Memories and Fears

Before I crack on with this post, another in my long line of Observations, I would like to give a follow up to my Anxiety post. To all those who may be concerned, please be assured that I am past the worst of it and feel much better now.
(Never underestimate the curative powers of a hug, and words of comfort, from the one you love.)

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And now, our regular scheduled programming:

An interesting thought occurred, just the other week. I was lounging in bed, more than likely reading further into The Dark Tower, when I decided I wanted to return to a very specific slice of childhood.
Those of you of a similar age, who grew up with the PlayStation 1 console, you may remember demo discs. They usually came free with gaming magazines and contained about...ten/fifteen minutes, tops, of existing games or videos of game play. I don't recall when/where/how we acquired ours, but I certainly remember playing it. Squatting in our dusty pile of PS1 games is such a demo disc.
It contains:
Demo play from PaRappa the Rapper, Kurushi and Nightmare Creatures.
Video play from Final Fantasy VII and....some surfing or boating game, I can't remember. The videos never entertained me: why watch someone else play a game, when you can just play another yourself? It didn't interest me as a child and still fails to interest me now! It, like the 90's, are little more than a fading memory.

Anyway, during that 30est. minutes of youthful nostalgia, I discovered that since childhood I had improved at Kurushi, entirely not improved at PaRappa the Rapper, and - The Point Of This Post - I was still scared by Nightmare Creatures.
Now, anyone of today's generation would read such a statement, see the game in question, then point and laugh in my face. Compared to today's titles, Nightmare Creatures is not scary. In the fifteen minute demo, you play a very pixelated character, armed with an almighty fighting staff, who is attacked by several equally pixelated monsters. These include zombies, werewolves and gargoyles. Their mechanics work like a lot of old games; their movements aren't smooth, during attacks they switch between swinging their arms or standing still, and they come equipped with three sound effects at best.
Compare that with recent horror game Alien: Isolation. The Xenomorph looks, sounds and moves like its film counterpart, and it is so cleverly programmed, it never does the exact same thing per game. It doesn't follow a set route or set of instructions - in short, you can't cheat your way around it.
Now, Alien Isolation also scared me, I won't deny that for a second. But what Alien didn't do, which Nightmare Creatures did, was have me playing in a heightened state of uncomfortable tension. The only way I can really describe it is like a full-body itch, or my skin crawling; despite the fact I was over a decade older, had played/seen/read tonnes of other scary texts, I was uncomfortable and didn't like that I was playing it again.

And I wonder if this is an example of fear linked to memory. I've seen a video around this, theorising that "if you take a memory, attach it to an emotion, it burns in your memory and you remember it forever." This is why I can remember countless joy-inducing Christmases, devastating losses in the family, and every nightmare I've ever had - whereas boring, day-to-day activities like school and college might as well be in someone else's head.
As a child, I was terrified of Nightmare Creatures - regardless that our "copy" of it only lasted twenty minutes maximum. If my brother was ever playing it, I had to leave the room. Because, to my 7/8/9/10 year old self, it wasn't just a clump of cloudy pixels fighting a different cloudy clump. It was a man, left abandoned and alone, armed with a stick and fighting off a terrifying werewolf, with claws and teeth bigger than his head. When you're a kid, you don't care about shoddy special effects or less-than-impressive graphics. Between the game dynamics and your imagination, you create the fear.

(Sometimes it's not just kids. Thanks to Jaws, a lot of people got scared by a big rubber shark............including me!)

Had I played Nightmare for the first time recently, I was have immediately dismissed it, switched onto something "actually" scary like Evil Within, Resident Evil or BioShock.
But because I had that childhood fear of it built into the base level of my brain, Nightmare Creatures created in me a level of tension and discomfort that the above titles never quite achieved.

So if you're ever in the mood for a proper fear-fest this Halloween, root around in your childhood memories and dig out what used to put you on edge in your infant years. Just imagine it:
October 31st. Everyone's out watching IT or Insidious or The Human Centipede.
And then there's me.
All the lights off.
Wrapped up in blankets.
About to watch The Black Cauldron.
Cos let's be honest here, no child was fully prepared for that film!

Have a good one

=]

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It's just occurred to me I "sort of" covered this topic over four years ago, back in January 2013. With a different spin on it, however. To anyone interested, have a link!