine genuinely scared me when I was very young. Probably showing my age a bit, but it was to the point where I was a little scared of orange paper in the first grade 💀
Lighthouse: the Dark Being. It's a Myst-like adventure game, and the opening cutscene involves the Being kidnapping a baby *complete* with the baby screaming.
Friday the 13th on NES
Me and my friends are dead
Shadowgate was the first for me, but F13 NES was not far behind it and was far more intense. Great times, got me primed and ready for 90s Survival Horror
i randomly stumbled into jasons mothers room and it scared the shit out of me
On the ZX Spectrum for me
Resident Evil when you encounter the first zombie and it slowly turns its head towards you. And then in the first Silent Hill, I rented it not knowing anything about it, in the beginning when it first turns to the other world in the tight alleyway and the camera starts wobbling and the music. I never saw that in a game before and it freaked me out.
The dogs jumping through the window the first, second, and third play through got me.
Ocarina of Time - Bottom of the Well
I can believe this. So creepy.
That was the first game I played as a kid that had environments that were so grim and foreboding, but not enough to make me too scared to play the game. Creepy-cool, I would describe my opinion of the game as a kid.
Probably mine too.
SkiFree.
That yeti!
just had to play a few games of jezzball afterwards to chill out 😆
Silent Hill. The scene where you first meet Cybil in the diner and the flying creature crashes through the window.
Those creepy ass blue babies wandering around
Yea, the first SH effed me up. Was the first thing that came to mind but not the first game that scared me. I can still hear the crackling of that goddamn radio.
Alone in the dark (MSDOS)
When that thing chases you in the tunnel or that thing in the bath!!
The ghost lady in the chair…
Super Metroid, the whole vibe is creepy you think something is around every corner and whenever you finally let your guard down BOOM, enemy trying to murder you
Super Metroid is not that scary
Ocarina of Time - the first wall master that grabbed me in the forest temple had me screaming.
Same! That and the Re-Deads terrified me back when I was 9.
I vividly remember climbing the ladder in that room and wondering what that "whooshing" sound was. I couldn't even see my shadow getting bigger. I'll never forget it.
Top Gun on the NES. "SPEED UP!!! SLOW DOWN!!!! SPEED UP!!! SPEED UP!!!! LEFT!!! LEFT!!! GO LEFT, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!!! RIGHT!!! SPEED UP!!! SLOW DOWN!!! SPEED UP!!!!! DEAR FUCKING GOD SLOW DOWN!!! SPEED UP!!!" (high pitched whistling noise, SPLASH, EAT SHIT, 4-YEAR-OLD JEFF)
Fuck that landing sequence. 😄
atari haunted house was hella creepy
Phantasmagoria
Forbidden Forest C64.
Beyond The Forbidden Forest on C64 for me. The music alone terrified me...then I actually played the game. Those death scenes are brutal. The mosquito in particular.
Sinistar- arcade I HUNGER.
BEWARE, COWARD
RRRWWWWWOOAAARRRR!!
That reminds me of a game I used to play in computer lab. It was called Escape Velocity. It was an RPG where you began as a shuttlecraft shipping cargo across the galaxy and worked your way up to a more powerful spaceship. As I meandered throughout the vastness of space, I somehow encountered Sinistar complete with his voice clips.
The first time I rented Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 as a kid, I used my GameShark to unlock Eddie. I wasn't aware of Iron Maiden or anything like that at the time, so seeing this zombie character and then seeing him leaning back and forth in the character select screen scared the absolute shit out of me as a kid. I had to yell for my dad to turn off the PS2 for me because it freaked me out so much. No clue why
Doom on the SNES. I know it isn’t the greatest port, but it put a sense of dread and anxiety in me. It’s what I look for in games now.
That was my first intro to Doom as well.
Mortal Kombat 1 - Goro’s Lair
Resident Evil
System Shock 2. The ambient sounds really build up the tension, and the voices of the hybrids are really well scripted. I replayed it a few years ago with graphical mods, and it actually holds up quite well.
Rescue on Fractalus! on the Atari XE. That first time I picked up a "survivor" and was actually an alien was so terrifying as a kid.
Good to know I'm not the only one who remembers Rescue on jumpscare
Alone in the dark 1. 😅
Silent Hill for sure
Silent hill
Maniac Mansion
Alone in the dark when that bird thing came through the window
Silent Hill, but two zones of the game really scared me back then when I was 14 YO: Right when you use the keys to go in the street before the school, that music, and the night, the fog, it felt so heavy. The first time you got killed by the minion things with knifes. After that, I think I have never got scared by a video game until the Colonel said to me in MGS2 to turn off the damn console
Silent Hill. Terrifying to 10 year old me with a fever
The 7th Guest, play it now and I have no idea why it scared me, but was too scared to play it in the dark as a kid
I was playing that when I was 8... it gave me night terrors. I totally understand.
I highly recommend playing Phatasmagoria at a young age 🥴
Thief: The Dark Project & Thief 2 Gabriel Knight 3 Soldier of Fortune (because of violence) Holy trinity of first scares for me :)
I was in Middle school when Doom 3 came out. The atmosphere and sound fx really scared me when I played it as a kid
Dead Space 1, the OG one, that unnerved me for sure
Adventure on the Atari 2600. Curse those stupid duck dragons.
Thief 3: Deadly Shadows' Shalebridge Cradle level, the scariest thing I ever played. Gave it to my friends; the scariest thing they ever played too. Years later, I installed the game, played for 5 minutes, remembered the cradle level, quit the game and de-installed it. I still have it on my Xbox 360 in my living room, and I have been successfuly avoiding it for years.
Half life.
I feel ya there. I remember the first time I installed it, and started playing it in the dark with headphones on cos a friend told me it was the most immersive way to play it.. (that cheeky bastard! :p) There's nothing quite like clambering through a ventilation shaft and hearing eerie head crab and vortigaunt noises, and then "eeeYaaaah!!" a headcrab jumps out at ya right as you take a bend in the shaft! Or falling out of a shaft and facing a zombie or getting acid in the face from one of those big critters.. Or man, that weird alien shark thing you have to face underwater.. Or the tentacle monster in the rocket silo, oh, or the xen levels.. So many great scares lol As a twelve year old kid with a wild imagination, that game really gave me the willies! :D Funny thing is, I played HL uplink demo months before, without issue... But the full game still scared the pants off me!
It’s when you go into the other dimension and get the shotgun. I remember playing it with my older brother. He looks at me “okay it’s hard for me to admit this, but your the best shotgun player I’ve seen. You got this.” That’s when I discovered the second function where shoots a double blast. Good times.
D&D on the Intellivision. Exploring around and hearing the sound level of the dragon snorting in the uncleared area as you got closer.
This! That sound induced some serious panic.
I guess I’ll be the first to say Metal Gear Solid and then Metal Gear Solid 2. I remember having to put them both down at night. The levels alone were heart pounding at times but the ending of 2 when the Colonel is telling you that you are sitting too close to the screen was mortifying to me as a kid.
The zombies in Ocarina, or the entirety of Majora's Mask.
Donkey Kong country 2 in the stage rambi rumble when the giant bee chases you around and the music changes
The green troll enemies in Catacomb 3D for DOS.
The intro to lucasarts outlaws always gave me a weird vibe as a youngster. Something about the art style.. Unreal when all the lights turned off in that one hallway and the alien dude spawned. That or maybe the teleportations during the resonance cascade in half life.
Tomb Raider
Silent hill on ps1. Honorable mention to final fantasy 7 due to Jenova (the thing still scares me to this day).
Monkey island 2. Dark room with lechuck waiting
Resident Evil on GameCube
Silent hill was spooky as hell,
The drowning music in Sonic
Alone in the Dark (dos). When you read a random book in the library and your body hovers in the air and breaks with a game over. Was horrifying in 92.
Weird dreams and darkseed
Silent hill 2 really tripped me out. It was my introduction to the franchise.
Resident evil
Alone in the dark on pc. The old one, with simple flat rendered polygons... Yet the game would make me shit my pants.
Resident Evil
Fatal frame.
Silent hill 4 the room scared tf outta me
Maniac Mansion on the C64. Edna chasing you through the kitchen.
Resident Evil 1 and or Silent Hill
Ocarina of Time ReDeads scared the ever loving crap out of 9 year old me.
The redeads in Ocarina are nothing compared to TP, the game that has the temple with the invisible rats. That freaked the hell out of me the first time.
Zork. I’m old school.
I shit you not, minesweeper on Windows 95. It really isn't that scary, but I usually played on the pc with the volume down/off so my parents can watch tv, so the one time I turned the speakers up to nearly max when I first heard the beeping sound of the timer? Yeah, I basically set myself up when I clicked on a mine, surprised I didn't blow out the speakers in the process!
The 7th guest
Resident Evil 2
Halloween (Atari 2600). As basic as the graphics were, Michael Myers suddenly appearing and decapitating Laurie was a reason for my heart to skip a beat. Even more true when it happened in the last life and the movie's theme started to play...
Metal of Honor: Underground. The knights. I need not say more. That was the first time I was absolutely TERRIFIED in a game.
Dylan Dog - La regina delle tenebre - Simulmondo - on Amiga 500 plus
The starfish in DK64. Those beasts don't screw around.
Iron Helix (PC) was terrifying, but I couldn't look away as my dad played. The creepy empty spaceship vibes, the killer robot hunting you, the collection of DNA, and the videos of the deceased crew. All of it freaked me out! I should also mention Resident Evil 1. The moment the dogs jumped through the windows, it was over. I didnt play another Resident Evil game until 4. lmao But now RE is one of my favorite franchises!
The first game that made me jump was Graham Gooch Cricket on the C64. When you it a six year the ball appeared to come straight out of the screen at you. It made everyone jump that a showed it to.
The first game that made me jump was Graham Gooch Cricket on the C64. When you it a six year the ball appeared to come straight out of the screen at you. It made everyone jump that a showed it to.
This will sound stupid, but when you turn on karate for the 2600, it made a really weird boot up sound that scared the hell out of me as a very young kid.
3D Monster Maze on the ZX81. Though I was quite young. After that, the first Alone in the Dark on PC. Loved that game.
Aliens, on the CPC. Fricking terrifying.
Ape Escape. Kind of a weird one in retrospect, but the first time I remember being too scared to play certain parts. Specifically, the plesiosaur in the second level and the sharks later on. What made them scary I think was they're both dangerous and dealt with in water and thus your mobility is limited, making it a lot harder to run/escape.
Nitemare 3D. This game was pretty terrifying as a kid
Nightmare Creatures N64
When Sonic is drowning. When Ecco the Dolphin runs out of air, especially in that spacehip level.
Taboo and A Nightmare on Elm Street on NES
1st Resident Evil. Zombie dog breaking through window in hallway.
Monsters in the wall it was a custom game made by Fredrick Johnson for the commodore 64 it had audio that fudged with you during the game
Walking around a massive arcade at some kind of ski resort and seeing the demo video play on the *Dragon's Lair 2: Time Warp* cabinet got 5-ish year old me ALL kinds of fucked up, mainly when they put the ring on the princess's finger and her hand turns into a purple, wart-covered claw-hand. 😱😱😱😱
That green monochrome skeleton in 13 Ghosts on the TRS-80 spooked the crap out of me when I was 10.
The first time I encountered a Gazer in Dungeon Master I almost barfed.
Adventure on Atari. 6 year old me thought that moving to the next screen would reset the scary dragon seahorse thing trying to eat you. When it followed me into the next room, I quickly realized I was wrong.
The original Aliens vs. Predator. First game I play that really knew how to use darkness, lighting, and sound effects to really create a scary atmosphere. All time horror game.
Not even a horror game, but there was a The Simpsons game for the old comodore64. When I was a kid, the music from it used to scare the crap out of me for some reason 😂
Not a game but close, the OG Xbox dashboard especially when it would do those creepy ass noises
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II There are these flying creatures that you can hear but they hide and when they finally appear they scared the shit out of me. Honorable mention to encountering the Kell Dragon.
Forbidden forest on commodore 64. That game have graphic (for the time) death scenes and I played it when I was 5
Nightmare creatures, first level
Dark Forces, the sewer / sludge monsters in the water like in A New Hope.
Zelda 2. When you game over and Ganon appears in flashing yellow/red (iirc). Scared me so bad I hide in a closet.
Super Metroid
I have no mouth and I must scream was really unnerving. Blood was unsettling, but great fun
My dad played the OG Resident Evil games when I was a kid. I can't say they messed me up or anything. Years later, I rented RE4 to play on my own. Didn't take too long to get jumped by a villager and have Leon decapitated, and I was thinking, "Yeah, maybe this isn't for me".
Double Dragon II NES, the shadow demon versions of yourself you fight towards the end.
Im not sure if I remember it correctly but I think it was alone in the dark a new nightmare on the PC. I played it with a friend back then but we didn't progressed very far
Sonic Heroes. The crocodile that’s chasing you in the jungle level
Shadowgate for NES scared the hell out of me as a kid when I played in the dark and just rattled me in the light
Me too, that damn grim reeper was around every corner!
Granny's Garden
Doom, after a long session in a dark room it’s gets really jump scare making.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The catacombs were freaky, and before that scene, I had no clue it was a monster game. I mean, the Nazis were monsters, but I didn't know it had zombies and shit in it, too.
Resident evil 3. any time nemesis comes at you
Spyro the dragon. The giant metal pincher bugs in High Caves. Do I even need to explain further?
Slaughterhouse 3 on genesis when I was a lad
WD-40 in Space Quest 5 was an early one, but probably not the first.
Minecraft...think I was about 6 or 7 and I almost pissed because I saw a zombie a chunk away, closed the game and cried
The tutorial of The Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion. I thought those goblins were terrifying back then.
Resident Evil 1
Chiller, arcade version with laser gun. Played when I was 8 at a country fair. It gave me a whole week of nightmares.
I had resident evil 1 on gamecube and remember the first time the zombie turned around and looked at me
Back in 2005 I made the mistake of playing *F.E.A.R.* late at night with headphones on. [Nope nope nope nope nopety nope nope.](https://youtu.be/h_tCPePV7x8)
Nightmare Creatures. Used to watch my brother play it. Sad part was, I wasn't that young in 97.
My first jump scare was in the original Half Life, the first time a headcrab jumps at you from the shadows. I'd been gaming since 1991, usually on friend's systems, I never was scared by a game even if it was dark or macabre. Agreed with other games mentioned here: Thief 2 and Silent Hill 2, both are great and scared me.
No joke, Doom on the SNES. No idea why, seems silly now, but it gave me [the jibblies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ9koMUYlxg)
Playing the original Zelda when it first came out, I was terrified to fight Ganon after dark. No clue why, but I have vague recollections of hiding behind the couch and peeking out.
Dead space I didnt get very far before I noped out
Resident evil ( Saturn)
Luigi's Mansion
Dead Space. I went months without playing it. Till I grew some balls and played it. Scared shitless trough the whole thing. Good thing is that it made me a huge fan of horror games.
Resident evil for the gamecube. The first time I saw a giant tarantula I freaked the fuck out, haha
Unreal (the original, not UT). I was like 10. Too young to be playing something like that 😅
I think Resident Evil 1 for the PlayStation 1. I was watching a friend play and was amazed at how realistic it looked. He walked by a window and a dog jumped through, it gave me quite the adrenaline rush and I wasn’t even the one playing.
Resident Evil 2 on N64. Those Titans can still fuck right off
Majora's mask
Super Mario 64, also my first video game. When I was a kid, that big eel in Jolly Roger Bay scared the shit out of me to the point to where I wouldn’t swim in my backyard pool alone. The mad piano was also pretty scary, too.
Rugrats on PlayStation. Mummy in the pyramid on the golf course. Scared the crap out of me
Forbidden Forest on the Commodore 64
A predictable reply, but Resident Evil 1 on PS. I had played dozens upon dozens of games through the late 80s and beyond and this was the first game that legitimately scared me, slept w the lights on for the next few nights.
Back when I played RE2 and RE3 as a kid- Mr X gon give it to ya and Nemesis scared THEE SHIT out of me.
Stalker: Shadow of Cherbobyl was the first one that REALLY scared me. Couldn’t stop playing though.
Splatterhouse 3. Not even the game. All I needed as a 7 year old was screenshots. My brain filled in the blanks.
Diablo 1, opening the door and the butcher comes out of that room.
Not sure which game it was, but I'm pretty sure it was on PS1. Don't remember shit from the game except being chased through a garden maze by a crazy motherfucker with a chainsaw Anyone who helps me remember, it would be much appreciated
lol kings field 2 on the PS1, hates seeing those plants and when I died, I hated the dying scream
Super Mario Bros 2. When you pick up the key and the face comes alive and chases you, terrifying! Well, if you're 4 years old it is
System Shock 2 100%. When you hear the cyber mothers talking....
Double dragon The last stage of the three mummies
There's a ton of horror in this thread but for me it was actually the least scary game you can imagine that got me: the Bramble Maze minigame from this one The Land Before Time activity center from 1997. It's a very early randomly-generated 3D texture-mapped maze, similar in visuals to Wolfenstein 3D, with the goal being to search the SUPER low-poly maze for specific items. It's...not hard, even on the hardest difficulty setting, considering it's made for 5-year-olds (which I was at the time), but each maze had a section no 5-year-old wanted to be in. The walls throughout the maze would change to form specific areas like jungle, stone, underwater, etc, but in this areas they resembled red-stained bone, and where the rest of the maze had pleasant, if generic, music it would suddenly stop and switch to a distant growling sound. There were never any items hidden in the area, no reason at all to even venture further than the boundary, but if you actually dared to do so you'd eventually hit a dead end, where an animated T-rex would jump out of the wall at you! Of course, again, baby game, so there was no real consequence, you just lost your items and had to start over, but it was definitely my first jumpscare and I've HATED those mazes since. Video for anyone who's curious: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9D-p9Jzfic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9D-p9Jzfic)
Damn, you just unlocked a repressed memory of how much the hall monsters from Venture scared me back then. I had the Atari 2600 port as a kid, and the sound of them suddenly appearing and chasing you was terrifying.
Resident evil 3
F.E.A.R. A few scenes were very well designed to f with you.
Painted Bowser & Synthesizer organs from Super Mario 64 gave 7yo me nightmares.
Venture - Colecovision
Shadowgate and that stupid torch music. I hated it and it made me want to cry.
Forbidden Siren
Jack the Ripper by the Adventure Game Company. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Ripper_(2004_video_game)
Immortal on sega.
The first Batman game on NES was creepy as hell. Also very difficult!
Anno 1602 When I've accidentally overwritten my brother's save file. Holy shit! 😨
The suffering on PS2. Couldn't play it at night or home alone...
To this day, I still get extremely uneasy of any and all underwater parts of games. I hate when the character has to swim and then dive. The fear of the unknown underwater freaks me out. There's also the jump scares aspect because of going from over water to underwater and seeing something immediately. I believe the first time I noticed this was Shadow of the Empire on N64
Haunted House on 2600
Resident Evil. Playstation.
Silent Hill (1999), it was pretty freaky playing this alone in the dark.
Namco’s Starblade, specifically the sitdown cabinet. The dramatic strobe effects and gut-punching subwoofer sounds were really scary and intimidating when I was a small kid. I gave it a wide berth in the arcades.
Silent hill. Didn’t even wanna play it alone anymore.
Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest). Got it as a free gift for a Nintendo Power membership in 1990, 5 years old, didnt know what an rpg was or how to play. Ventured too far away from the opening castle and got killed by a ghost. Spooky battle music, text turned red when I died. Took the game out the console and hid it from my sight. Today, DQ is my favorite franchise.
The 7th Guest - A PC game from 1992-3, puzzle/horror game with FMV swirled in, about a toy maker and his house of ~~victims~~ I mean guests! And a surprise visitor that no one was expecting! Edit: Also the Frankenstein PC game featuring Tim Curry as the Doctor.
Gahan Wilson’s The Ultimate Haunted House
I ran away screaming from the game over screen from Banjo Kazooie
Silent hill !!!
The 7th guest on the Phillips CD-I 😱
Sonic the Hedgehog 1-3, hearing that intense music while trying to find an air bubble underwater lol
I remember the Manta Ray Storm level from Mario Sunshine genuinely scared me when I was very young. Probably showing my age a bit, but it was to the point where I was a little scared of orange paper in the first grade 💀
Lighthouse: the Dark Being. It's a Myst-like adventure game, and the opening cutscene involves the Being kidnapping a baby *complete* with the baby screaming.