Why not?

What game scared the whatever out of you? For me it was the first Silent Hill. I was alone in my house late at night and had my bedroom door open. I kept having this irrational fear that something was going to come lumbering out of the shadows so I paused the game to shut the door. Tightly. Then I locked it.

"Thief: the Dark Project" made me clench my buttcheeks reeeeeal tight. I also have somewhat disturbing memories of playing Darkseed back when I was a kid. The weird thing was that I didn't have a soundboard, and that somehow made the game even more eerie (me being young and impressionable surely helped too).

I think most first-person games have an immediacy which heightens the tension. I remember listening at one door in Thief for several minutes and then, when I thought all was clear, I opened it and was face-to-face with a guard. On the otherhand, Anchorhead, a text-adventure, had me pretty edgy, too.

The first Phantasmagoria scared me very much (probably because it was my first horror game). But the most scaring gaming session was for me playing the second chapter of Sanitarium (the one with deformed children). I could barely sleep after this. Pity this game couldn't keep the same level of horror intensity in later chapters.

The game was nice indeed but it didn't really scared me ;) . I guess Phantasmagoria 2 is kinda scary. Also fps like Doom 3. You know, monsters jumping at you in dark corridors :) . But above all I remember about 9 years ago Duke Nukem 3D and how afread I was in few places ;) . I guess it was my age :)

"Thief: the Dark Project" made me clench my buttcheeks reeeeeal tight.

Yea, me too. The crypt level where you have to steal that wizards stone or whatnot really freaked the Hell out of me. I'm was happy as anything when that level ended. Also, the second level, the "haunted mineshaft" srt of creeped me out. And even so, being caught and chased by a guard is freaky because I'm running down these deep dark corridor and all I here is footsteps running behind me. I get so freaked out when that happens.

Also, Alone in the Dark: A New Nightmare scared the hell out of me. I was 10 years when I play that game and I STILL have haunting memories of that game. Especially when that guy in the mirror sucks out your soul. Probably not the best young game experience I've ever had.

Also, Silent Hill 2 creeped me out. Outside in the woods when you could hear those footsteps behind you was sort of creepy, especially since you had just started out the game. Also, indoors, you can hear that creepy noise in the background and you feel like something is just going to jump out at you.

The resident evils never really scared me. the first one sort of creeped me out a few times, especially in a few of the darker hallways.

Oh yea, in Super Mario 64, the Boo's Mansion level creeped me out when I was a kid. I always like it when my dad would do it for me because i hated that level. In goldeneye, i also had my dad do the statue park level because I was afraid of that level too.

So yea, theres a few that really got me. :-/

Friday The 13th on the NES! Try playing it during the dead of night with the volume maximized...

Some of the highlights...

I played System Shock 2 at 3am and that was pretty intense. The creatures echo in the hallways and the digital goddess herself comes online to taunt you.

I also really really hate playing any of the Half Life levels with those pods on the roof with their tongues hanging out. Those things really creep me out! (I waste a lot of ammo "removing them" from the levels). I don't remember the actual name for them.

I also remember being freaked out by Countdown and it's heavily static-ed screaming voice sample (one of those Access RealSound games too before I had a soundcard) as you're hauled back for a lobotomy.

Finally, when I was very little, I had played a game of Hacker on the 8-bit atari and had gotten REALLY freaked out because I had thought my computer really had connected to some remote system and the police really were coming to my house to get me (the game over screen says as much, with a police siren sound effect). Now I know better, I disconnect the modem before I play ;)

Remember that any game is a lot more intense if you play it late at night, with all the lights out, and the volume up high.

And when you are married and your wife, for a strange reason, prefers to sleep during the night. Then it gets really scary, I tell you, regardless to what game you play :)~

While it's quite laughable now, Phantom Slayer on the Coco 1 in fall of 1982. It was a fps, but had a terrible sound when you did, especially if you had the volume cranked. I played it down in my parents basement at the time, on a big 25" tv, in the dark, with the volume cranked. Some info on the game: http://nitros9.stg.net/phantomslayer.html And, and interview with the author, in which I publicly admitted to being scared out of my wits: http://nitros9.stg.net/interview.html

I am sure that some of the younger gamers who have only seen fps games from Doom on will laugh hysterically at the primitive graphics on this game (several of my younger co-workers did), but even they jumped when they died trying it on an emulator....

That's awesome. Kinda like the jump from Alone in the Dark to Resident Evil, but AitD is/was nerve wracking, too.

Alone in the Dark (the dog jumping through the window in the attic was amazingly scary and unexpected) and Ecstatica for the monster that haunts you throughout the entire village, and cannot be killed. Those really scared the wits out of me.

I can say there have been two games that have scared me so much that the experience has stayed with me to this day.

Doom - I think there's a level on E1M3 or is it M2? Where you need to go through a dark narrow maze-like area infested with Imps and grunts. I remember once poking around and you here that "EEeeeEE" sound the idle grunt zombies make... oh creepy. That was fun.

The other one being Half-Life. Those headcrabs would freak me out. Forget the barnacles, though they were creepy too, but not as frightening and surprising as headcrabs. I had one fall down a chute once, right into my face... made me scream like a cheerleader with her hair on fire. :)

Mike

The game that kept me really scared for a long time was Clive Barker's Undying. I was younger of course, but I was playing it while being home alone at night and it was really really scary. I even had a friend who would refuse to play it at home, while alone in his room, and preffered going to a I-cafe and spending a lot of money because it was less scary. On the other had, Chasm had some spooky levels (it was also very hard), and the image of spiders chasing me through a giant labyrinth-like pyramid still haunts me :D

There were probably more but that's what I remember for now.

I'm 34 and it *still* scares me. I haven't been able to finish it.

Hard to say...since I scare easy so i really don't play scary games to begin with..

i did have a nightmare once when a giant Mario went into my room when I was about 10...(my cousins and I spent a few hours playing Mario non-stop b4 hand)

I recently finished Condemned: Criminal Origins and that was pretty f'n scary.

I can't wait for the PC release of that title.

The scariest game for me was Half-Life, if only for the headcrabs. Everything from the way the look, to the way they move, to that hellish piggy-squeal they make, actually led me to never play the game again. Or the sequel. Which is a pity because I really like both games.

System Shock 2 gets an honorable mention for being very scary even without having things that JUMP IN YOUR FACE AND START TO EAT IT.

Seriously, I don't know how anyone can play the original Half-Life without reaching a state of nervous exhaustion.

They made the head crabs even scarier in the sequel too.

head crabs?....dare I ask?

The thing this guy has on his head (though this is the normal head crab).

is that monster's body inside out?....shudders

lol@"Cheeses Crust" nice...i'm taking that one Trixter

There have been only two games that have scared me so bad I had to walk away and calm down:

Doom (of course). I was expecting a crappy Wolf3D upgrade, so I started the game with SBPro, headphones, and a darkened room. Big mistake.

Clive Barker's Undying. Cheeses Crust that thing freaked me out.

Still Silent Hill 1. Which is quite an accomplishment since I only played for 2 hours before running as far as possible from the Playstation. Surprised they haven't made a movie on it yet (or have they?)

Yet to be confirmed but some of my friends during university days mentioned Fatal Frame to be the scariest game they ever played. Not quite sure which version, but consider this: 10 dudes in a room watching the game. Most of them bailed out. Either this is really one scary game or they don't make dudes like they used to...:)

There IS a Silent Hill movie, it's coming out in April or so. It seems to be a mixture of SH1's story with SH2's soundtrack, with a main character that looks like SH3's Heather... and it seems to be surprisingly good too.
At least judging by what little can be seen on the trailers, it doesn't look like the typical crappy class-B videogame knockoff we're so used to see (like Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, and the utterly vomitive Alone in the Dark).

Anyway, back on topic: hands down, the first Silent Hill. To this day, I'm amazed at how incredibly effective the atmosphere is, especially with such low technical resources. Like a good old-school horror movie (such as, say, The Changeling) it's straight-out, pure terror from beginning to end.
Horror-wise, it even surpasses any of the sequels by a fair margin (the 3rd one being the closest one).

And the second place goes to Clive Barker's Undying, with no doubt. Aside from the constant tension created mainly by the eerie soundscape (it doesn't get any better than strolling through an oppressively dark, narrow corridor, knowing you're being hounded by those clawed creatures; while a corpse hums a lullaby somewhere in the distance), it had so many small, memorable scripted moments that you can't possibly remember them all, and so you can play the thing 3 or 4 times through and still be shocked by some of them like the first time. I know it did happen to me.
And it's happening again in these days.