There is no doubt that at some point during our hours of playing videogames we will encounter a game that causes us to think that our game console is possessed by some sort of blood-vomiting demon spawn from the 5th circle of hell. But after hours of wasting time frantically reading scripture, and dousing it with homemade holy water, we realize that its not a demon sent to claim our souls, but a scary video game that caused you to soil your pants. These are the games that you play with the lights on and a loaded gun with silver bullets at the ready.

D (Saturn)
This game was my first foray into the world of survival horror severed limbs and all. I was a little young to truly grasp the fairly difficult puzzles, not to mention keep up with the 2 hour time limit you have to beat the game before your character is overcome by the darkness. This game had all the key ingredients of a scary game: Father goes on killing spree at hospital, daughter is sent to hospital to save Father from the evil that has consumed him, Daughter enters room and sees bodies impaled on spikes on the wall. I may never have survived long enough to fail beating the game in the 2 hour time limit as a youngster, but the game terrified me so much that I decided to bury it in an iron box in my backyard in some sort of misguided pagan ritual in an effort to cleanse my house of the evil that was this game.

The Thing (Xbox)
What really stood out to me in this game was the whole trust system the game used. The game is based on the movie of the same name, and takes place after the events of the movie. You are part of an investigation team that is sent to find out why contact has been lost with the scientists at the station. The games’ setting is in a large research lab in the Antarctic and therefore you get this great since of being isolated and alone. However you soon find you are not alone because not only are there weird creatures, but survivors as well, this is where there trust systems comes into play. You never know if any of the people you encounter are actually people or infected zombies of whatever it is that has taken over the research station. This game caused me to question whether or not my friends were actually infected by this insidious disease, but a flamethrower, and five years behind bars showed me that they were not infected.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (Gamecube)
This is the only game that I can recall that actually made me question my mental health. I would go along and battle various zombies and other various demons both winged and non, and then I would go to save my game, but no my game is not saving its deleting “NO…..NO….NO…. What the hell and didn’t hit delete! I hit save! God Damnit!” I yell, and then promptly throw my controller to the floor causing unnecessary damage to my controller. If I had waited a couple seconds before having my breakdown I would have seen that what I perceived as reality was false, in fact I didn’t hit save at all, everything was fine, I only wish that my act of rage had only been figment of my imagination and my controller wasn’t broken. That’s what made this game so scary you never knew if what you were seeing was real or the result of a low insanity meter. You would walk into a room and without warning your arms and legs explode and you die and then the screen flashes and you are in the previous room in one piece.

Bioshock (360)
Since this game is a new game I won’t explain to much into the various pant-wettening moments of this game, but lets just you’ll never look at a golf club the same again. This game is chock full of depraved cinematic elements such as a seemingly wholesome little girl repeatedly stabbing a dead body with some sort of hypodermic needle, although it did make it all the more easier to harvest them for power.

Resident Evil 2 (N64)
I knew that night light I got would come in handy from the first moment I saw a group of feasting on the flesh of some unknown victim. This game has the most fear inducing mini-boss ever, a giant MOTH! It’s like the creators of this game entered my deepest darkest nightmares and decided to add it to this game, as a child I had a nightmare of a very large moth attacking me and it totally freaked me out, and now hit it is presented in pixilated form, what sick bastards they are over at Capcom. However this time I was able to turn the table on that nightmarish moth, and was able to overcome my fears after repeatedly blasting it after a shotgun and a single pistol shot to the thorax to make sure it was dead.

So there you have it, a few of the most terrifying games to ever make me scream like a girl while I was playing them alone with the lights off. While the games may come and go the deep psychological scars they have left will remain, at least until I get around to setting up the appointment with the psychologist….. Oh yes and Superman 64 made me projectile vomit, but that was for different reasons all together.