That Green Dude

It’s time for my answer for October’s Question of the Month and I have a good and rather entertaining answer.

Question of the month is an event hosted by Kim from Later Levels, a fantastic blogger that engages with the community a lot. Last month’s QOTM  was won by me which was a pleasant surprise, can I make it two in a row? We shall see. Here’s my answer to last month’s question, where I wrote about a dream game of mine which would be a “Survival Horror Detective Thriller“.

October’s QOTM has been created by Megan from A Geeky Gal, an amazing blogger that writes about a wide variety of games and even cosplay. Go read her work and follow her blog.

Here is October’s Question of the Month:

In honour of Halloween, tell me what video game scared you the most. What is it about the elements, environments, music, or characters in the video game that scared you?

 

Oh, I’ve got a good answer for this month’s question. There’s a game that scared me so much when I was a kid that I couldn’t go anywhere near a certain item for a couple of months. The item I was scared of was… a camera. Have you guessed what game absolutely terrified me when I was a kid?

Yes, it’s Fatal Frame, aka Project Zero.

I played Fatal Frame when I was a kid and I immediately regretted that decision. I played horror games when I was a kid like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, but they didn’t scare me that much, that was until I played Fatal Frame.

One of Fatal Frame’s mechanics is the Camera Obscura, it is used to see and fight evil ghosts that want to see you dead. Seeing the ghosts through the camera back then petrified me. It scared me so much that for a few months, I didn’t go anywhere near a camera.

Being scared of cameras actually got me into a bit of trouble at school. One of the things we did at junior school was learning about the local wildlife and to enhance our work, we were told to take pictures of all the animals and insects we found. You can probably guess what happened.

I was scared of touching the camera, I didn’t want to go anywhere near it. This obviously meant that I didn’t take the pictures and I didn’t do the work properly. I was that scared of cameras, that the school phoned my parents and told them to come up to the school.

Now you might be wondering, how did he even get Fatal Frame in the first place? The answer to that question is, that it was my dad’s game. He played Fatal Frame and any game he played I wanted to play. When I finally opened up to the teacher about why I was scared of cameras, I lied because I was afraid of having all of my video games being taken away. I blamed it all on a nightmare I had and my dad luckily ran with that as well. I wasn’t in trouble and I got to keep my games, it was a win-win at least for a short time.

 

The crisis was averted however, I still had to deal with my fear of cameras. Thanks to the brilliant teachers that I had in junior school, I got over my fear of cameras in a couple of months. I had a teacher take pictures of wildlife with me, to reassure me that nothing would pop out of the screen.

 

You know, looking back at it I find it weird that I was so mortified of this game. I played the game from start to finish back in high school and it didn’t terrify me, it had its spooky moments but it didn’t have the same effect it did when I was younger.

What I find even weirder is that not only do I really like Fatal Frame now but I also have a fondness for the paranormal. I’m a sceptic at heart, I do think ghosts exist but I want to see concrete evidence for myself.

Fatal Frame, a video game that made me terrified of ghosts coming through a camera and now ironically, I want to catch an actual ghost in a camera shot. It’s weird how life can come full circle sometimes.

 

That’s my answer to October’s Question of the Month, I hope you enjoyed it. If you want to have a go yourself (there’s still some time) then click here.