The Goombas in Super Mario. Jumped all over 'em, I did.
No love (or should I say fear?) for the Dahaka from Prince of Persia? That bastard scares the piss out of me, especially when playing late at night.
And in a reversal of the thread, you routinely scare the sHELL out of the koopa troopas.
I remembered probably the worst one ever - the monkeys from System Shock 2.
Nobody has said Rescue on Fractalus? It might be from 1984, but it still managed to scare me and my dad.
The bloodsuckersfrom The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of games. They turn invisible, then appear next to you to attack.
Every time it rained in Call of Pripyat, the number of mutants would like, triple, and you couldn’t relax anywhere. I’ve killed controllers, bloodsuckers, and chimeras right near the entrance to safe areas.
Stalker mutants:
The OP:
Cyberdemons (and Spider Masterminds) never really bothered me too much, because when they show up, there’s almost always some trick for killing them: A switch to turn on a crusher, or a bunch of other monsters you can get to fratricide them, or at least an invulnerability sphere and a bunch of BFG ammo. But Barons of Hell? Those things, you’re on your own. Whenever you see one of them, you know you’re in for a real fight.
Wollywogs. If you played the original Pikmin, you’ll know to hate them in advance; if you didn’t, you’ll get a crash course in Pikmin 2. In Pikmin 2, there are walls in the caves you can break down to get treasure. Sometimes, these walls trigger traps. Sometimes, they are Wollywogs.
Two pages and no Wallmaster yet? I got shivers down my spine just Googling it.
Now, that picture is creepy. But you can see it. My first Zelda was Ocarina of Time. I remember walking into a room, assessing it, then hearing a fwoosh and seeing a shadow and all of a sudden I’m back at the start of the dungeon with no idea what just happened.
Then I get smart and don’t stand under the shadow. Well holy shit it was almost scarier to see the damn thing. And then the game tries to screw you over with its cousin, the Floormaster. You can see them, but they divide into 3 little hands you have to kill before they morph back into the big hand. Buuuuuuut then the game decides to make them invisible. Clack clack clack where the hell is it bwaaaaah!
Then I went back and played Link to the Past. I’m wandering around a forest dungeon, see a lovely 16-bit shadow and the sound - and run around like a chicken. Over the 16-bit version. Yeah, I know.
I played Silent Hill with the lights off. None of it compared to a Wallmaster.
Thinking back to lowbie days in WoW–there was nothing that made me jump like the “Warrrrrrblegarblegarblegarble!” of a Murloc who’d just spotted you (and brought five of his buddies along). It took me a lot of levels before I finally stopped panicking every time I heard the noise.
I once had a friend chase me around a store with the Murloc stuffed toy that makes that noise. I hate it so much.
Speaking of WoW, the battle roar you first hear from Ingvar in Utgarde Keep. That was the first time I heard it, so I was conditioned to go ‘omg final dungeon boss!’ every time I heard it, but they use it in Northrend for much less dire things so I get riled up over nothing.
It’s not always a jump so much as panic, but whenever the tank appears in an unexpected place in Left 4 Dead. If the team stays calm and works together, he’s actually a fairly non-threatening enemy, but let’s consider the facts:
- He’s about three times as big as every other zombie and enemy in the game
- Frantic boss music starts playing the moment you notice him
- If you get incapacitated, he can kill your character before your buddies kill him
- In a game where you can take 6-10 hits from pretty much everything else, he only needs to get one blow in to incapacitate or kill you.
- He’s much faster than you are.
- OH MY GOD HE’S RIGHT ON TOP OF US RUNRUNRUN splat
Are you thinking of add-on levels? When you meet the Cyberdemon in E2M8 it goes into the room with the most rockets. You have to lure it round the arena to pick them up to even have a chance of killing him. And you still have to kill the Flaming Skulls as well. If you’re only starting with a pistol, this is rather difficult on higher difficulties.
Actually, I’m thinking of Doom II. I never got any more than the shareware first episode of Doom I (which doesn’t have the Cyberdemon), and so kind of forgot about it.
Did Shareware really ever “Work”? Doom and Keen Especially, iD probably didn’t get anywhere near what they should have for the games. Putting in “Suggested” price for Doom probably didn’t help.
Then again, I could barely afford shareware games growing up, let alone full-fledged games.
I don’t remember that part, where was this?
It was in Fort Frolic, I believe.
More of Sander Cohen’s nasty work.
Ah, I gotta play that part again. That was one of my favorite levels
Fort Frolic has another very nasty scare, although it’s more of a psychologic game than ah AAAAH in your face one : there’s a room with a handful of plastered spider splicers in. They’re fairly creepy in their own right, especially considering they bleed when you shoot or hit them… but other than that, they’re 100% non threatening.
Then you trigger that room’s secret button, go down into the cellar, pick up the special secret and whatnot… and when you go back up the statues aren’t there anymore. They’ll pop up on you time and again from now on, still covered in plaster and on a strict “out of the fucking blue” basis, for optimal urine to pants ratio. Enjoy your stay.
I always liked my second playthrough when I knew what traps were laid. Put on the invisible plasmid and activate the “Power to the People” machine down in the area where the plaster guy is sitting in a chair. The game is set up where as soon as you activate the machine, the splicer becomes active and attacks you. (On a side note, hitting the statues with a wrench before they become active provides an endless supply of blood, but for some reason you just can’t kill them.)
However, with the invisibility plasmid (which you let take affect before activating the machine), the splicer can’t see you. And he never comes directly up to the machine where he would run into you (and thus nullify your invisibility.)
So you can sit there indefinitely and watch him as he tries to figure out where you are, because he’s programmed to attack you, but he can’t see you, and isn’t programmed to actually approach the machine.
Then shoot some incendiary buck into his head (or any other damage of your choice).