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00:10Welcome to MojoPlays and today we are getting jump scared by a balloon with a smiley face drawn on it.
00:16These are the 20 scariest moments in Nintendo games. Let's do it.
00:19Before we continue, we publish content all week long, so be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to get
00:25notified of our latest videos.
00:28Pokedex Pokemon Series
00:35Across a jaw-dropping 30 years, the Pokemon series has technically flirted with spooky ideas plenty of times,
00:41but none of that comes close to the true horror hiding in plain sight, the Pokedex.
00:46If you actually read about the little monsters in there, you'll discover Pokemon are actually kinda unhinged.
00:52Take this entry from Pokemon Silver for example, Drowsy.
00:55It remembers every dream it eats. It rarely eats the dreams of adults, because children are much tastier.
01:01Which is… unsettling.
01:02Once you realize your carefully trained partner might be snacking on your subconscious while you sleep, it raises deeply uncomfortable
01:08questions, particularly about why kids' dreams are apparently considered a delicacy.
01:13Creep.
01:13Or consider this entry from Pokemon Black, Yarmask. Each of them carries a mask that used to be its face
01:19when it was human. Sometimes they look at it and cry.
01:21That's right, the creature you're ordering into battle was once a human being and is fully aware of that fact.
01:27Then there's Haunter from Pokemon Crystal.
01:29Haunter. It hides in the dark, planning to take the life of the next living thing that wanders close by.
01:34Just a friendly pal lurking in the shadows, waiting to kill something. Cool? Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.
01:46Weird Faces Game Boy Camera
01:51The Game Boy Camera is one of those strange Nintendo experiments that quietly slipped through the cracks of history.
01:57This was a time before phones had cameras baked into them, when the idea of carrying a camera in your
02:02pocket was borderline sci-fi, especially for kids.
02:04So when I cracked into this novelty camera with a handful of goofy minigames thrown in as a bonus, I
02:10was enamored. Cute. Wholesome. Completely safe. Or so it appeared.
02:14Then you press a button you didn't know mattered and suddenly the screen erupts into distorted, nightmarish faces staring back
02:20at you.
02:21These weren't monsters or fictional characters either, but grotesquely altered images of the developers themselves, warped into something deeply unsettling.
02:28On their own, they're uncomfortable to look at, but the real horror comes from context.
02:33Kids had no warning, no explanation and no clue why these images existed at all.
02:38One moment you're messing around with a toy camera, the next you're confronted with a parade of uncanny faces that
02:43feel like the FBI finally cracked into your device to see that you were secretly taking pictures of your butt.
02:52The Trees Super Mario Galaxy 2
02:58On the surface, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a cheerful parade of strange worlds, each packed with bright colours, playful
03:03enemies and whimsical set pieces that keep things light-hearted.
03:06But dig a little deeper and what the f*** is that?
03:10In Shiverburn Galaxy, something is very wrong.
03:13If players switch to first-person view and scan the icy cliffs in the distance, they'll notice three shadowy figures
03:19standing motionless on top of the hill.
03:21They aren't acknowledged by any NPCs, they never interact with the player and they serve no gameplay purpose whatsoever.
03:27Digging into the game's files doesn't really help much either, the figures are blandly labelled as Tree, a description that
03:32raises far more questions than it answers.
03:34Just three unexplained silhouettes, patiently observing and ready to pounce.
03:39Of course, they never will, but we didn't know that in 2010.
03:43Clanker Banjo Kazooie
03:52This list isn't limiting itself to games developed directly inside Nintendo's walls, but also including titles that the company published.
03:59If that sounds like I'm stretching the rules, eat my butt!
04:01This is Matt Mojo Plays Now.
04:03After weaving your way through the maze of underwater pipes in Banjo Kazooie's Clanker's Cavern, you emerge into an open
04:09area where the titular character suddenly introduces himself.
04:13This is Clanker, a mechanical monstrosity and maker of 90s nightmares.
04:17On paper, his dialogue paints him as friendly enough.
04:20Once the initial panic fades, it becomes clear that he's harmless, but that first encounter is still pure nightmare fuel.
04:25Series creator Greg Males later explained on Twitter that Clanker was originally meant to be visible earlier through a straight
04:31pipe.
04:32Designed to spark curiosity rather than fear, but hardware limitations forced the team to redesign the pipe with a bend.
04:38Hey Greg, the bend was a bad idea, don't do that again.
04:47Unagi The Eel Super Mario 64
04:54I feel like I've talked about this eel a lot.
04:56Whenever horror, where it shouldn't be, is a topic of discussion, this is the first thing that pops into my
05:00mind.
05:01Jolly Roger Bay in Super Mario 64 lulls you into a false sense of security.
05:06It's serene, beautiful, soaked in calm blue water and backed by one of the most peaceful tracks in gameplay history.
05:12Nothing about it feels threatening.
05:14Then, you dive into the cavern at the edge of the bay, drift down towards a sunken ship and notice
05:18something peering out through a shattered window.
05:20That's Unagi the Eel, and it is absolutely not here to be cute.
05:24Beyond the obvious issue of deleting Mario's health bar on contact,
05:28what makes Unagi so upsetting is how completely alien it feels in the Mario universe.
05:33There's no cartoon charm, no goofy expression, no soft edges,
05:36and the game has the audacity to ask you to deliberately antagonize it for the next star,
05:41forcing it to burst from its hiding spot and lunge right for you.
05:44P***ed off!
05:45Jesus!
05:52Who's training EarthBound?
06:00When EarthBound finally resurfaced for Western audiences via the Virtual Console,
06:05many weren't prepared for just how far the game was willing to push discomfort.
06:08This ain't your mama's JRPG.
06:10The most unsettling example arrives during the trials of Prince Poo.
06:14Instead of a conventional trial, the game asks him to sit perfectly still,
06:18while a spiritual entity calmly dismantles him piece by piece.
06:21It's just normal stuff.
06:23First his legs are removed, then his senses vanished one by one,
06:26until even his mind is stripped away.
06:28That thing that made this moment so uncomfortable
06:31was how the developers used the design to really drive home what was happening.
06:35The audio cuts out when your ears are taken,
06:37text grows colder as your body disappears,
06:39and the imagery disappears entirely with your vision.
06:42What makes this scene especially disturbing
06:44isn't just what happens, but your role in it.
06:56The SA-X Metroid Fusion
07:08Every mission Samus Aran undertakes seems to come packaged with a fresh nightmare,
07:13but Metroid Fusion raises the stakes by introducing one of the series' most unsettling ideas yet,
07:18the X-Parasites.
07:20These organisms don't just kill, they replicate,
07:23absorbing the DNA of any living creature and perfectly mimicking it.
07:27Can you take a wild guess what happens next?
07:28Enter the SA-X, a ruthless duplicate of Samus at full power,
07:33wandering the station like an apex predator.
07:36This isn't a rival you can out-shoot or out-play for most of the game.
07:39When it appears, the rules change completely, the music tightens, your options vanish,
07:43and survival means escape.
07:46Remember when everyone lost their minds at games like Outlast and Amnesia,
07:49where fighting wasn't an option?
07:51Metroid fans didn't even blink.
08:03Mask Transformation's Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask
08:09Majora's Mask could honestly fill an entire Top 10 Creepy Moments list by itself,
08:14and it may just do that.
08:15Give me a few more entries.
08:16There are two scenes that filled me with terror as a child of the 90s.
08:20One was when Jim Carrey first puts the mask on in the mask,
08:24and the other is exactly the same thing.
08:26The transformation sequence every time Link equips a mask isn't just scary,
08:30it's just disturbing.
08:31His eyes strain and bulge, his skin fractures and twists,
08:35fangs force their way out, and the whole process is underscored by raw,
08:40agonized screaming.
08:41It's hard to forget.
08:43A Nintendo staff member later explained that Link's screams are meant to reflect the boundless sorrow
08:48surrounding each mask, but who cares?
08:50To children in the year 2000,
08:52it just looked like Link was in more agony than a human being can ever experience.
09:01Nighttime Expeditions Pikmin 4
09:12Never leave after sundown.
09:15That's rule 101 of the Pikmin series.
09:17And that's exactly why the idea of Pikmin 4 introducing a mode built entirely around nighttime exploration
09:22feels immediately wrong to longtime fans.
09:25The game isn't just breaking its own rules, it's breaking your nerves.
09:29These nocturnal missions arm you with Glow Pikmin, a strange species that exists only after sundown,
09:35and tasks you with rapidly spawning them to defend a base from relentless waves of enemies.
09:39The careful, almost surgical gameplay Pikmin is known for
09:43collapses into frantic chaos as red-eyed creatures swarm in every direction.
09:47Instead of calmly issuing orders, you're sprinting across the map in a panic, barely holding the line.
09:54It begins to feel eerily close to a zombie horde mode,
09:56and it's exactly what we didn't expect in a game like Pikmin.
10:05Zero 2, Kirby 64, The Crystal Shards
10:16The Kirby series has always worn a cheerful mask.
10:20You give me a little pink guy fighting an antagonist as silly looking as King Dedede,
10:24and you're gonna make me smile from start to finish.
10:26But things changed when the series moved to the N64.
10:30For most of the adventure, the game is gentle, forgiving, even cute,
10:34conditioning players to expect nothing worse than a good silly goose time.
10:37Then the final stage hits, and the tone snaps in half.
10:41You're dragged into an alien, otherworldly space that feels completely disconnected from everything you've seen before,
10:47and your pants feel primed for a good wetting.
10:49The last boss isn't quirky or whimsical, it's the physical embodiment of nightmares,
10:54a massive bleeding eyeball with wings floating in the void, firing lasers with zero sense of irony.
11:00There's no breather, no way to pause and collect yourself, no option to flee,
11:04you are just locked in place and forced to confront this thing head on.
11:07I'm just gonna play something else, I don't need to finish this game.
11:33The only thing scarier than the cold empty vastness of space, is the cold empty vastness of ocean.
11:38Aquis, in Star Fox 64, is terrifying, in the shiver-down-your-spine kinda way.
11:44It violently rips the player out of the game's usual setting,
11:47and sends you to the depths of water, where everything looks different.
11:51Instead of open skies and fast-paced dogfights, movement is sluggish, visibility is poor,
11:56and enemies ambush you from blind sides.
11:58The haunting music and echoing sound design amplify the tension,
12:01while the ocean setting removes any sense of escape.
12:04You're not soaring anymore, you're just surviving.
12:06Then, when you reach the end of the stage, you face off with Bakun,
12:10the monstrous, clam-like creature believed to have been the reason
12:14as to why Aquis was now a 97% ocean world.
12:17He is yucky.
12:26Blackout Luigi's Mansion
12:38Blackout Luigi's Mansion
12:44immediately drops him into a nightmarish scenario perfectly tailored to his anxious personality,
12:49a haunted mansion.
12:50Whoever came up with that idea has to be a real risk-taker.
12:54By today's standard, it feels like second nature,
12:56but back then, a pitch like, okay,
12:58Luigi in a haunted house with a vacuum would have been worthy of a solid firing.
13:02Late in Luigi's Mansion, once much of the house has been cleared,
13:05and you reach the rooftop, the game pulls the rug out from under you.
13:08A lightning strike knocks out the power,
13:10plunging the mansion into darkness and forcing Luigi back inside to find the breaker room.
13:15What follows next is a nerve-wracking trek through pitch-black hallways,
13:19where visibility is limited, tension is high, and ghosts ambush Luigi at every turn.
13:23It goes from cute horror to regular.
13:31Missing No Glitches Pokemon Red and Blue
13:44Missing No or Missing No is one of those things that feels like it should have never been seen by
13:48human eyes.
13:49The original Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue were famously unstable under the hood,
13:53packed with programming quirks that occasionally produced results, far stranger than intended.
13:58But although it's become as infamous as Pikachu himself,
14:02it's easy to forget just how spooky Missing No is to unsuspecting players.
14:06On the surface, its effect almost seemed harmless.
14:09Item duplication, the kind of thing that tempted players to push their luck, and push it, they did.
14:13Beyond that point, the game began to unravel.
14:16Duplicate versions of the player would wander the map,
14:19Pokemon sprites would twist into grotesque Cronenberg-style horrors,
14:23and entire areas would collapse into Glitch City,
14:26a place built entirely from broken data,
14:28where walls trapped NPCs and numbers replaced the ground beneath your feet.
14:31That is, of course, assuming the game didn't simply freeze or crash outright.
14:35And it actually happened.
14:36My best friend ruined his cartridge of Pokemon Blue by pushing Missing No as far as he could.
14:50Ghost Girl Pokemon X and Y
14:54While exploring Lumio City,
14:56you can chat with employees in an otherwise ordinary office building,
15:00where someone casually mentions that no one's ever gone to the second floor.
15:03Naturally, curiosity takes over.
15:05Ride the elevator up, and the game suddenly shifts tone.
15:08The screen flickers, and without warning,
15:10a pale woman is standing directly behind your character.
15:13She silently floats past you and whispers,
15:16No! You're not the one!
15:17And then disappears completely.
15:19No explanation, no follow-up, no way to trigger the event again.
15:22What the hell in the Pokemon universe was that?
15:29Gyroid Face Animal Crossing
15:35The Animal Crossing series is practically engineered to be comforting.
15:40It's most people's end-of-the-day decompressed,
15:42not everybody's start-of-the-day cup of coffee.
15:44The real terror comes from a simple mistake,
15:47visiting a friend's village and forgetting to save.
15:49It seems harmless at first.
15:50You reload the game, and then you realise something's immediately off.
15:54Your character's face is wrong.
15:57Horribly wrong.
15:58Hereditary wrong.
16:00Everyone's is.
16:01Welcome to Gyroid Face.
16:03Your avatar now wears the hollow-eyed, open-mouthed expression,
16:07complete with an empty, lifeless stare that looks like it's peering straight through reality.
16:11This isn't a quick slap on the wrist, either.
16:13The punishment lingers, forcing you to wander this cheerful world
16:16as something that looks like it came straight out of your sleep paralysis nightmares.
16:28Bottom of the Well, Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time
16:39Nothing good ever waits at the bottom of a well.
16:41Is it Little Timmy?
16:42Is it a bloated corpse from The Walking Dead?
16:44Is it a claustrophobic mini-dungeon?
16:46It is!
16:46Lucky guess!
16:47In The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time,
16:50draining the well in Kakariko Village
16:51and deliberately throwing yourself into the darkness below
16:54takes you to a location that's unsettling more for its atmosphere than its layout,
16:58lolling you into a false sense of security just long enough to lower your guard.
17:02Then, you meet Dead Hand.
17:04This grotesque, swollen creature drags itself across the floor,
17:08its disembodied hand bursting from the ground to seize you while it slowly closes the distance.
17:14The arena is cramped, escape routes are limited, and panic sets in pretty damn fast.
17:18There's no clever trick, no safe corner.
17:20It's just a spooky moment in a game that hasn't exactly prepared you
17:23for this body horror nonsense you're currently experiencing.
17:31Sanity Effects Eternal Darkness Sanity's Requiem
17:36It feels like cheating, but Nintendo so rarely publishes survival horror
17:40that I have to bring up one of the lesser-known GameCube gems
17:43and talk about its crazy mechanics.
17:45Plenty of games try to scare you with hideous creatures,
17:47but Eternal Darkness Sanity's Requiem takes a far more insidious approach.
17:51Instead of relying solely on monsters,
17:53it attacks the player directly through its infamous sanity effect system,
17:58deliberately shattering the fourth wall.
18:00Throughout the game, your sanity meter constantly fluctuates,
18:03and as it drops, reality begins to unravel.
18:06At higher levels, the effects are strange, but almost playful.
18:09A character's head might pop off and start quoting Shakespeare.
18:12But as the sanity gets lower, the tricks turn cruel.
18:15The game convincingly fakes system-level failures,
18:19making it appear as if a television is shut off,
18:21or your controller is disconnected,
18:22or your save file has been deleted.
18:25The horror doesn't come from what's on the screen,
18:27but what's on your system,
18:28and no game since has gotten this level of real-world effect into its experience.
18:37EMMI Encounters Metroid Dread
18:50As we've seen, the Metroid franchise has always thrived on tension and isolation,
18:56but EMMI units are a different beast altogether.
18:59These mechanical predators don't just threaten Samus like the previously mentioned SA-X,
19:04they dominate entire zones, relentlessly hunting her from the moment she enters their territory.
19:10If one catches you, instant death, no second chances.
19:14Once an EMMI locks onto your position, the game transforms into a survival horror,
19:18and somehow matches the energy of mammoths like Alien Isolation.
19:21In fact, the experience feels eerily similar.
19:24Panic sets in immediately, the music tightens,
19:27and your only option is to sprint, slide, and scramble for an exit
19:30before the machine closes the distance.
19:32Just thank your stars there aren't any killer androids waiting to block your path.
19:36Oh wait, maybe this is exactly like Alien Isolation.
19:39The stress is so intense that finally escaping often leaves you physically tense.
19:43Is this why I always have jaw pain at the ripe age of 30?
19:46I thought it was all the food.
19:57Giygas Earthbound.
20:09You'd be silly to think you wouldn't see Giygas on this list.
20:12Giygas is so infamous for being terrifying in a game you wouldn't expect this level of terror in,
20:17that it almost always gets brought up in discussions about surprising horror.
20:21It's a horror tale as old as time, don't reveal too much about your monster.
20:25Ambiguity is your friend, and if you want to scare the pants off a young Matt,
20:28don't let him know exactly what he's fighting.
20:31Giygas isn't presented as a clearly defined enemy,
20:33and even when you finally reach the last battle,
20:35it's almost impossible to understand what you're actually fighting.
20:38This alien force is less a creature and more a manifestation, like an idea.
20:43And I know that sounds wanky, but you try and describe it better,
20:47and I bet words will fall short for you as well.
20:49Giygas warps reality and saturates the world with a feeling of despair.
20:52The warped visuals of one of the SNES's creepiest finales is painted with oppressive sound design
20:58and increasingly abstract forms that make it impossible to understand what you're up against.
21:03Each phase feels wrong, and it left an impact on gamers still talked about today.
21:07Or at least by me.
21:21End of the world Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask
21:23It was tough to choose between this and Giygas for the number one spot,
21:31but I ultimately chose this because the moon from Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask made a six year old me
21:36cry.
21:36While the journey as a whole is packed with disturbing characters and pretty bleak side stories,
21:42nothing compares to what happens when you fail outright.
21:45Let the final hours tick away without playing the song of time, and the game forces you to watch the
21:49inevitable.
21:50The moon slams into Clock Town, wiping everything out in a cold, merciless apocalypse.
21:56It's not just shocking, it's final.
21:59That single moment drives home the stakes more brutally than any enemy encounter,
22:03serving as a result of your inaction, proving that this inaction actually has consequences.
22:09I could barely look at the moon, but seeing it win was too much for my little soul.
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