In a bit of a twist today I am going to tell you about a game that scared me half to death when I was a kid, and still scares me today:

This is Jumpman for the Commdore 64 (and Atari, I believe). It looks innocuous enough, doesn’t it? You get to take control of a blocky pixel guy who gets to jump around and collect diamonds.

Then you start to play the game and there are bullets. Just, randomly. Bullets. Heat-seeking bullets. That will make 90 degree turns if they get near you so they can destroy you. They make gun noises. That noise will strike fear into your heart.

Scary thing #2 about this game: When you die, the game makes this TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE NOISE. It sounds like somebody doing very evil things to a synthesizer while you watch your lifeless ragdoll body plummet to the ground, bouncing helplessly off of every obstacle in the way. The guy in the video I posted dies a couple of times if you really want to see and hear it. (You don’t.) It’s horrific. NO PIXELS SHOULD HAVE TO GO THROUGH THAT.

Did I mention it was stupidly easy to die in this game? One misstep and you’re toast.

Scary thing #3 about this game: When you ran out of lives the game would start flashing red, (cue seizures here), as this fanfare played. Except it was like a reverse fanfare because most fanfares sound like they’re leading up to something good. This fanfare sounded incredibly foreboding, as though it was leading up to something impossibly terrible. And all this while the screen is flashing red. I can’t express to you how terrifying this was to me as a three year old kid. (I tried to find a video of this on YouTube but sadly I had no luck.)

Now let me tell you about one of the earliest nightmares I can remember having. I must have been about three or four years old, and in my dream my dad and my uncle were playing Jumpman (cause they used to do that when I was a kid), and somehow I just knew that if they got a Game Over the world was going to explode. I tried to warn them, but they wouldn’t listen to me. They got a Game Over, that terrible fanfare and the flashing screen came up, and the world exploded. Then I woke up.

AND YOU WONDER WHY I AM SCARED OF THIS GAME.

As for the game itself– I guess it was amusing enough if you could get past the whole thing about being maddeningly scary. The premise was pretty silly… apparently the Jumpman is actually an alien or space ranger who saved the planet or something? I don’t know, that’s what I worked out from watching my uncle beat the game (I figured he must have been some sort of god among men for actually playing through the whole thing), but then again, this is Commodore 64 we’re talking about here.

All I know is that no scarier game has ever been made. Eat your heart out, Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

At least the cover is hilarious.