Halloween is a long gone, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a horror game every now and then, right? While most games listed will hardly frighten one even a little bit (unless you really are that pathetic), they all have a special place in my heart and are worth one’s attention. Do note that none of these are simple flash maze games that will result in a screamer prank at the end, promise! Besides, most of those have already lost all of their effectiveness as most can already expect them unless they’re new to the internet, and they’re so 2004. As for the games listed, they’re all freeware, independently/amateur made, and/or fan games.
Pokémon Black
I’m not sure if this one counts as it’s based on an urban legend and nobody has played it, though it’s quite definitely the creepiest game out of the lot. Before you think of the actual Pokémon Black version, this is not the same innocent Pokémon game. The Pokémon Black that I’m speaking of is an alleged hack of Pokémon Red version, and it also deals with matters of death. Instead of the usual 3 starters you choose to begin with, you also have the option starting with a Pokémon called “GHOST”, who was at level 1 rather than level 5 as all starter Pokémon are. GHOST had only one move, which was “curse”. According to an author from Tiny Cartridge,
“Defending Pokémon were unable to attack Ghost — it would only say they were too scared to move. When the move “Curse” was used in battle, the screen would cut to black. The cry of the defending Pokémon would be heard, but it was distorted, played at a much lower pitch than normal. The battle screen would then reappear, and the defending Pokémon would be gone. If used in a battle against a trainer, when the Pokéballs representing their Pokemon would appear in the corner, they would have one fewer Pokéball.
The implication was that the Pokémon died”
I haven’t seen any attempts of fans recreating, or if you’re skeptical of its existence, create, the rom hack, but it would certainly be a must play for any Pokémon fans wanting a little sprinkling of horror in their usual Pokémon battles.
A Nightmare on Sesame Street
You most likely have not even heard of this one, let alone remember it, though to be fair I had long
forgotten its existence as well. A Nightmare on Sesame Street is a very old (we’re talking late 90′s old) computer game that I stumbled upon one day. Those were back in web 1.0 days, where we had piles of AOL free 200 hour trial discs and everyone used dial-up. Of course, I was still just a mere little child at the time, so I used the internet mainly for looking for games to play. This is how I stumbled upon a website called GameHippo, a haven for freeware games. Of course, the site had long been dead, although it has been revived, albeit the revival is no where near as successful or as active as the original.
Back to the game – A Nightmare on Sesame Street was a rather simple game. You played as Ernie, that one orange guy with the striped shirt, and since it was also a 2-player game, player two would play as his best friend, Bert. Basically, you had a time limit for each level to kill the Sesame Street muppets with a torturous, agonizing death as much as possible and then you would be sent to the next level after the time limit has finished. You had a choice of weapons such as bombs, an axe, a torch, and a needle. There was even a secret level dedicated to the developer’s “WonderDweeb”. It was weird; these were the days where everyone hated little kids shows like Barney like how people today hate Justin Bieber.
DotFlow
While I’ve never had time to play the original Yume Nikki game, which itself is a horror game, I found myself playing “.Flow” from a game recommendation one of my friends from Rizon told me about. .Flow is a
freeware Yume Nikki fan game, but a lot more darker, scarier and shocking than the original. The game was made using RPG Maker 2003, just like the original Yume Nikki game, created by an anonymous person going by the name “lol”. In it, you play as a young girl named Sabitsuki, who explores her own mind. There is no story in .Flow as players must interpret their own as they see fit, though many fans sepculate theories to explain character backgrounds and the likes.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles: The Master Edition 1 & 2
I would say without hesitation that Sonic 3 & Knuckles is my favorite game on the Sega Genesis. As one who has beaten the game literally over a hundred times, seeing rom hacks of the game is a great way of reliving my
childhood and playing the game from how others would have envisioned particular levels. Sonic Retro is a great website to find all kinds of rom hacks for Sonic games as well as fan games made from scratch. Hell, you
could say these amateur devs could dish out a Sonic game better than Sega themselves could, and I kid you not by this claim. Unfortunately, despite many of these fan games having great potential, most are never completed or developed past beta. Still, there are great titles such as Sonic Megamix, Sonic 1 The Harder Levels, Sonic Fan Remix and of course, S3&K Master Edition.
While the Master edition rom hack isn’t really a horror game, the game is infamous for being excruciatingly hard. The levels seem almost hopelessly impossible to complete, yet they’re still doable, although the chances are very slim. Even if you speed through carefully, you still have the time limit to worry about. The game has changed the layout of Sonic 3, switched around palettes, and distorted the sound tracks to give it a hellish tone given the difficulty, though strangely enough most of the levels after the third zone remain untainted. Even while using save states (and believe me, you’ll be saving states every 3 seconds) or the debug code, the game is still unbelievably hard. Indeed, one with high blood pressure should avoid this game at all costs as the rage it’ll give you could probably be fatal. If there’s any game that will you make rage quit hard, it’s definitely this one. In fact, I’ve admittedly even cried from frustration because of this game, and I haven’t done that since I was 8 years old.
There’s also a sequel to S3&k Master Edition that was released recently and just like its predecessor, the game is a nightmare and feels like a game you play in hell.
