Good luck Brooke!

Now, scariest game moment. Well, though I have enjoyed being frightened by both Silent Hill titles, the moment in which I knew true terror took place in....Mario 64.

That's right. Falling down one of those bloody pits in the mansion stage and landing on a spinning platform with *shudder* circus music playing. Reminded me of clowns. *shudder* The deep fear that carnival music brought out in me has yet to be matched.

Shigeru Miyamoto is an evil, evil man.

-Volaran

More scary is your news of yesterday. . . . Why are you quitting?! Are you being coerced by those in power? You can't be coerced, dammit! You have blue hair and a katana! And. . . . fanboys that don't pay attention and lack the knowledge of Latin mechanics that would otherwise save them from looking stupid in front of the rest of us! YOU WEAR DOC MARTENS!

Scary... that's not hard to find! I was playing FF8 really late one night, and it was pitch black in my house and raining (everyone was in bed except me). And I got to the part where you go into space, and that seemed pretty cool, albeit a little random. And then Rinoa went out there, and all that stuff happened, and you had to catch her, which weirded me out a little... I mean, it was like, they want me to go out THERE? To the depths of space? Well, okay... so conveniently, I got to the Ragnarok, and that's where I thought I was home-free.

Not so.

I save at that nice little save point and walk Squall and Rinoa forward... and all of a sudden there is this horrible noise and polygonal figure under me... and the psycho music starts up, and I swear, it scared me half to death! Feeling brave, I went down and fought the thing... only to die in the first 20 seconds of the battle. Then I turned on every light in the house, ran to shut off the PSX, and sprinted up to my room where I hid under the covers the whole night, scared half to death that one of those horrible alien space monsters would come and cause my demise.

Strange, huh?

~LadyChristelle, still wary of the Ragnarok...

As for the scary topic, I could list off all the times in Silent Hill that I was freaked out or when I rushed over and turned the PSX off. But no, everyone else will be doing that. So I will go with the less obvious game that was the first to make me wanna cry (actually, it probably did make me cry).

That game was Dr. Seuss's Fix-Up the Mix-Up for the Colecovision.

I can't even remember exactly how old I was when I played that traumatizing game. I'm guessing I was like 4 maybe, or a little younger. All I remember was an EVIL looking Grinch staring at me, commanding me to put his body back together. And there were like hardly any moving graphics, so the screen would just stay the same for hours upon hours (well ok not that long because it wasn't a hard game), creeping me out to no end. And playing the evil game with a number pad didn't help anything either. All of those old timey games (like ET and Superman too) freaked the hell out of me. I can't be the only one, can I?

So yes, that is my scariest gaming moment. And please don't hurt yourself laughing too hard.

-Shane, who will kick anyone in the head who cheers because Brooke is leaving

Video games aren't really outright scary. Extremely creepy at times, yes, but not scary in a horror movie kinda way. But I can think of one game that terrified me for just a moment: [parasite eve]. When PE was released, many mocked it for being a horror game that wasn't particularly scary. Well, they were fools. Fools, I say! Or maybe they just didn't play this part near the end. You're wandering around a darkened museum, fighting re-animated dinosaur bones, and as you wander, someone is locking doors behind you and stuff, making you ocassionally crawl along windowsills to avoid being trapped. This very fast and repititious "tension" music is playing (and I always got to this part of the game late at night). Suddenly with no warning, a dinosaur smashes thrugh a window to the side and tackles your character, making her fall backwards over a railing. I think that's the one and only time I've ever yelled out loud wen playing a game.

Of course, I've heard the game design of PEII was far more frightening than anything in the original.

Okay, I'm sorry about this. I tried to resist it, but this has been kicking around in my head since reading the first sentance of yesterday's column, so I had to write it. It's to the tune of the "Please Stay" song from MST3K #905 - "The Deadly Bees." Remember the tune? Probably not. Well, whatever.

Brooke (singing):
I am leaving from this column
No more pompous stupid readers
No more yelling shrewish flamers, I must go.
I'm departing with my wisdom
To the quiet where I come from
Even if it means ending all I know.

The Collective Voice Of The Double Agent Readers [TCVOTDAR]
(singing):
Please stay,
We are your friends,
Though we've never actually met.
Please stay!
We'll give you love,
If you'll do a Monday column again.
(Or any other day after this week.)

Brooke (singing):
Can you give me any reason,
Why I shouldn't up an leave you,
And give up this silly job as I go?

TCVOTDAR (singing):
There are several million reasons,
Though there's none that we can think of...
Um, there are several million reasons, here we go.

Brooke (singing):
All these reasons you have given me,
Might totally convince me,
But I've already thought of all that, I must go.
With songs,
And tonberries,
And chicken cookies to give out,
I can't stay,
I've made my choice,
It's for the best without a doubt.

Brooke and TCVOTDAR (singing):
(I/she) will goooooooo...

TCVOTDAR:
Shit.

-Toma Levine

~sniffle~

First thing, man, it sucks that your leaving. I always though you were a great DA, and it was great to see a woman gamer *grrl gamer for you l337 people* give here thoughts and rants to us GIA readers. We will miss thee..

Now then...

My scariest game experience was with the Silent Hill games. I mean, never before had a game made my heart race, and scare me so much while playing. The RE games were good, but nothing like this. After playing one day, I woke up ready to go to school, only to find a thick sheet of fog around town and the high School. Oddly, this happened the same week as the Dr. Pepper 125 year anniversary festival in town. Scary indeed.

-Tristan, who can think of anything to put here.

10 years old, playing Wolfenstein 3-D in a darkened room with a sound card and quite loud speakers. Yes, I know its a pc game, but back in the day, hearing the game with a sound card. The guards screaming Auctung at you while pulling the triggers on their pistols. The only light being the glow of the monitor and the eerie red led of the speakers.

That was freaky.

Of course, then again, I was 10.

I guess I could say that the day I thougth that Faceball: 2000 for the SNES was a cool game could be my scariest gaming experiance.

Regardless,

-B

What was it about W&W that made it so horribly frightening to me when I was young? Was it the artwork, with its browns and purples, its thick black outlines reminiscent of fourteenth-century illustration? Perhaps the multitudes of spiders descending upon the hero as he explores the inside of a rotting tree... No, I'd have to say it was the music.

Sound in gaming has come a long way, yet there's something to be said for the bleeps and blips of the eight-bit days... the distorted, heavy sounds to which the NES' sound production was limited allowed for thick but remorseful chords to be struck in a game's music, intentionally or unintentionally. Most games at the time strove for clear, sharp tones; Wizards and Warriors started with dull, resonant bass and laid it on thick.

Dark music, dark artwork, and dark spiders coupled with a truly bizarre little tune that played when you were low on health gave me nightmares for the better part of a month.

-Nij

Scariest gaming experience? That would have to be while making my way through one of those many segue camera angles in the basement of the Resident Evil house and running around what appeared to be a background art dead zombie on the floor, who--SPOILER (but only for the very low on time, because it's an auto-squish)--grabs your leg just as you pass. I swear, the controller flew out of my hand, in much the same way the medical instrument would when a particularly buxom patient would undress for Dr. Benny Hill.

--J., whose only remaining Halloween connection left to make would have to be that episode when Benny played Count Dracula vs. Wonder Woman, which BTW was also one of the very few you got to see boobies on regular TV....

It's PC-related, but I think everyone can attest to its freakiness.

I was over at my friend's house, and he was playing Doom in deathmatch against our mutual friend who lived four or five houses down the cul-de-sac. They'd played for a while, say, half an hour, without incident. Then, for a period of maybe one or two minutes, our friend is nowhere to be found. When my friend sends a message to that effect - "Dude, where are you?" or something equivalent - suddenly we hear the sounds of one of the game's enemies, the Demon.

Now, you have to understand that in deathmatch mode, all monsters are taken out of the level. The game's code makes them cease to exist. But when my friend heads to the central room of the level, the entire thing is filled, wall to wall, with Demons.

We assumed it was some sort of bug. Our friend on the other side of the line still hadn't responded, but my friend said something like, "Man, that's freaky." Then we did get a response - nothing big, but noncommittal. "Yeah, weird."

Right after the text message disappeared, which happens after about five seconds, who rings the doorbell but... our mutual friend.