Nearly twenty years ago, Nintendo did the unthinkable by publishing its very first M-rated game on the Nintendo GameCube. Released on October 25, 2002, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem stands as the very first mature game published directly by Nintendo. As a company widely known for being family-friendly, this was unheard of at the time.
Developed by Silicon Knights, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem is regarded as one of the scariest games of all time, and still sends chills down player’s spines to this day, with music, visuals, and a story that are sure to test the courage of even the most well-seasoned horror gaming veterans.
Upon inspecting the game’s long list of accolades, awards, and reviews by critics, it’s easy to see why Nintendo published the title. Eternal Darkness was 48th in the top 50 Nintendo Games by Official Nintendo Magazine, and the 96th best game of all time on all consoles by IGN, with countless other accolades.
This makes it all the more unfortunate that the game struggled to garner a wider audience upon the time of its release, with the game selling less than half of a million copies. This caused Eternal Darkness to fall into obscurity, though the game was later regarded as a cult classic.
It seems that Eternal Darkness may be making some sort of a return, though, as just recently Nintendo renewed several game trademarks, including Eternal Darkness, among the company’s other more popular classics, such as Ocarina of Time and Super Mario Sunshine. While this certainly doesn’t prove anything concrete, it is an interesting development nonetheless. If the company were to bring back the franchise for the Switch, there are several different routes that it could go, whether it be a sequel, remake, or direct port of the original GameCube game.
Denis Dyack, the original creator of Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, attempted to create a spiritual successor to the GameCube classic through Kickstarter entitled Shadow of the Eternals back in 2013. Unfortunately for Dyack, the project fell short of reaching its goal of $750,000 and was canceled.
It would certainly be a dream come true to both Dyack and the original game’s fans if Nintendo decided to go the route of bringing this old project back, either as the title Shadow of the Eternals or as an official sequel to Eternal Darkness. With such huge potential, it’s sad to see this project never reach the light of day and it would be great to see Dyack’s vision become a reality.
Psychological horror games have come a long way in the last 18 years, with many new innovations and mechanics introduced. In some respects, Eternal Darkness feels very dated with fixed camera angles, slow character movement speed, and a generally slow pace. But in many other ways, the game is unique and tries many things that most horror titles wouldn’t dare to try nowadays.
The game offers a complex magic and combat system, where the player can either cast spells or use melee combat in order to cut off specific limbs of enemies. Additionally, the game has one of the most ambitious stories of any survival horror game, spanning hundreds of years with over a dozen different playable characters. A sequel or remake of the game could double-down on the original’s unique mechanics and features, and throw in plenty of new ideas on top of the first game’s already brilliant ones.
The game’s most iconic feature, Sanity Effects, could get the biggest facelift, with brand new effects that could take advantage of the Switch’s new features. For those who never played the original game, one of the coolest parts of Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem was the game’s use of the system.
Nintendo must have thought so as well, as the Japanese gaming company went so far as to patent the feature itself. Like many video games, Eternal Darkness has a health meter as well as a magic meter. But unlike other games, there is a third meter, the Sanity Meter, which keeps track of the player’s current sanity level. The Sanity Meter lowers every time the player comes into direct content with an enemy and continues to lower the more time they spend around danger.
As the player’s Sanity gets lowered, they begin experiencing hallucinations, from the player’s character sinking into the ground to their head exploding and more. But some of the game’s best Sanity Effects come in the form of the game itself breaking the fourth wall. Some of the fourth-wall-breaking instances include the game tricking the player into believing that all of their in-game items have been lost, pretending that the controller has been disconnected, and even stating that the player’s save files have been deleted.
These sanity effects are all fantastic, but the game could definitely throw some extra ones in, taking advantage of some of the Switch’s new features. Things like the Joy-Cons’ HD rumble and portability of the Switch console could both be used to the game’s advantage, with new creative ways of scaring the player.
Eternal Darkness is a brilliant horror game, but it unfortunately never rose high in popularity like some other survival horror games from its era such as Silent Hill 2 and Resident Evil 4. Releasing the series onto the Nintendo Switch would not only expose it to new fans, but also allow longtime fans of the title to experience it again on current hardware, with potentially new features that could help enhance it. With the Switch’s already impressive library of horror games, the Eternal Darkness series would be a welcome addition to the widely loved hybrid console.
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem is available exclusively for the Nintendo GameCube.
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