The games/levels you were most scared of during childhood

[Apothem]

e1m3 where you grab the blue key and the lights turn off. That shit always freaked me out when I was little

[4thcharacter]

The giant brain boss and the fourth level in Life Force used to freak me out as a kid. The hud vanishing while fighting the said boss never helped.

[Ixnatifual]

The marine campaign of Alien vs Predator 1 and 2.

[osjclatchford]

The marine campaign of Alien vs Predator....

YES but I wasn't even "little" ... blew the shit out of that pipe that fell out of the overhead vent in the first map...

[Ethril]

let's see...

the wraith in shadowgate (until i learned how to get rid of it and then it wasn't so scary anymore just kind of creepy. that special NES kind of creepy. the intense music in that room didn't help, nor did the time limit.)

the second level of thief (the spiders were creepy and i hated the zombies because they kept getting back up and chasing you... any enemy that keeps reviving itself indefinitely was scary to me, really)

any level in a mario game with the giant fish that eat you and kill you instantly (mario 3 and yoshi's story in particular because those fuckers could JUMP. the ones in yoshi's story were even worse because they came with other ones that shot water at you to knock you off platforms so you couldnt be clever and just stay out of reach. they were fast as lightning, too, and im pretty sure you couldnt kill them, period.)

map30 in doom2. i wasnt afraid of the giant face on the wall, but the level freaked me out because i didnt know how to win, and enemies kept coming, and you could DIE IN GOD MODE.

bottom of the well in ocarina of time (oddly enough i dont remember the shadow temple bothering me). also: future castle town with all the redeads.

anything, ANYTHING with instant-death crushing walls/ceilings (doom's crushers are easily-avoidable and usually not even fatal. i mean either slow impending death where you had to quickly find a way to escape, or fast smashy deathtraps like hexen was so fond of)

in retrospect, i guess i just hated to be rushed. i liked to take my time and explore, and not having a safe zone (or not being able to MAKE a safe zone) made me nervous.

[Amuscaria]

Any Super Mario boss-castle levels on the SNES with the creepy music.

[Viscra Maelstrom]

i don't remember any games outright scaring me as a child, and i played some stuff like Resident Evil 3, Alone in the Dark 4 (the demo only), and of course Doom, which never once scared my 4 yo self. what DID scare me, though, was actually an interactive children's CD-ROM featuring a character i don't quite remember the name of now. but the gist of it was that he's a boy that is visiting his grandma in a skyscraper of 7 floors or so, and you ride the elevator to each of the floors in the building, with a colorful character on each of them.

the scare came from the fact that the boy sees the real person at first, then he imagines a fantastical version of them later on, which is told in an animated storybook kind of way. and on the 5th floor was a man in which he believed to be a ghost. there are mini-games you can play on each flor pertaining to these fantastical versions, and in the 5th one is a pitch-black room, in which you hover your cursor around the room, acting as a flashlight, and then you'll sometimes see scary things accompanied with music cues. what makes it worse is that, there's ANOTHER mini-game in the floor, from which you have to access the scary dark room first to get to it, in order to get a key for a sort of secret mini-game in the basement. so there's actually a reason to go to this floor aside from being scared shitless as a child.

i can't find any gameplay footage of it on YT, though all the cutscenes of the game are up on Youtube, but since none of it has what i'm looking for... meh. i might try and find the game CD i have and run it here to see what really scared me back then.

[RaveYard]

Doom 2 MAP30 - Creepy music, creepy boss and Romero's head... creepy...

Any underwater area in the Sonic the Hedgehog games. 'Nuff said.

And that too

[Hisymak]

I remembered a few more cases.

In Heretic E1M2 there is a "slow" red crusher in the middle of the level, there is Dragon Claw and some quartz flasks under it. When I played this level for the first time I didn't know about the crusher so I just went to grab the Dragon Claw and then unexpectedly I was crushed into death and could not leave the crusher. I was really frightened, and for some time period I avoided that cruser area and got Dragon Claw in some later level. Sometimes I asked my dad to grab the Dragon Claw and all the items for me because I was afread of going for it myself. Finally later I was brave enough to go for it myself. I was about 5 or 6 years old when I first played Heretic, it was probably the very first 3D game I had in my life.

Commander Keen 2. There are levels with a lever, which when you pull it, you destroy the Earth. I never liked these levels and thus CK2 was not my favourite game, and I never finished the game in my life. But what I was afraid of were those Vorticon Elites. I was scared of each area in the game where they were. They were very fast and constantly jumping, so they were extremely hard to hit and kill. But they were also shooting on me and killed me really lot of times. Even nowdays they are very deadly for me as I still cannot shoot and avoid them well, and thus finishing levels with them is still a challenge.

Commander Keen 4, the way to the secret level (Hand pyramid). I actually discovered the way two times in my life. For the first time, I was just gathering all the inchworms together. I had absolutely no idea what it will do, I was just doing it for fun (because I played CK4 for 100th time and had nothing to do). I remember the worms were almost gathered and I started to aimlessly jump up into the air with my pogo stick (again for fun). I was really not watching my screen carefully, maybe I turned my head off the monitor, and when I looked back on my screen then I suddenly appeared in front of the secret level. I was frightened to death (no idea why) and exited the game as fast as possible. Of course I did not realize that and how I triggered the way to the secret level, so it took me another year (or maybe two, three) to discover the way to secret level again.

[BFG]

witchaven 2 level 1 it was like descening into hell

[Hellser]

Descent 1 and 2, leaving the levels... That timer doesn't help either.

[TechnoDoomed1]

E2M8, I was terrified of going outside. It was not until I reached 17+ that I managed to gather the courage to defeat the Cyberdemon outdoors, even if I had dealed with him on other levels. Stupid, I know.

I found a way to abuse the level by using the central pillar and opening all doors. You can get him, but his rockets always hit the pillar, allowing you to kill him with the plasma rifle easily with some patience.

[Oberron]

Slimers from Duke Nukem 3D.

[TDG]

Hello all,

Has any of you ever played Ecco the Dolphin on the Sega Megadrive/Genesis?
It was an adventure game in which you played a dolphin that had to search for his family that were whisked away by a mysterious vortex.
You had to leave the safety from the home lagoon and explore distant waters, seas, and underwater caverns. During these you encountered creatures both friendly but also hostile like jellyfish, sharks, but also deep sea spiders which really creeped me out.

Halfway during the game the story turns science fiction as it reveals a lost of history of a disappeared human civilization, the Atlanteans, waging war with an alien race that seeks to harvest the oceans of Earth for all life every couple of centuries.
The Atlanteans lost the last war and were forced to travel back in time, leaving Earth at the mercy of the aliens called the Vortex (hint hint)

At that point the player has to go back in time as well in order to restore an ancient and powerful lifeform called the Asterite ( a creature resembling DNA strings) that can help the player.

Near the end of the game the player travels to the Vortex homeworld, finally encountering the Vortex aliens which design H.R. Giger would probably appreciate, large headed biomechanical creatures with four arms that even after loosing their body will continue to pursue you if you do not destroy their heads.

Though some of the enemies were pretty freaky I think the real kicker of fright was the risk of drowning. Dolphins are mammals and of course need air and in some areas or levels access to the surface or air pockets is really really rare.
So when you start running out of air you really start to become tense as you see to reach the nearest place where you can breathe. This also makes it somewhat of a challenge to player to actually go to areas where you can only stay a very limited amount of time.

There is also another segment that can really pull your nerves. Near the end you need to navigate through a maze but as this is an auto scrolling sequence you constantly need to be on the move. If you get trapped you are automatically dead and need to repeat the previous level again.
I am pretty sure a lot of players were quite nervous when going through this place, wondering if any opening they were saw was a path on which to continue or some diabolical dead end made by the level designers to trick you.

The music also really helped to set the mood, some of the tracks were really haunting, giving you this feeling of absolute loneliness.

[enderkevin13]

Can't really name any at the moment, sadly.