EarthBound/Nightmare Fuel
- The final battle against Giygas in EarthBound . You spend the entire game fighting cartoonish monsters with baseball bats and frying pans, and end up battling a Cosmic Horror with a terrifying, amorphous visage that looks like a screaming face, a demonic ghost, and a fetus. The creepy, atonal, jarring background music and the dialogue inspired by the creator's trauma of seeing a glimpse of a murder scene, which he thought was a rape scene, in a movie as a young child only adds to this. Then when you finally defeat Giygas, the visual and audio distortions get worse and louder until they peak, then instantly blip out like a TV set turned off. The fact that most of the rest of the game is so childlike and cartoonish only makes this more terrifying.
- The music for that battle is not truly atonal. It's more like Prokofiev in style. There is a clear tonal center unlike in true atonality. However, it is still terrifying, especially since Earthbound is cartoonish normally.
- It eats prayer. Also,
- The music for that battle is not truly atonal. It's more like Prokofiev in style. There is a clear tonal center unlike in true atonality. However, it is still terrifying, especially since Earthbound is cartoonish normally.
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Giygas: It hurts. It feels... G O O D. |
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- And just before Paula prays for the last time (which is when you come in), she gets no response from anybody.
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Paula's prayer was absorbed by the darkness. |
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- There's also the fact that you're fighting Giygas in the past, when he was weaker. Imagine what he would have been like in the present.
- Actually you DO fight the Giygas from the present, who fled into the past. Still this doesnt make him less terrifying.
- Read the explanation Pokey gave as you fighting Giygas in the past, his future evil has become so powerful that it retroactively made his past self more powerful.
- Actually you DO fight the Giygas from the present, who fled into the past. Still this doesnt make him less terrifying.
- Poo's Mu Training in Earthbound. You're controlling an unfamiliar character who is told to go attend to a training session. The training initiates a battle, where an outline of a stylized Chinese-ancestor head appears. It then proceeds to (all in text, mind you) break your legs, tear off your arms, cut off your ears, poke out your eyes, and tear out your tongue. Worst of all, before each step, it asks for confirmation. After each step, your health drops. The final step reminds the player that all they have remaining to them is their mind--which they are then asked to give up as well.
- The Japanese version is even scarier; where in English the spirit informs you that he will "take your sight," in Japanese he says he will "crush your eyeballs." See here for the comparison between the Japanese and English versions.
- Wait through the logos for Nintendo, Ape (now Creatures), and Halken. Eerie red static flashes on the screen, with an quiet, high-pitched noise, and as the flashing slows down, we see a scene of UFOs shooting lightning at a city. Does This Remind You of Anything?? Cue Scare Chord.
- Th-the Boogey Tent...it's bad enough as-is, but isn't there a slit in between its jaws, and around that, the inside of his mouth colored slightly differently? Like there's something inside his mouth that he just hasn't swallowed yet?
- One word: Ambush!
- Moonside was... weird.
- The Cave of the Past.