Though home consoles, in their early days, didn't boast enough pixel-pushing power to elicit genuine fear in most players, horror and video gaming have gone hand in hand since the inception of the medium. 3D Monster Maze tasked players with evading a monster in a pseudo-3D environment back in 1982, and Death Race 2000 pitted play♍ers against ghouls and zombies all the way🉐 back in 1976.
Sure, the bleeps and bloops of old Atari 2600 and NES games aren't all that terrifying today, but that doesn't mean that retro gaming is totally devoid of quality horror. Here are 10 old horror games that could still scare the pantsꦜ off of you!
10 🥃 System Shock
The unofficial predecessor to the beloved action/horror franchise 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bioshock, 1999's System Shock 2 is still fairly well known despite its age and remains a celebrated horror classi﷽c. The 1994 original, however, is a lot less polished and remembered mostly by those who were old enough to play it when it first debuted.
Taking place on a derelict spaceship, players must solve puzzles, combat enemies, and navigate the title's warped, maze-like environments to track down and defeat the terrifying rogue SHODAN. It's essentially a 2.5D CRPG version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and lovers of retro horror titles definitely need to give this one a shot. There's also a remake slated for a 2020 releas𝄹e!
9 Sweet Home ♛ 💞
Before the gripping terror of games like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Resident Evil and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Silent Hill, horror games were few and far between, and the closest gamers could get would have been horror-themed titles like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Castlevania or Monster Party.
However, 1988's Japan-exclusive Sweet Home, based on a film of the same name, was one of the first games to genuinelꦐy attempt to get in players' heads and offer up some genuine, in-your-face scares. Often considered to be a predecessor to the aforementioned Resident Evil franchise, Sweet Home was an RPG that featured terrifying enemi♓es, bewildering puzzles, and an everpresent permadeath mechanic. It was as scary as things could get on the Famicom.
8 The Suffeꦫring
Released in 2004 for the original Xbox and PC, The Suffering may be a little too recent to be considered truly retro, but we'd be remiss were we to n🐼ot menꦉtion this underrated horror gem.
Set in a prison overrun with psychological terrors, players step into the role of a condemned criminal forced to make a desperate escape and confront the terrible secrets of his past. With deadly enemies designed to portray different methods of execution, The Suffering is a tormented, twisted experience that would have been utterly horrify🐼ing when it first released. Difficult and disturbing, ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚit's still worth checking out, and it's currently available on GOG.
7 💜 Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
Often viewed as the black sheep of the original NES Castlevania trilogy, 1987's Simon's Quest was an ambi🐼t🉐ious horror RPG which saught to propel the concepts introduced in the original title to new heights.
While the boss fights were underwhelming and the puzzles were so cryptic as to be game-breaking for some, the oppressive atmosphere and lurking fear latent in Simon's Quest must have i𝓰ntroduced younger NES owners to a whole new level of terror. Though considered to be annoying today, many still have the words "what a horrible night to have a curse" imprinted in their psyches.
6 𒁃 Haunted House
Released in February of 1982, Haunted House was one of the very first horror games to be released for home consoles. While it certainly 💞isn't all that scary by today's standards, it was a valiant ♎attempt at creating a hair-raising atmosphere.
Tasked with collecting pieces of an urn, players quest through a series of pitch-black environments and risked encountering all manner of creepy-crawly terrors or becoming completely lost in the titular haunted house. It ma𝓰y have come across as fairly generic for the horror genre—even back in the day—but there's something undeniably unsettling about this old Atari 2600 classic.
5 Doom 64
As the name would imply, Doom 64 released in 1997 as a Nintendo 64 🌊exclusive, and, as a result, is often considered to be the odd-one-out when it comes to the seminal first-person shooter franchise. That said, recent ports to modern consoles and Steไam have opened players' eyes to the horrific wonder that it was.
A totally new experience rather than a simple port, Doom 64 featured a tense, broody atmosphere and a grimy industrial soundtrack that felt like something right out of a horror movie. It was a much slower, more intense take on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Doom's typical run-and-gun action, and, at times, it feels more like survival horror than a twitch sho🍒oter.
4 🅘 Silent Hill
Perhaps an obvious pick, but this PS1 classic really needs to be played to be believed. it's one of the few early 3D games that was—and still remains—truly terrifying, and it spawned a series that would eventually culminate in one of the scariest demos of all time: P.T.
Silent Hill famously used its limitations to its advantage; the low draw-distance becoming a fog that masked the town's horrors, and the blocky, polygonal enemies were made all the more horrifying by how ill-defined they were. A classic which seems to get even scarier as it ages, Silent Hill is a must-playꦜ for anyone with a passing interest in horror.
3 ꧟ Cl🌠ock Tower
Just as the 1988 genre-defining NES title Sweet Home was ahead of its time, 1995's SNES Japan-only Clock Tower pushed the console to its limits and delivered a horror experiencℱe unparalleled on a 16-bit console.
The story of an orphan adopted by a mysterious benefactor and made to live in a sprawling, c♔onvoluted mansion, Clock Tower is a point-and-click adventure game that emphasizes a lack of control and makes things all the more inten🔯se by removing any direct control of the player character. It also features a series of puzzles that would put Resident Evil to shame and permadeath that makes each encounter with the deadly Scissorman all the more mortifying.
2 🌸 ꦬ Night Stalker
Releasing in 1982 on the Intellivision, it would be safe to assume that most modern gamers haven't played—or even heard—of Night Stalker. Roughly akin to Pac-man with a horror twist, Night Stalker tasked players with racking up points while gunning dꦫown the titular enemy ꧂and surviving for as long as possible.
A very early form of survival horror gaming, Night Stalker was a must-play for Intellivision owners back in the 80s, and it's a must-own💮 for those collecting for the retro console today. Intere⛎stingly enough, the game alongside the upcoming release of the Intellivision Amico.
1 I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream 𓄧 ﷽
Based on a 1967 novel of the same name, I Have Not Mouth And I Must Scream was a 1995 point-and-click horror adventure that pushed the limits of what was acceptable to present in a video game at the time. Featuring intense scenes of gore, abuse, and trauma, it was the game that Night Trap wished it could be.
In the far future, a supercomputer kn🌊own as AM is holding the last five members of the human race captive, forcing them to endure constant torture. Players must explore scenarios from the past in order to find some means of escape—trust us, it's scarier than it sounds!