Not sure if this really qualifies, but it scared the excrement out of me and my friend.
We were playing Banjo-Kazooie, switching off the controller every so often. Swimming around, randomly exploring… ooo! A hole! Let’s see…
HOLY $%U)(#$U%)@)#(*!
A freaking SHARK pops up at the other end. We were both freaked out for the next 10 minutes.
Also, just recently finished Final Fantasy I. Maybe this was me, but the sudden change in the plot at the end was something I entirely did not see coming. WTF? A loop in time?
OTOH, I am now addicted to the Final Fantasy games (I love plot twists). Not sure if that’s a good thing…
Got Riven and Myst about the same time. Played through Myst then started Riven. Now Myst, for most of the game, you’re all alone - just you and your disembodied hand.
Riven:
as soon as you get to Riven, someone traps you! You have enough time to think, “I’m trapped! I can see the release lever! What do I do? Help!” before someone shows up, steals your books (Hey! I need those!) and then the thief gets knocked out/darted and dragged away. Your mysterious rescuer comes back and opens the trap. I wasn’t sure what to expect after that!
For those not in the know, the party, including Locke, a fresh-faced thief with a crush on the lead female singer, Celes, beats up on that damnably persistant giant squid Ultros up in the rafters. Then the party falls to the ground.
With the opera somewhat interupted and the lead males out cold, Locke, thinking quickly, starts up:
“Neither of you will have her! I Locke, treasure hunter, will marry her!” At which point Ultros starts up again and the fight continues. Pure goodness, great scene! And I bet the opera patrons thought it was a pretty unexpected twist.
The game Outlaws scared me. A lot. I was ten at the time, but I still find it scary. Not the game itself, but the little easter eggs:
In the first level, if you blow up part of the outhouse you get to swim underneath and then find a UFO. If you activate part of it, a panel opens up and you see an alien. Part of it was that I was startled, but it was still scary!
Then in the bounty level for the short guy with the sombrero and two pistols, if you turn on the fly code you can find this white poodle in sunglasses. Try shooting it, and the sunglasses will flip up and it’ll have red eyes, and your character will start on fire.
That really scared me. Something that added to it was that it was a sprite, so if you went left or right it would turn to stare at you at all times.
I played it again recently and still found the game scary!
The arcade version of Donkey Kong. On the first stage, you could complete the stage by moving Mario across to the far right ladder at the bottom of the screen, climbing the ladder, sliding to the right a little then jumping to the right off the bottom of the screen.
Spoilers, kind of. I mean, its not like the plot was terribly important, but in case anyone really feels it would be a horible spoiler…
Inspired by the legends of the great heroes of light, at the start of the game, you kill the traitor Garland (who will knock you all down!). In order to purge the world of evil and the terrible Chaos fiend, you travel around and kill the elemental evils. Then you travel back in time, thus becoming the very heroes you read about! Garland, by combining with the power of the four elemental fiends, came back too, becoming the fiend Chaos,whom you set out to defeat. It’s a recursive temporal loop; these things have theorized and may actually be possible IRL!
Which is a sort of WTF?! moment itself. I mean, he’s not going to kill us, oh no. He’s going to take that… sharp… pointy… sword… and just… knock us all down. Heh.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a great game, but it can be buggy as hell.
For instance, I was playing the mission “Rub Out”. I got to the basement of the mansion when my partner got killed, ending the mission. Nothing to do but leave and try again, right? Wrong. The exit became blocked off, and I couldn’t get out. Eventually, pedestrians started spawning in there. I wound up using the suicide code to get out of there.
It’s Engrish, of course. The correct translation is probably “I will strike you down!”
But I the best line from a Final Fantasy game is Kefka’s "Son of a submariner! :mad: " after Figaro Castle avoids being set on fire by diving into the sand.
I always thought it was Kefka’s “You spoony bard!”
Tht reminds me of a scene early on in FFVI (just after the one you mentioned). If you have Terra use magic during the first battle after the attack on Figaro Castle, which is the first time she fights with Locke and…uh, Edgar?.., then they will stop in mid battle and have a WTF? moment of their own (“Did you just use magic? How’d you do that?”). Once the scene is over, the battle resumes and you continue to lay the smackdown on some enemy mechs.
Funny how they never bother to attack while your party is distracted…
I was playing Rome: Total War when I had a moment somewhat like the OP’s. An enormous army was knocking at my door. It had probably 600 men (which is a lot in R:TW), compared to my 75. Fortunately, they only had one ram, so I just put two phalanxes behind the gate, and their cavalry charged, got held up, and had boiling oil poured on it. Over and over again. They fled with about 100 men left, and I lost maybe five.
Heroes of Might and Magic 2, Archibald campaign, sixth (Rebellion?) scenario.
I pick the Necromancer castle. Voila, there’s the map, the town lies by a body of water, and I get a nifty Corlagon the Knight (level 5 or so, yay). I hire a second hero, scrounge unprotected stuff down the coast with Corlagon, go north with the other.
The mother of all treasure troves glimmers before me, guarded by a stack of laughable peasants. Surely this bounty will empower me to complete the city within a couple of weeks. My necromancer rides forth into battle…
Her eight skeletons and three zombies face five groups of eight hundred peasants. Sure enough, I missed the fact that it was a legion of peasants The cowardly Charity retreats from battle.
I somehow scrounge up the eight additional bits of sulfur to build a Mausoleum by the week’s end, but this will not do. Another agonizing week passes. With ten liches in his army, the brave Corlagon engages the peasants. They crowd together at times, and the liches easily eradicate the poor agrarian folk. The victory screen proceeds to tell me that as a result of my necromancy… what the hell? Corlagon is a knight… but a portion of the dead had risen to serve me anyway. I look at the number below the skeleton icon - 1200.
Corlagon’s army slices through the map as a hot knife through butter, adding to its numbers as it goes. I do not even bother with the treasure troves. The enemy has titans against my lowly undead, but they are outnumbered five hundred to one…
The cowardly Charity retreats from battle.