The Ordinary Games That Horrified Me as a Kid
Nostalgia for some, abject terror for others
Somewhere between the age of 3 or 4 (in ’91 or ’92), my father came home and surprised me with a Sega Master System II (but to me at the time, it was just a big white box covered in blue and red text). There was this weird monkey-boy on the front zapping a black space-toaster with his fingertips. I didn’t know what this thing was, but it was exciting, so I was keen to check it out.
My next memory of this life-changing event fast-forwards to later that day, when I refused to continue playing Alex Kidd because everything was killing me and I couldn’t get past the first stage. There were dragons, giant fish, and two purple ghosts all out to ruin my day. This experience was probably the first time I learned to conceptualize death as something tangible and dangerous, and it scared the crap out of me. Also, Li’l Angie hated ghosts.
Looking back as a grown-ass man (who likes to believe he isn’t scared of ghosts anymore), I’m somewhat envious of people who seem to have nothing but cherished memories of playing things like Super Mario Bros. or Mega Man. While the crux of the games’ challenge is to avoid death by an enemy’s touch, the characters’ designs were less terrifying and your death didn’t result in your spirit flying towards the sky while seemingly howling.
And don’t get me wrong; I had a great time playing other games like Spider-Man vs The Kingpin, Ninja Gaiden, My Hero, and even eventually, Alex Kidd in Miracle World. In fact, I’ve never subscribed to the idea that games make kids anti-social because playing games was always a social experience for me. I had uncles who were between 5–10 years older than me: the ripe age for playing games all weekend long. I would regularly invite the neighborhood kids around to my place and we’d play Cool Spot for hours. And it was at other kids’ houses where I learned more about videogames that existed outside of the Sega Master System.
I was lucky in that over time I’d developed a solid library of games for a young kid from a poor-ish family. My youngest uncle, only five years older than me, also had a “Seega” (as we’d all call it until I forced myself out of the habit in my 20s), so we would often swap games for the weekend or hang out. But it was only in the company of other people that I could ever gather the courage to play some of my games.
Bear in mind, this was right before Mortal Kombat ripped the spines and hearts out of the American Congress, forcing their games industry to self-regulate and enforce age restrictions on products. So a game like Taito’s Space Gun, an on-rails shooter about blasting aliens that have invaded a space station and harvested human bodies, probably seemed like an appropriate romp for an unsupervised 5-year-old like me.
Yeah, nah. The ominous menu music was enough to spring a leak in my shorts to the point where I don’t think I ever got past the first stage or so, even after buying a Light Gun from Cash Converters years later (which would have made the game a lot more playable, in hindsight). Even watching playthroughs of the game today I still get goose bumps just from hearing that soundtrack.
A game that still gets my heart-rate going and triggers that “oh shit” part of my grown-man brain, is a first-party Seega game called Ghost House. You play as a kid vampire hunter navigating multiple similar-looking haunted houses, in order to awaken and kill its five Draculas (seriously). It kinda sucks now, but at the time it seemed cool and had great music until you realize it’s mostly just the one tune throughout the whole game.
That is until you finally open a Dracula coffin with a key, and a literal bat-out-of-hell starts flying erratically towards you, accompanied by some equally maniacal music.
Thankfully, I can look back on most of the games that gave me the spooks and smile condescendingly at my young self. I mean, since the ’80s videogames have become a sort of rite of passage, particularly in the tough as nuts 8- and 16-bit eras. But in retrospect, I have to appreciate the kind of innocence a kid like me could have to get the crap scared out of them by a 16x16 pixel sprite and 4 channels of MIDI. And I don’t think I’d trade that experience for anything.
Some honorable mentions of other games that spooked me:
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (the drowning music)
- Metroid II: Return of Samus
- Pokémon Red (Lavender Town)
- Resident Evil
- Silent Hill 2
- Eternal Darkness
