What makes older games more unsettling?

Like many of you, there are some games from my childhood that still give me the creeps when I see them. Is it just "creepy nostalgia," or is there actually something to it?

[Seegtease]

Super Metroid is probably the best use of atmospheric storytelling I've ever seen in a game.

[Corbearable]

The limitations of technology in these games are 100% integral to their nostalgia now, to the point people have to struggle to recreate the same ambiance. I wonder how many of the jerky aspects that we loved about these old games were completely unintentional and frustrated the programmers who were trying to make an experience as smooth and flawless as they could. I hope they're happy to see that those limitations are part of what we all fell in love with.

[DBWendy]

As a little kid, I always found games like this scary, because they felt so big and mysterious. I felt like there was so much more happening behind the game, that I could never see. It was an uncertain kind of unease, like not knowing what's making a weird noise at night.

[chrisbg]

In this regard I always point to Silent Hill. Back in the day it was creepy as hell but as time has gone by its age has made it even creepier. Something about the odd movements, stilted dialogue, aged graphics and such just add so much to atmosphere of being in a living nightmare.

[Ravangers]

Ocarina of Time had some of the scariest monsters of all time. The redeads, moblins, skultillas, even some of the friendly npc's were scary. And the whole entire game of Majoras mask lol

[mojpiesto]

I think a lot of it comes from a degree of separation. Old media, like anaolg video, are so far into the past at this point that they are no longer the norm, as such they are unfamiliar, and even if you grew up with them they were the norm when you were younger and more impressionable. The separation applies to graphics as well, that style of presentation is antiquated and due to it's uneven nature or separation from realism it feels a lot more alien than the modern photorealism. It's like the fear of the unkonwn - it looks and functions differently from what you're used to, it's harder to comprehend

[CordeliaWagner]

The soundtrack of Super Medtroid is good!!! It feels so creepy, it feels so isolated, it feels so claustrophobic.
Best enjoyed as a kid awake at night in a dark room with headphones on to not awaken the parents.
One of my favourite Games of all times. 🖤

[PrincessAmanante]

Honorable mention to the sega sonic games underwater levels, and the nerve wracking music upping in tension as Sonic was running out of air.

[rickcornejo]

To love retro games better than newer games is not delusional by any means, imagination plays an important factor and Pixel graphics is a form of art all unto itself

[DplayzGames]

I find some old games as eerie, mostly because I play them without having any sound and without watching anything because of how lazy i am to turn the sound on

[TheKillzone]

Playing Shin Megami Tensei for the first time, got surprised of how ominous and creepy is the title screen.

[monolyth]

Even the NES has some of the most atmospheric horror games ever made.

[glitchsky]

it's a mix of the various limitations of the tech at the time. surreal animations, pore view distances, clunky or limited Controls, weird discordant midi tracks. it forces the players brain to fill the blanks and make sense of what is shown. modern stuff is clear and clean, yes a flesh hallway made from twisted bodies is going to be creepy in both eras of games, but a modern one can fully render it, and it'll be more... defined, real. which weirdly makes it less scary, less alien, yet more viscerally disturbing. it's a different type of fear.

[chrisrj]

The 90s didn't want to be the 80s and tried to appeal to the teens and collegers... but your parents from the 70s didn't catch that.

[Streakbreaker]

Really interesting topic! I think some aspects of older technology really lent themselves to unsettling atmospheres, intentionally or otherwise. Older games and media tend to be a little uncanny valley; with some combo of liminal spaces, janky movement from limited framerates, and compressed audio you can end up with something that's undeniably creepy in a hard to define way. I think some of these same qualities are what give analog horror an extra layer of spookiness.

[highwind]

When I was about 9 or 10, Ocarina of time used to freak me out a little bit. And when I was about 13 me and all my friends would pass around a copy of Silent Hill but couldn't bring ourselves to get far in it.

[AgentialArtsWorkshop]

Without getting too controversial, at least part of the psychological concept stems from the same reason you showed gameplay footage when mentioning older games and movie footage when mentioning newer games.

I’m a little older, so I experienced most of the kind of thing you seem to be describing more with some Nintendo and Atari games than I did for games for the Super Nintendo or Nintendo 64/PlayStation. Either way, I think part of what it comes down to is phenomenological context and awareness.

Newer games have long cut scenes, behind the scenes internet campaigns, and a much better understood production process, all of which make aspects of the interactive “story” more clear. While I do mean in terms of the characters on the game screen, I also mean in terms of the characters who created the content on the screen. Players today have a more direct pipeline of awareness running to their brain from every aspect of a game experience, even meta elements.

It’s extremely clear what Arthur or Master Chief’s drives, feelings, and intentions are when we play those games. We also know how everything on the screen came to be there, and in most cases who put it there and why. We know these things not only because there’s more behind the scenes understanding, but because games aim for a more one-to-one representational experience than the more symbolic and surreal representation used by older games.

We didn’t know much about who made them, how they were made, or—due to their symbolic, surreal representational nature—why they were made the way they were. Old games just existed in a surreal and unknowable space. The more symbolic and analogous a game had to be, the more surreal it felt, the creepier or more unsettling it was.

The disconnect also ironically allowed an elevated sense of responsibility over the characters. Does Samus really want to run around this ship; does Mario really want to go down this dark pipe? Are they scared? Upset? Not knowing made controlling them a little more real.

You can get a lot of it from much older arcade style games with black backgrounds and symbolic character sprites.

Because of all of this, older games can feel like some kind of coded communication from a lost or alien entity—indecipherable, uncanny, and largely unknowable. They feel like fading echos from no place still perceptible to no one discernible.

They’re electronic ghosts, driven far too mad by incorporeality to know their cries to the living no longer make sense. There’s a longing loneliness to them you could feel at the time.

There’s a kind of confused sadness on the edge of creepiness to all of that.

[vKarto]

2:27
T-Rex: Hey sir! Can I clean your windshield?
(not my joke)

[littlebigcomrade]

Being unsettled is such a fun feeling to have with games.

[besc]

Jurassic Park for SNES scared me as a kid. Those first person views in the dark buildings and dinosaurs that could wreck you from anywhere got me.