Candid talk: Your darkest/scariest Mario moments

[King Aquamentus]

I hear a lot of talk about Big Boo's haunt in Super Mario 64, particularly the piano, but the stage doesn't really give me any unease, and I thought the chomping piano was hilarious.

For me, what does it is World 8 in Super Mario Bros. 3. Now, your opinion of this may change depending on what version you played first. Was it 16-bit? Then maybe it doesn't feel the same to you. A lot of dusky, blotted out mountain backgrounds and leafy jungle backgrounds. That's the problem with trying to graphically update everything. Some things should just be left as is. In the 8-bit version of this game, those stages were just black background, and much more bleak. At most, the actual stages halfway through world 8 had white outlines of background elements, sort of like what you'd see beyond the stage goals in some worlds. You couldn't even tell where the stage goal began, and the overworld music of course was replaced by the usual underground theme. Add to this a distinct lack of toad houses and bonus games? Yeah. Even better, World 8-2 was almost completely colorless, aside from enemies and quicksand. It was almost like the game was mocking previous lighter parts with this nightmare dream world.

[mrz84]

The giant fish (Big Bertha) and its various incarnations have always crept me out (don't like being eaten by giant fish...) and I've gotten to the point that whenever I see a stage with one I'm like: "Nope" *either use cloud item to skip or bring in a ranged attack power up*

[rock_nog]

Phanto always creeped my right the frick out. I always dreaded grabbing that key. He's invincible, chases you endlessly until you actually use the key, and there's just something unsettling about how he looks. Oh, and I just about crapped my pants the first time I made it through Super Mario 2 and came across the bird door that actually starts attacking you when you get the orb. Just... Ugh... Freaky-ass bird face flying at me... I swear I had nightmares about that. Never cared much for Big Bertha in Super Mario 3, either, but it didn't set me off nearly to the same degree that those enemies in Mario 2 did... maybe because I was a little older, more experienced, etc. Don't get me wrong, I'd friggin' run like hell in any level that had a Big Bertha, but it was a controlled panic, not something that would haunt my nightmares.

[King Aquamentus]

I used to greatly dislike Big Bertha stages myself. Now I'm indifferent to it. Stupid, because you know what? I still get eaten all the time.

[CJC]

Cosmic Mario levels are always a bit spooky, but I'd have to say the scariest Mario moment for me was level D-4 in Lost Levels (the original Mario 2). You're just trucking along in the level and suddenly SHAZAM! Bowser in your face. And he's not on a bridge, either. No, he's on a row of question blocks.

After I outran him I was terrified that he was going to be launching fireballs from behind.

[Din]

The auto-scrolling ship in World 8 of SMB3 has been and always will be an absolute terror to me. It's fast, it's frantic, the safe platforms are scarce and laden with mole wrenches, and a single misstep means a fall into the looming void of death below.

Oh, and Phanto is still absolutely terrifying.

[King Aquamentus]

Bowser's airforce or his navy? You can just bypass a lot of the latter by swimming through the mud, and none of the aircraft in World 8 really seem that ship-like compared to elsewhere.

[Din]

Whoops. Sorry, that probably wasn't very clear.

His air force at the end of the hand trap segment.

[mrz84]

About Phanto...Invincibility Star works on him. I tested it once. Little bugger came right back a few seconds later though. Otherwise, he is unkillable.

[GrantGreif]

I remember one time when I was little, I played the first castle level in NSMB for the first time and had to close my DS about three quarters of the way through because I was actually sweating. This was probably because of a combination of the fact that I barely had enough skill back then to even get to the castle in the first place and the fact that the music legitimately scared me.

[Aliem]

The first time a hand reached out of the ground and dragged me into a level in Super Mario Bros 3, no question.

[erm2003]

The first time a hand reached out of the ground and dragged me into a level in Super Mario Bros 3, no question.

Ok yes, this. I was having trouble figuring out what mine would be, but this was probably the one thing that got me when I was little.

I do still get some chills when playing some of the haunted house levels in any of the games, especially the newer games with the creepy music and crazy mazes.

[mrz84]

The hands in SMB3 spooked me too, I'll admit, the first few times I saw them. After that I saw them as a mere annoyance when I didn't want to go through one of those levels. Also, it looks kinda like Master/Crazy Hand from Smash Bros (seriously doubt that they used the hand for their model though)

[bigjoe]

This will sound weird, but when I first got to the maze castles in SMB1 and didn't know what they were about I was pretty spooked by them. The level just kept repeating itself and the time slowly went down.

The hawkmouth coming to life in SMB2 takes the cake though. I'm pretty certain I had a nightmare about it that very night.