Due to the limitations of the hardware, NES games had a ceiling on how intense and unsettling they could be. There’s a reason the horror genre really took off during the PS1 era: 3D provides so many more opportunities to freak players out. Still, while it was far from common, a few NES games tried to push the envelope, embracing the darkness through their environments, enemy designs, and sheer atmosphere.
Even if not all these games hold up today, they all deserve praise for taking substantial risks, and they arguably set the stage for later masterpieces like Resident Evil. Therefore, let’s not waste any more time: time to get dark.
5
Friday the 13th Is All About Saving Kids From A Bloody Death
Jason Voorhees Has Never Been Scarier
Welcome to Camp Crystal, and by god, you aren’t alone. During the absolute height of Friday the 13th mania, Atlus put together an ambitious love letter to Jason Voorhees. Cast as all the counselors, your goal is to simply defeat the iconic slasher villain, ideally before he wipes out all the children. While not necessarily scary, the game is consistently stressful and surprisingly bleak, making it pretty effective.
The NES and SNES have plenty of games based on horror movies, but the majority are just action-platformers that don’t really attempt to capture the spirit of the source material. Friday the 13th does that by actually casting you as an outmatched victim who needs to rely on your wits and quick thinking to survive the ordeal. Also, the game blurs out an alarm whenever Jason is about to slaughter a kid, which is neat.
4
Abadox: The Deadly Inner War Lives Up To Its Name
A NES Game That Leans Into Body Horror
A shoot ’em up mostly set in the stomach of a living planet. Yeah, Abadox is quite a weird game, and I mean that 100% as a compliment. The title refers to the planet Abadox, which has just been eaten by Parasitis, a sentient parasite that drifts through the cosmos, consuming worlds along the way. Parasitis’ body grew to the size of the planet, too.
Basically, Parasitis is a mix of Marvel’s Ego and Galactus.
As a premise, that’s dark as all heck, but we aren’t done yet. Sent on an apparent suicide mission, you dive right into the belly of the beast, fighting through Parasitis’ internal defenses to try to destroy it (and save the planet). The backdrops aren’t factories or generic space, but rather the gross muscle, ribs, and veins of the planet.
3
Shadowgate Will Lead You To The Shadow Realm
Get Used To Seeing The Grim Reaper
An incredible port of a celebrated Macintosh original, ICOM Simulations’ Shadowgate is pure dark fantasy goodness from beginning to end. Even as somebody who really isn’t all that good at puzzle games, I still found this game pretty darn engaging, largely thanks to the creepy-as-heck vibes and the sense that something could go wrong at any moment. Players are cast as a guy who ventures alone into the dreaded Castle Shadowgate, all in the hopes of stopping Warlock Lord before he summons a Behemoth.
As a point-and-click game, Shadowgate gives you a few commands that determine how you interact with the world. The solutions aren’t always obvious, and players will inadvertently make mistakes that result in their deaths. Seriously, the game makes it very, very easy to die, and simply opening the wrong door can be enough.
If you are going to play a version nowadays, the remake on Steam is the way to go.
2
Uninvited Is Gothic Horror On The NES
Once You Enter, You May Never Leave
- The final two images are from the 2015 remake, not the NES original.
That’s right, we are doubling down on ICOM Simulations. Uninvited plays exactly the same as Shadowgate, and it also involves entering and exploring a mansion (or manor, in this case) absolutely crawling with all sorts of monsters. ICOM worked around the NES’ limitations by pairing text descriptions and gruesome static imagery, and the game goes into painstaking detail when explaining exactly how you died.
Considering movement isn’t ever on display, Uninvited somehow managed to put together some truly impressive jump scares, and the reaction is heightened by the fact that the player must be the one who decided whether to open that door, approach that southern belle, pick up that ruby, or spend a bit of time in the cellar.
The story is just a classic haunted house scenario, as the protagonist crashes his car, realizes his sister is missing, and then heads into the manor for shelter.
1
Sweet Home Is Pitch-Black Dark
Capcom Knows A Thing Or Two About Horror
Before Capcom changed the horror genre forever with Resident Evil, the developer tried to do the same thing with Sweet Home, which didn’t leave Japan due to its bloody gore and religious imagery. So, what makes this top-down RPG dark? Well, the backstory involves an infant being burned alive and a mother who goes insane and ends up killing a bunch of kids before committing suicide and then becoming a ghost who haunts her mansion.
The story is more than enough to earn Sweet Home the title of the darkest NES game, but the gameplay further cements its crown. You take charge of 5 characters, all of whom have special abilities that make them vital in one form or another. However, the game also has permadeath, a feature that very few games are willing to adopt.
