Scary enemies in nostalgic games that made you quit the game

[Doom_Dude]

The black beast in Arx Fatalis. It appears in the dwarven kingdom and it constantly comes after you. Normal weapons do nothing and the area is a no-magic zone, so you can't use any magic against it or to aid you. It doesn't move fast but if you stop, you know it's going to appear soon. Only one way to deal with it is a bit of a puzzle..

 

 

6 hours ago, Doominator2 said:

These guys

 

Also the robots from Thief 2 weren't really scary but kind of unnerving 

 

Also the giant spiders and the craybeast (thankfully they're rare) guys in Thief. First time with the craybeast I was in the ruins looking down a well / some kind of hole. lol Heard all this awful clicking in the shadows. Threw some mines in the well and the thing walks over them like a tank and keeps going. So I noped the fuck out of there. Later I'm underground and realize I'm inside the same well. I dunno where the craybeast went and still don't know. As for the spiders I had one running against a barred prison door trying to get to me, when it clips through, sails over my head and a guard attack me. Ahhh good times.

[Tartlman]

Definitely the zelda redeads, fuck those.

 

Also king dodongo made me quit ocarina of time for a good few months.

[Ledillman]

These mf:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

also:

 

 

Bonus:

Spoiler

I don't like fast things

 

[DuckReconMajor]

Oh yeah, as mentioned ReDeads in Ocarina of Time definitely scared me too

 

The second snow level in GoldenEye 007 where you can barely see in front of you I wouldn't play if I was alone.

[Li'l devil]

Too many to list, but here's one example:
Olaric from RtCW.

 

Speaking of SS2, the one monster that made me feel uneasy is actually... those eggs, because they make such a creepy unnerving constant "buzzing". They didn't make me quit, but creeped me out a lot.

 

Another, lesser example, are hell knights in Doom 3 when I was a kid.

[BBQgiraffe]

the fucking fast zombies from Half-Life 2, whenever I got to Ravenholm I would lower the volume to almost zero until I was like 13.

I was also scared of the nether portal noises in Minecraft for some reason

[DuckReconMajor]

Oh god speaking of Minecraft, one of my first experiences was running up to what I thought was a Zombie during night-time, only to then learn what a Creeper was.

[Roofi]

[Hisymak]

For me it was the final boss of the second episode of Duke Nukem 3D: Overlord.

 

 

The Overlord probably was not that much scary on its own (I already defeated Battlelord and Cycloid Emperor by that time), but it was the environment and level itself what scared me so much. The ending part of previous level (Dark side) and the last level looked so much creepy, so when I entered the final boss hall and then suddenly the door opened, this boss came to me and killed me on touch, I was frightened to death. The low screen resolution and detail back then added much to creepiness. For many years I avoided encounter with this boss and quit the game just when reaching the final hall. I was about 6-8 years old kid, do not remember exactly my age when it happened.

[BlitzTheNutz25]

7 hours ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

Never made me quit but as soon as I see or hear one of them I get a shiver through me.

 

 

The first time I saw one of these things, I jumped once they did...ironically.

[unerxai]

The Spawn from Quake 1, those blue blobs that jump all over the place. The first time I encountered one was in a really dark area so I could barely see it. It killed me in like 2 seconds, I didn't know what the fuck had happened.

 

[Eurisko]

Those Kids from the elementary school in the first Silent Hill. Scared the shit out of me. Really unsettling location and atmosphere.

[The_SloVinator]

On 2/23/2020 at 6:38 AM, Chow Yun Thin said:

 

 

Spider (System Shock 2). No, just no. I just can't handle them even if I went Marine with a tricked-out Assault Rifle and anti-personnel rounds. They move super fast and make an unearthly sound that puts me on edge for the rest of the deck I'm on. Good luck finding an anti-toxin hypo once they bite you.

Haha. I vividly remember there being a patch that removes all spiders from the game. I used it when I first played SS2 11 years ago cuz it did scare me when I first encountered them in Ops Deck.

[Scorpius]

https://imgur.com/a/oFXFoSN

 

S.T.A.R.S.

[Chezza]

I never really got frightened enough to quit a game but I got a couple scares from some monsters others mentioned.

 

Perhaps the biggest scare was my first experience facing a poltergeist in Stalker. The abandoned lab x18 I believe.

 

The mood was set early on, then when I traversed downstairs I saw a crate lift in air just hovering. For a couple seconds I'm just looking at it until suddenly it gets thrown at my face and breaks. It got me so by surprise I had to press escape to have a breather in the menu.

 

It's controlled by those invisible poltergeist that may only appear after pumping some bullets into their electric aura.

 

 

[Decay]

3 hours ago, Eurisko said:

Those Kids from the elementary school in the first Silent Hill. Scared the shit out of me. Really unsettling location and atmosphere.

The shadow/ghost things or the knife-wielding gremlins? To this day I still can't play that fucking game because of the school.

[Pechudin]

Uh, I have to admit that I was kinda ... not scared but definitely anxious to play the E2M2 of Dusk, with the Wendigos. Got over them easily after the first encounter, and really like them as an enemy. I have not, however, get to playing the E3M4 with those wide-mouthed Horrors, they kinda kept me from going further. This is similar to many things in my life, imagining the uncomfortable situation can be worse than actually pushing yourself to go trough it.

[KillPixel]

Don't think I've ever noped out of a game, but if I did it was when I first met this guy.

[ASD]

As a child, some of the invincible enemies such as the Arachnut, the blue bird, the thundercloud and the Mimrocks (falsely thought so) in Keen 4 made me feel anxious so I didn't bother trying. I also had the fear of dolls, statues and masks become living so stage 7 of Golden Axe with the green statues was a hard part to me as 4/5 years old.

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Laugh if you want but the exploding devil heads in episode 2 of Monster Bash sufficiently traumatized my younger self that I shelved the game after getting the registered version and seeing them, despite being more or less fine with everything in the shareware episode.  Eyeball gore, man.

 

Also is it just me or is it kind of weird how Monster Bash was like this mix of one half presenting as a "kiddy" game and one half a gore fest?  A bunch of early Apogee games were surprisingly gory when you think about it.  Like that one monster that you can shoot the eyes off of in Crystal Caves and it leaves bloody stumps, although that one didn't really bother me even as a kid.  The original Commander Keen trilogy had a little blood too (Vorti-ninja death animation comes to mind) before they toned it down to a "neural stunner" in the later games.

 

I had a nightmare once about the monster face on the Bio Menace title screen too, but that didn't prevent me from loving that game.

[unerxai]

14 minutes ago, ASD said:

As a child, some of the invincible enemies such as the Arachnut, the blue bird, the thundercloud and the Mimrocks (falsely thought so) in Keen 4 made me feel anxious so I didn't bother trying. I also had the fear of dolls, statues and masks become living so stage 7 of Golden Axe with the green statues was a hard part to me as 4/5 years old.

Now that you mention it, those scared me a bit too. And then there was Robo Red, the big daddy of all the invincible creatures in the Keen series. 

[mrthejoshmon]

Here's an odd one.

 

 

The Bonewalkers from TES 3: Morrowind. Whilst they aren't the most visually abhorrent thing and they don't make particularly haunting sounds they are terrifying just from the threat they present alone (especially greater variants). A Bonewalker is something most players never prepare for, it probably won't kill you, no, worse, it's going to damage your strength with every hit it lands.

 

If you enter a room and see this thing standard protocol is to high tail it out, if you get stuck that is when the bed shitting occurs, if you meet one and it gets you you're boned (excuse the pun) and that is why I fear this thing.

[Murdoch]

6 hours ago, ApplemunchDooM said:

Never made me quit but as soon as I see or hear one of them I get a shiver through me.

 

Yeah those bastards were unnverving.

 

5 hours ago, unerxai said:

The Spawn from Quake 1, those blue blobs that jump all over the place.

 

Ah yes those damned things. The Fiends would get to me as well initially before I mastered the movement better. Still a rush to face one of them.

[The_MártonJános]

Yeah, the OP was afraid of Pinkies, but I was a bit more durable. I got hung up on the Bruiser Bros themselves.

To have the context given, I didn't know how to strafe yet (or perhaps it wasn't available at all?) and I could also just Shift-run, which was sort of a nuisance to withstand. More so, the dimmer area seemed quite off-limits, since the red floor looks like ember and have already proved itself dangerous on several occasions (I played E2M1 beforehead, the triangular pedestal which holds the Shotgun on certain difficulties is one example.) Feeling sort of restricted, I didn't last too long before the Barons (yes, the third surprise, TWO of them, not only one) took me down.

I didn't even dare to play E1 ever after, but reaching E2M8 was an even more gruesome experience, just by starting that one map...

What kind of outer-source brute force could've done this to the guys that swept the floor with me on the last encounter?
And not only this, but also, the 'exit switches' in the center.
I genuinely believed pressing them would revive the dead Barons.
It was fun being 11, having the living crap scared out of me every now and then, but still so blissful.

[DJVCardMaster]

This is one of the scariest encounters in a child's game. The low poly dark aesthetic of the original Crash Bandicoot gives this a worse feeling.

-Get into the wrong side of the branching path
-Go up stairs and the camera angle suddenly changes from top-down to back perspective
-Dead end on an old rusty room
-Suddenly this guy raises up with a nasty laughter and starts shooting



Sadly this moment got "nerfed" on the N'Sane Trilogy, since most of the eerie feelings came from the low-poly aesthetic.

[Mr. Freeze]

1 hour ago, mrthejoshmon said:

The Bonewalkers from TES 3: Morrowind. Whilst they aren't the most visually abhorrent thing and they don't make particularly haunting sounds they are terrifying just from the threat they present alone (especially greater variants). A Bonewalker is something most players never prepare for, it probably won't kill you, no, worse, it's going to damage your strength with every hit it lands.

 

Sounds like the Black Death from Diablo. Every time they hit you they reduce your max life by 1. 

[Doominator2]

1 hour ago, mrthejoshmon said:

Here's an odd one.

 

 

The Bonewalkers from TES 3: Morrowind. Whilst they aren't the most visually abhorrent thing and they don't make particularly haunting sounds they are terrifying just from the threat they present alone (especially greater variants). A Bonewalker is something most players never prepare for, it probably won't kill you, no, worse, it's going to damage your strength with every hit it lands.

 

If you enter a room and see this thing standard protocol is to high tail it out, if you get stuck that is when the bed shitting occurs, if you meet one and it gets you you're boned (excuse the pun) and that is why I fear this thing.

How did I forget this one. The first time I played Morrowind I discovered a little tomb by the side of the sea. When I walked in I was already kind of spooked out by the sounds of ghosts whispering. First door I opened I saw one of these guys and I never ran out of a dungeon so fast in my life.

[TheOrganGrinder]

Dungeon Master on the Atari ST.  The mummies.  These guys:

 

 

They're not actually dangerous; they're probably one of the two weakest enemies in the game, in an inversion of the usual sorting algorithm of skeletons and zombies being low-tier and mummies being a step or two above that.

 

But like all enemies in the Atari ST version of Dungeon Master, they move silently, and sometimes they like to roam in packs, and so you can be in unfamiliar territory, exploring as carefully as you like, when all of a sudden you hear that "Rrraaah!" from somewhere around you, one of your champions is wounded, you don't know where they came from or what's going on or where you can safely retreat to...

[Cherno]

I quit Thief: The Dark Project in the second mission when I reached an elevator shaft and below me, I could see a giant spider waiting for me in the darkness. Screw that!

 

I also completely freaked out in System Shock 2 when encountering the Invisible Arachnids for the first time. I played in coop mode, however, so I had to continue :(

[cybdmn]

The Librarians in Metro 2033. I wasn‘t scared really, but frustrated. These Goliaths are completely overpowered, if one of them get you, chances that you die are at minimum 80%.

 

Add to that that you are rather low on ammo, when you meet them. I tried numerous times to get past them, and couldn‘t survive the last three of them.

 

I quit, and never tried again. They destroyed the whole game for me.