What was the First Game that really Scared/Freaked you out the first time you played it?

Ugh...

Character limit reached, as the thread title is actually incomplete...

I was supposed to add...

... what part of it scared you.

Anyway this post by Prectorian on an unrelated thread...

https://forum.romulation.net/threads/help-me-to-find-the-game.65004/#post-1456247

... inspired me to post this topic on here for a much richer discussion.

Anyhoo, shall I begin...

For me it was Earthbound, specifically the "Moonside or rather Demonside" section:



Skip to the three minutes and ten seconds mark...

Now for my explanation why this section of the game freaked me out the first time I got to it.

If you haven't played the game before, this section has your party traveling to Moonside which is an alternate dimensional version of Fourside the town where this section begins.

What freaked me out about it was that the atmosphere is absolutely "Hellish" with counterparts of the people from Fourside now saying things like, "Yes is no, No is yes, it makes perfect sense here in Moonside" and further on someone actually says, "Welcome to Moonside... wel com to moo nsi ns dem ons ide."

However to cut a long story short, this segment of the game was actually just a hallucinogenic phase brought on by an item in that particular area of the bar, the party went into at before the 3:10 time mark.

*Further explanation why this segment freaked me out*

Before the end of this section of the game, and before the hallucination explanation, I really thought you went into a demonic parallel dimension in this segment and that to me is absolutely scary. Think "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Poltergeist" and you'd probably get an idea where I'm coming from with this. Or think, "Silent Hill" (the first only as the sequels were just cash grabs IMHO), when the protagonist Harry would get his "Dark World" episodes. Now that's scary.

Also I once saw a "B Movie" (I think it's a B Movie), when I was little, whose title I can't recall, where the story was about this family that moved to a seemingly nice subdivision where all the inhabitants' souls were sucked into a parallel hellish dimension and the ones inhabiting the real world were the souls from that other dimension. And the way people were sent to that other dimension was when the townsfolk invite you to the subdivision's clubhouse. In the movie all but the mother of that new family were "invited" and slowly she felt something was odd about her hubby and the kids and that they were very incessant for her to join the club as it were.

The movie ends with the mother finding a way to destroy (through prayer, perhaps? as I said my memory of the movie is a bit dodgy) the clubhouse portal and she not only freed her family but the entire town folk as well.

Anyway, that Moonside section from Earthbound awakened that faint memory I had of that movie and it hasn't left me yet... primarily as I really don't know its name and I really wish I could find out its name someday too

And if you guys will suggest "Invasion of the body snatchers", I'm fairly sure it's not it.

Also somewhat TL;DR kinda thought...

Zombies no longer freak me out, because people have added a "scientific" explanation to what zombies are. But had they kept the "Supernatural" explanation from long ago, kinda like with the first ever "Night of the Living Dead" movie or from the "Evil Dead" series, then zombies would still be scary for me.

 

I guess I have to agree with the fact that Nemesis is indeed crazy scary, especially because he stalks and plays with you all throughout the game, he even levels up and has changing forms as he gets stronger. Sadly as I said, the franchise giving the zombie origin a Scientific rationale lost the fear factor for me.

Look at it this way, in the RE games, zombies were a product of Umbrella Corp's genetics research and therefore they have equated zombification as an illness or an epidemic with a viable cure. Now let's say that Zombification in the RE series was brought on by an actual "Evil" Necromancer, kinda like how Dracula is reawakened every time in the Castlevania franchise, who use ancient evil magicks to raise the dead, now isn't that creepier?

Okay it may just be me, but for myself mysticism is way scarier than the scientific approach.

 

Hard to say. If we talk about the tension of fear and loneliness, I would pick the DOOM-series and Alone in the Dark.

If we talk about jump scares which make you really sweat, I would (still) pick DOOM 3.

 

I think "jump scare factor" is what's nearer to what Prectorian feels with the Zombies in the RE Series, and "Tension of fear" for what I felt with that section on Earthbound

And as far as jump scares are concerned... mine has to be the first time I encountered the "Guardian Bit" boss from "Chrono Trigger". Yes I know it was just a malfunctioning robot, but it suddenly crashing down on your party to attack you was just unexpected... and it's the first gigantic boss I've seen in the game. Then later on, at Pre-historic time, The "Black Tyranno" game me an even bigger scare when I encountered it. Absolutely dumb of me I know LOL

 

Since this thread "mostly" has been dealing with SNES games so far, you mentioned "Earthbound" and "Chrono Trigger", I think I can add another SNES game to the list: "Super Metroid".

I almost got a jump scare when Samus suddenly encountered the huge Baby Metroid "crashing down" before her (it's a cliché don't you think?) before the final battle with Mother Brain.

But I played it when I was older. At that time I already had tried "DOOM 3".

 

I would like to contribute by adding Mega Man X 6 for the PSX. The final Sigma stage.
Oh my god. The music. The scenery. And the best part- The winged wolf demon statues thingies.
The level design is completely identical to the first three but. . . It looks like it's. . . Dead. . .
Since the whole place is made of the Nightmare Virus. And you killed the Nightmare Mother in the previous stage. The only thing keeping it alive now is Sigma. Who is already 90% deleted. And the winged wolf demon statue thingies, the first stage they were like "You come to this place? Prepare to die!". The second (or third) stage where you face (Nightmare Mother or Gate? sorry I can't remember. ) they were like "What are you going to do now?".
The final stage they're just... howling in pain. Just What are those WWDSTs ?
At one point, I thought they were gonna pop out of the background and someone were to fuse with them and use them as an armor to face you with.
(Spoiler: (which they won't.) )