As some of you know, I've pretty much been a gamer since I was 4. I've noticed that a lot of you grew up with videogames as well and figured this would be a fun thread idea.
When I was 7, my grandma of all people, got me Castlevania II: Simon's Quest as well as Top Gun for the NES for my 8th birthday. Not wanting to wait a week to get into it, I remember opening the box and going to the bathroom to read the manual (as I was oft to do at that age) and thinking along the lines of "Oh cool, kind of like a ghost story thing." Of note, I did not hear of nor play the first Castlevania so this was all new to me.
Lo and behold, that evening I finally get some "TV time" from my mom and sister and put this puppy in. Spookiest title theme music EVER! So, I went from "This looks like a fun game" to "Oh, I almost pissed myself and haven't hit Start yet." All went well, though. It's a lovely day in the starting village and I already have some holy water and my whip. I start to venture to the right of town and DUN DUN DUN!
But that wasn't really the worst part, as you well know. After all, the monsters got tougher but the big hearts started dropping like candy as well. I can hang with this game. It was scary and frightening, but I could do this and it was a nice departure from what games I had played before. Then, shit got real..
This LOVELY little place is just where a happy 7 year old Shewgenja needed to end up a week before his 8th birthday, lemme tell ya! Cruising along at a good clip, I managed to make it here before the end of the night, so the music progression all throughout up to this point went from the sing-songey yet foreboding town music to the brisk and fresh daytime music in the forest to the hurried and haunting nighttime curse music to the positively frantic mansion/dungeon theme. My heart was beating and the monsters here were clearly a step up from everything outside. It was giving me that same rush that Ninja Gaiden gave me! Still, the atmosphere was dark and foreboding and.. Was that dead people hanging from the ceiling on chains?
Yes, that was a bunch of dead people hanging from the ceiling on chains in this mansion where clearly a deranged psycopath lunatic lives. I had to pause the game.. This unrelenting morbidness was a bit much to handle for young me. I was fully creeped out and scared to hell and back as to what would happen when I plunged the stake into the orb. I was terrified as to what would happen! At this point, my sister had wandered out of her room and wondered why I had just paused the game and sat there with a cup of water looking white as a sheet of paper.. All I could muster up was "This game is pretty scary." At that point, not wanting to look like a little kid in front of my older sister, I proceeded to plunge the steak in and get Draculas freaking dead bone which was somehow a shield.
Being utterly grossed, weired and horrified out at this crazy game at this point, I decided to make my way back to the village and save my game. Then I tried Top Gun to kinda give myself a break. Later, I went to sleep and had insane nightmares about dead bodies hanging from the ceiling of my house and my school being overrun with sinister zombies. I woke up in the middle of the night and went back to sleep and still had another nightmare about corpses being all over the streets because a werewolf was loose in my neighborhood. Simon's Quest thoroughly conquered my subconscious and I didn't play that game again for at least another month afterward thanks to that.
So, System Wars, what was the first game that gave you nightmares?
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