Feature: The Scariest Game On Every Nintendo Home Console

Sunless Sea is fantastic. Crazy it wasn’t reviewed here.

I haven't played all of these games but for me Clock Tower is the gold standard of scary games. Graphics don't matter, not much in weird ass monsters, there's no action because you're helpless, but it's terrifying. That's how you make a horror game.

I’ve been scared to death every time the Easter Ripper appears in MURDER HOUSE

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories made brilliant use of the Wii Remote and was very, very creepy indeed.

I so wish that the Joy-Con had speakers too.

I thought the scariest Switch games were all the cloud gaming releases, hyuk yuk yuk.

We don’t play horror games in this house

FALSE! Scariest game on N64 is actually: Superman.

clock tower really deserve it, but theresia on nintendo ds is something that deserved be in this list, even being in the portables only.

Im no good with anything jumpy. I even jumped playing Super mario partys - dont wake the wiggler mini game 🙈 my 10 year old used to find it highly hilarious. big girls blouse i am.

Lone Survivor was really good and scary.

Sunless Sea is quality stuff, but to take the top spot on a consol with four Bloober Team games in the genre plus other stuff like Remothered, Outlast and a truckload of Resident Evils sounds like quite a feat.

Clock Tower is amazing. I mainly grew up on NES and Mega Drive games, but it was this game besides other experiences like ActRaiser, Mystic Ark and Tales of Phantasia that cemented the later emulation-unveiled SNES as my top fave console for a good few years until I got a proper taste of NDS.

@CharlieGirl with video games, you usually need to experience something before you come to fear it - and contrary to some publishers' apparent optimism, the internet infrastructure in most parts of the world doesn't readily facilitate that with cloud versions.

Thanks for the reminder that I got Eternal Darkness this year and I haven't given myself the time to play it.

What did RE4 do to hurt you?

For me, my 64 pick would have been Shadowman 64. That game was seriously twisted. Digital nightmare fuel.

Sweet Home OWNS. Highly recommended. Also, @gutsy your post is even lazier lmao

Always wanted to play Sweet Home. The movie is awesome.

Ju-On and The Calling were ones I really enjoyed on Wii.

Silent Hill on PS1 was to me the first time something was scary wrong. Still can't bring myself to go back to the game but maybe a Physical version might not be so bad.

@BeefSanta I don't make my living writing for a children's game site, but if I did I'd be ashamed to have this article represent my knowledge and capabilities.

Wii U is ZombieU all day long!! Love that game at Halloween

so sunless sea is the scariest game on switch? really?

3ds--Dementium: the ward remastered.

Sweet Home was not available stateside so nothing was scarier for me on NES than LJN's Friday the 13th. Jason could pop up at any moment to slice you up, but it was even worse to be alerted when he was in a cabin murdering the (child) campers and you knew you'd have to go to him and battle him in 1st person Goonies II mode.

Add to that a life system that inevitably lead to you losing the counselors that controlled somewhat decently first, leaving you with the slower and weaker ones as the game was ramping up difficulty.

To be clear, this game was made by LJN and that does mean is plays horribly. But it was ahead of its time in some respects with some interesting gameplay ideas, and it did actually nail the dread and terror of living in a slasher movie.

What's about Dementium dilogy/duology and Nanashi no Game(Gēmu) on Nintendo DS?

The scariest game on the Switch isn't even a game; it is living with the constant spectre of your Joycons knackering and having to live without them for 2 weeks whilst Nintendo repair them ,,🤣

Interesting choice, picking a Switch game you don't even have a review for...

I liked The Calling on the Wii better as a spooky game than Silent Hill, but I’m probably in the minority on that.

@BongoBongo123 yes absolutly, with honorable mention for the original on DS (I never played the 2nd) and for Resident Evil Revelations on 3DS.
A little strange that there was no mention on Switch versions of Layers of fear and Outlast games.

Clock Tower is awesome and just a generally cool looking snes title. I also enjoyed Silent Hill Shattered memories. It's not without some flaws but some of the features with the wii remote were cool and some of the imagery sticks with me till this day. It's very spiritually in the style of Silent Hill even if it plays differently. I think It's the only good later title.

The Lone Survivor over Zombiu? I liked Lone Survivor. But Zombiu was a tense and horrifying experience. There was nothing more terrifying than playing Survival mode and almost losing your character.

@faint Nah, Calling is a better game. Night of the Sacrifice, Fragile, Manhunt... even Obscure 2 and Bug Island are literally better games. Shattered Memories is a God awful fanfiction. And that's just scratching the surface of what's wrong with the Wii part of piece alone.

Alien Isolation is the scariest game on any platform - period.

@FlashBoomerang sorry but that’s a typo and a half, because I didn’t actually know what game you were talking about. Theresia on DS.

Portable: Castlevania Legends (GB), Resident Evil: Gaiden (GBC), Pinball of the Dead (GBA), Resident Evil: Deadly Silence (DS), Resident Evil: Revelations (3DS), and EVERY Virtual Boy game because they're all scary to play due to the headaches and nausea each game causes.

Id have to say Alien Isolation is a strong contender on switch

@GamingFan4Lyf haha just my thoughts

Silent Hill Shattered Memories is great. Not perfect but I enjoyed the atmosphere building. Really inventive.

@Wesker This is about SCARIEST games, not GREATEST.

I love Sunless Sea! I hope they make it physical with both games on the cart.

I remember playing Eternal Darkness with a friend after school and the game scared the sh*t out of us. D:

Superman 64, basically liminal spaces: The Game.

I'd argue that REmake is way scarier than Eternal Darkness. Eternal Darkness had an incredible story, but it wasn't really scary.

Eternal Darkness and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories would both be great in VR if they were handled like the recent Resident Evil 4 VR for Quest 2, which is frikin' brilliant by the way.

resident evil 4?

"You and your friends are dead." If you're afraid of death, Final Fantasy II on the Famicom is not the game for you.
As soon as you name the characters (after your friends, probably) the game throws you into a battle of certain death.
And then of course there is the fake open-world design that tricks to constantly walk your way into more certain death at every turn.

@Lordplops Aww you gave me a flashback to the old N64 magazine and their ‘Lex Luthor’s Solve My Maze’ features.

Got a couple for NES. Shadowgate and Uninvited.

Shadowgate has many creepy deaths like breaking a mirror and it turning into a portal into deep space where "The grim reaper waits to embrace you." Seeing a close up of that Grim Reaper everytime you die is very nightmare fuel as well.

Uninvited had alot of memorable creepy moments (and some what the crap moments). I think what sticks out to me is the Southern Belle. And of course if you're playing the PC version (or have the Ruby in the NES version) seeing that random red skull appear is very terrifying.

Sunless Sea is great but definitely not "scary". It has an eerie atmosphere and a dark, interesting world but I was never "spooked" by it.

There are countless other horror games on the Switch which fit that criteria. This is the same console which has Alien: Isolation, Layers of Fear, Outlast and Amnesia.

I'm glad Lone Survivor got a spot, though. I think Fatal Frame would have been a more appropriate pick for Wii U, but Lone Survivor definitely deserves some love as it's one of the better Silent Hill-like games of the past 10 years.

Does anyone know how and where to play Laplace no Ma? I could find most of these online except this one?

Aw, no love for Zombii U then?! I know it divided critics, but that was a solid game which utilised the gamepad perfectly.
Alien Isolation is still the scariest game I've ever played. I would love a sequel, but it's unlikely now.

I'd mention Dead Space: Extraction on the Wii.

NintendoLife, do you want me to spend five minutes and give "constructive feedback" here or will you just delete that as well? I understand the writer here is young and uninformed... really don't know how basically saying "nah, you don't know enough and should have done more research, or played more games" is not constructive. Oh yeah, fee fees.

Didn't even include all systems, let alone represent some of the best in the genre for the ones included.

This is literally, lazy.

I'd love Shattered Memories on the Switch 😁

@gutsy it's a subjective article, i don't know what your knickers are in a twist for, some games are just better/scarier to others (case in point, shattered memories), they even ask for reader's picks to emphasize that they might not have chosen what everyone would have
how is asserting the author is uncredible ("too young/hasn't played enough games") constructive in this case??

@Wesker RE4 not that scary compared to REmake, more action than horror.

Not better than any of the first 3 actually, the first one, the first dogs, the second one the first licker and my god the third game, the first encouter with Nemesis. And Nemesis popping up everytime randomly was just terrifying.

In the first games the random sound that caught your attention and didn't know that it was a sound queue that lead to some kind of an encounter. The first ones were so much scarier because you had to solve puzzles, revisit places where you were already "traumatised" from before so you were already tense backtracking.

RE4 was just an amazing evolution from the tank controls to over the shoulder view and was nothing more than the gimmick of the game. The puzzles werd dumbed down as well and everything was so linear you never had to revisit any kind of level.

@sikthvash True, ZombiU was great

@somebread whatever kid

Obviously ZombiU not being the WiiU pick is the controversy here. It's the definitive version of the game and was a WiiU exclusive up until the subpar port the graced the One and PS4.

@icomma
Proving my point.

How hard would it have to be to include eshop, stuff like starship damrey, or escapee go? No, the writer picked and chose from the few games she's ever heard of and set parameters around that.

Could have been an awesome feature. Only have a full year to write it lol.

It's lazy.

Horror is such an important and influential genre that I guess I'm just disappointed that the majority of it is lost to most.

Glad Shattered Memories has gotten more respect as time has gone on.

@Darthroseman yeah, as more fans of the actual games grew up.

@gutsy so were left with weird little kids who never played or let alone understood silent hill writing articles for this site

@gutsy if you've got a bone to pick with shattered memories, leave it at that, don't swing at the article writers for it, it's generally the best recieved of the post-4 games (not counting PT for obvious reasons)

@somebread its not just shattered mem, though admittedly that game irks me. i genuinely think this coulda been a really great feature. it was however written by someone with, obviously, no passion for the genre. wish it was different.

@icomma you have reading comprehension issues dude im gonna talk to the other people here instead ok?

@gutsy We might not have found the scariest game, but we definitely found the biggest tw*t.

@nessisonett cant tell what you mean with that cute asterisk in the way, sorry kid

Clock Tower was also ported to the Wonderswan. A portable console.

Yeesh, it's crazy just how sensitive some people get over articles like this. Lists like this are just for fun, and aren't meant to be definitive. Nobody could ever create one that everyone agrees on.

Here's my rundown of every console.
NES: Maniac Mansion.
SNES: DOOM.
That's when I was little.

For Wii it's Silent Hill: Shattered Memories that still makes my hair stand up. From the first encounter with those ugly humanoid hunters transforming the whole city in some cold icy nightmare to the final story twist I was totally absorbed and amazed (and frightened). What a great horror experience. But Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon and Project Zero 2 - Wii Edition are extremely unsettling as well. I would also add Pandora's Tower and Resident Evil 4 - Wii Edition. They're just too good (and too scary) to ignore. Those are my Wii Top 5 Horror games.
Honorable mentions: Manhunt 2 and Dead Space Extraction.

For Gamecube I also agree with Eternal Darkness. It plays with your senses on a meta level. Nothing compares in the slightest.
Second place: killer7 obviously.

The spookiest horror game on N64? Possibly the zombie graveyard in Conker's Bad Fur Day. Body Harvest and DOOM 64 gave me a constant sense of dread as well. And Resident Evil 2, one of those "impossible" games and a stonecold classic.

On Wii U it's a tie between Maiden of Black Water and ZombiU. Lone Survivor was pretty good and crazy but because of its pixel style not too scary and ultimately somewhat of a very short game. Slender: The Arrival however, I will never do again! Not the best game but definately good horror.

On Switch I have played just a tiny fraction of its many horror games. DOOM would be the closest I think. So I go with Luigi's Mansion 3. Who said horror games must be bloody gorefests?
Oh yeah, Alien Isolation. Haven't played it on Switch but definately worth a mention. There are far too many horror games on Switch for me to have a comprehensive overview. Oxenfree, The Count Lucanor, and Darkwood are some of the creepiest indies I played so far. Check em out if you still need something for Halloween.

@MARl0 @SSGodLink
whats actually crazy is your compliance.

@gutsy You're trying too hard.

The Letter was the scariest Wii U game, hands down.

How do people play Clock Tower? ROM? I'm considering buying one of the translated repro carts on eBay, but not sure how those play.

Wait. So Sunless Sea is more frightening than Outlast?

@Wesker yah really. The first time I hears/saw the Regenerator was horrifying!

@gutsy you are even replying to your own messages. Bloody hell, not sure what your problem is. Anyway, good article.

Shattered Memories had a great aesthetic but wasn't scary. The enemies only came at you at obvious "ice zone" areas, and you just had to keep running. It felt more like a point and click adventure than a survival horror, where you're really just observing stuff happen instead of MAKING stuff happen. Yes I love Silent Hill 2. No I don't think it creates a standard to which it is impossible to live... I'm looking at you, Homecoming, get your own ideas!

Still remember playing through Eternal Darkness the first time. Great game. They should update it for Switch.

This certainly is a... list.

While I’m yet to decide whether or not Sunless Sea is a scary game, I’d like to thank the reviewer for highlighting it because I had no idea this game existed and it’s the perfect type of game I’ve been looking for. From looking at reviews and a few comments from people on here, it’s also a great game. I’m looking forward to getting stuck in tonight.
It reminds me a lot of my favourite (while not the scariest) horror game on the Switch, Darkwood. That game riddled me with the same anxiety and fear and dread I had when I first played Resident Evil on the GameCube and I highly recommend Darkwood to any survival horror fan.

For those of you that mentioned Shadowgate, Uninvited or Friday the 13th on the NES, and even the first Resident Evil game, mad kudos as even today I support those as still some scary games. Maybe the past graphics and the internet’s desensitization of death for millennials may not have them agree with this, but yes those are worthy of mentions. Even NES Jaws makes you jump.

Im surprised this article instead prioritizes Japan-only releases as if they were accessible NES and SNES releases. They should have been aptly credited to the Famicom / Super Famicom systems.

Other honorable mentions include the chilling, eerie music of the last stages and scenes in Contra, Super Contra, Contra III, Bionic Commando NES, Metroid and Super Metroid. Heck, Castlevania, Castlevania II, and Super Castlevania IV are totally related to this season!

For a fun yet creepy Halloween-related NES games, check out Alien Syndrome, Monster Party and Maniac Mansion. I’m sure there are others that are not coming to my mind now but I’ll come back here and edit as needed.

It's baffling how neither of the Fatal Frame games for Nintendo systems have not been mentioned. And Alies Isolation as a honorable mention? What a joke.

Nes and Snes's entries aren't even available in Europe, other than through emulation and rom hacking. N64 is obvious. Gamecube, while I fully stand behind Eternal Darkness, one of my favourite horror games ever, I have a weak spot for RE0 en REmake, those were among my first games on my first home console, and set a very high standard in horror and graphics, which still makes many games feel disappointing nowadays. While Silent Hill on Wii is a fantastic game and I really love it, I would never call it the scariest on Wii. Wii had Project Zero 2 (and 4, since we're not excluding imports and hacking), which is way scarier, and just quite a few actually good hidden gems in the horror genre, like Fragile Dreams. If light gun games and scary aren't mutually exclusive, Dead Space Extraction was awesome as well, and quite a rush. For Wii U, I'd go with the launch game that actually was available in a bundle, Zombi U. As a horror game, it's probably the game I played the slowest of them all, making the run and gun moments very intense, and some parts of it were actually almost too much to want to go on exploring.
Haven't played Sunless Sea, so I can't compare it to the ones I played on Switch, might have to try it.
As for handhelds, that would've been interesting, because the very few somewhat scary games on there are little known. For Game Boy there's also this whole community making short horror games nowadays, very interesting stuff. Game Boy Color had Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, and it wasn't bad actually, quite impressive. Advance... Nothing really comes to mind except for Castlevania and Metroid at times, a little bit. Boktai had some horror themes. DS had Dementium 1 and 2, and if you're counting fan translation hacks, Nanashi No Geemu. 3DS had Resident Evil Revelations (its best version if you ask me) and some indy games. The first Dementium also got a 3DS version, sadly as far as I know, the promised remake of the second (way better) Dementium never got released. Spirit Camera was an interesting Project Zero spin off, but it sadly was unplayable in the dark as it used the actual camera. I tried with a flashlight, and got it to work almost decent though. I also always think of the horror themed dungeon in Persona Q when thinking of horror on 3DS. Way scarier than you'd expect. And Luigi's Mansion. Not scary, definitely spooky.

@gutsy still waiting on your comprehensive list, bubby

Zombies at my neighbours should at least get a mention! great game

My friends and I actually did play Clock Tower on Halloween, and I briefly explained Shattered Memories when a friend actually said the words "shattered memories" in a talk, not referencing Silent Hill at all.