A game doesn’t have to be rated M to be terrifying. Sometimes, even the most innocent games can have horrifying characters, grim settings, and even some pretty intense jump scares.
From Nintendo classics to forgotten gems, these supposedly “family-friendly” games have all made gamers regret playing them in the dark. With giant sharks, cannibalistic piñatas, and real-life diseases, here are ten games that scared kids and adults alike.
10 Minecraft
When Minecraft was released, it completely changed gaming. The massive, immersive, buildable worlds were groundbreaking and the game remained one of the top-sellers for literally years. By day, the game is a beautiful feast for the senses, filled with towering mountains, lush jungles, and endless oceans. But by night, the game changes. Creepers lurk around trees, waiting to explode. Zombies wander freely. And Endermen (inspired by the Slenderman legend) mischievously move blocks around. When attacked, these Endermen also become extremely violent, and emit terrifying sounds straight out of a horror movie. Every gamer has jumped at least once while playing Minecraft.
9 Wiz ‘n’ Liz
In this forgotten SEGA Genesis gem, you have to rescue all the “wabbits” from an evil spell. The game places players under a very strict time constraint, causing a constant feeling of anxiety while playing. Furthermore, the game had a dark, almost Halloweenish tone throughout, with many of the levels taking place in graveyards, abandoned mines, creepy castles, and haunted woods.
8 Luigi’s Mansion
While GameCube was seen as one of the weaker systems in Nintendo’s history, everyone agrees that Luigi’s Mansion was one of the highlights of the console. Despite being based in the cartoonish Mario universe, the game follows Luigi as he hunts down ghosts in an old, dark, haunted mansion.
Armed with only a flashlight and a ghost-catching device, players must make their way through room after room of the ghost-filled estate. One of the scariest aspects of Luigi’s Mansion is the loneliness of it. There are hardly any other living characters in the game, creating a feeling of isolation and fear.
7 The Oregon Trail
You don’t need ghosts or monsters to create something scary. Sometimes, all you need is history. The Oregon Trail was developed as an educational tool for students to learn about the struggles of pioneer life. In the game, you need to traverse from Independence, Missouri to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Throughout the journey, players can die in a multitude of ways, including starvation, broken limbs that get infected, cholera, typhoid, snake bite, drowning, fevers, dysentery, measles, and more!
6 Viva Piñata
In Viva Piñata, players are tasked with caring for a neglected piñata garden, with the hopes of making it a joyous happy place for piñatas to live. There are a few problems though… Some piñatas eat each other, so players would sometimes discover piñata cannibalism happening right before their eyes. Piñatas can also get sick, in which they’ll then lay on the ground, breathing heavily, and moaning until help arrives, or until they die.
The game also had Ruffians, which were bad characters who would come into the garden at night and start fights, drop toxic candy, or kidnap piñatas. While the game may be cute and colorful, at its core, it’s a crash course in the struggles of life.
5 Jurassic Park (SEGA version)
Jurassic Park has had many game adaptations, and confusingly released two completely different games on Genesis and SNES, both bearing the same name. In the Genesis version, players control Dr. Grant as he tries to make his way to safety. Some of the levels are downright creepy, taking place in dense forests and underground control rooms. But scariest of all was the dinosaurs. When playing, nothing could prepare gamers for coming face-to-face with a T-rex, especially back in 1993, when gaming was nowhere near as advanced as it is today.
4 Super Mario 64
Super Mario 64 had some very creepy levels. There was notably Big Boo’s Haunt, where you had to explore a haunted mansion (easily the precursor to Luigi’s Mansion).
There was also the giant eel in the Dire Dire Docks level, which never failed to terrify players. Water levels are scary enough, but knowing that a giant eel the size of two buses was swimming in depths below was enough to scare an entire generation of gamers.
3 The Sims
The Sims revolutionized gaming. Some loved vicariously living through their characters, while others simply enjoyed building and decorating houses. The Sims was also controversial – not only could you make your sims have sex, but you could also, quite literally, kill them in a variety of ways. From forcing them to drown in the swimming pool, to setting the house on fire, to simply letting them starve to death, the game was full of macabre. And on top of that, your house could be broken into by burglars, the Grim Reaper could visit, and the ghosts of the dead could haunt the living.
2 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Easily one of the most popular N64 titles, The Legend of Zelda has long been a fan favorite. It was also, at times, quite horrifying. Case and point: Dead Hand. At the bottom of a well, Link must battle against a giant blob monster that’s covered in the blood of his past victims. Later in the game, you come across an abandoned Hyrule in the dead of night, where zombies called ReDeads emerge from the ground.
1 Endless Ocean: Blue World
In the Endless Ocean games, players explore the sea. Throughout the dives, gamers get to discover animals, search sunken ships, and enjoy the beauty of the marine world. And yet, despite the fact that you can’t actually get hurt in the game, there’s always something scary about coming across a giant shark in the darkness of the oceans. In Endless Ocean: Blue World, players are even stalked by a notoriously aggressive Great White named Thanatos. It’s easily the scariest game where nobody gets hurt.
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