You may ask, "Alex, what do you mean?" Or "Alex, now I'm curious; what sort of things do scare you?" Or, "Alex, can you make me lunch?" I can answer all three.
"Alex, what do you mean?"
Well, my dear reader, as far as un-scary things go, I am scared by some of them. And I don't mean it in the "whoa that freaks me out" sense; I mean it in the "you can smell the fear in my heart" sense. Take this ending screen to Yoshi's Story:
Yet, I get scared. The first time I saw this and heard the music in the background I couldn't move. Paralyzed with fear. I don't know what about it scares me.
Alex, now I'm curious; what sort of things do scare you?
Even worse yet is the ending to Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. While the game itself is dark, nothing scared me more than the ending. "Wait, Alex," you may ask. "It's the ending. Everything is supposed to be okay." I get that. The end. You're supposed to be happy. Yet, I sit there, paralyzed with fear at this:
I suppose the picture doesn't do it justice. The audio is what scares me more.
I almost see a pattern: ending screens in general scare me. Not just "the end" screens, per se, but other sorts of "ends." Take, for example, King's Quest VI, the 1992 Sierra game. Ring a bell? Anybody? No? To spare you details, there are ample ways to die in this game. While explanations of all of them would be tiresome, I can spare you one:
You are trapped in the Catacombs of the Ancients. You are surrounded in darkness. The only thing visible on the screen is the glint of your two eyes. You are alone, save a bloodthirsty Minotaur, who roosts in the Catacombs...somewhere.
There are two possible outcomes to this situation.
- If you purchased the lantern from the pawn shop five million events ago, you can light the lantern, explore the catacombs, rescue the maiden who is prisoner to the Minotaur, and escape.
- If you do not have the lantern, you hear the Minotaur enter the room. The last thing you hear is a ripping sound, and the last thing you see is your eyes traveling in two different directions.
"So," you might ask, "What exactly is so scary about these?" "Well," I might answer, "I don't know." If I had to guess, I would have to attribute it to my youth. I very clearly remember playing through this game when I was young, and since I was young and knew nothing of the world [of King's Quest], I died an obscene amount. Every single time the death fanfare played and the voices of death sounded, "Tickets....oooonllyyyyy....NEXXXT," I got scared.
Another thing that scares me:
To this day, I get scared thinking about these things. I visualize the Majora's Mask scene, or hear the King's Quest death fanfare and then lose some sleep.
Alex, will you make me lunch?
