Hey y'all! Happy Traumathon! If this is your first time around the rodeo, essentially Traumathon is a marathon of 31 videos all throughout October showcasing the scariest things we experienced through popular media as kids. New this series is the stellar intro by Tre Watson! Plus! Traumathon Arcade is a new thing we'll be doing in the second channel "Goose Boose Live and Reloaded"! In that series I'll be playing horror games all month long, so check it out! (Link in the description) Stick around everyone! We'll be doing this all October, 62 new videos in total (combining this channel and the second) so sit back, relax, and enjoy the spookies!
you're talking about how low poly thing look uncanny which they do and by that I feel like you would really enjoy cry of fear great horror game and perfect for this time
Nintendo: yeah let's just make a blue city, don't spend too much time Fans: this is the abandoned city and hope of a lost civilization whos legacy is lost to eternity
The world as a whole becomes a lot more interesting when you realize that everything that isn't natural, has been designed. Wet Dry World isn't just a bunch of assets tossed together haphazardly, none of the other normal stages are. Multiple people sat down and thought up what they wanted to do with this flooded city stage, and decided on every detail in the final level.
@@aortaplatinum Every level is just a bunch of random bullshit thrown together, with little to no thought after it was implemented. The game was slightly rushed but still became an icon of gaming
@@Mewtwo_150 Well, for the most part, there really isn't anything deep to it. They had a theme, made shit around that theme, and compiled it into a level. I really dont think they just went "We want a level which causes claustrophobia and exhaustion" when making dry wet world.
@@therealbubble4696 That's what I said lol. They made the map, threw some enemies in it, and put a random mechanic in it and called it a day. There wasn't much they could do back then due to hardware limitations
A lot of people also seem to forget about the cage in the corner of wet dry world. Depending how high your jump is into the painting, that’s how high the water is. So if you backwards flip high enough, you can swim into the cage, into a tunnel. There, you find an abandoned city. Idk if it’s in the remastered version, but it in is the DS and Original
Ok so can here anyone agree that it's odd that Peach's backyard is haunted by ghosts? Like why is it haunted by ghosts? I mean sure it COULD just be Bowser's minions but what if it's something more?
Fun Fact, if you actually wait in one of the rooms in the castle for a really long time a Boo would come in that room and attack you. It freaked me out as a kid.
7:40 a lot of older games had terryfing death scenes. One i never forget is a level on Spiderman 2 on the PS1. It was a level at night, next to dark, deep waters. If spidey falls, he screams and just... vanishes. I never wanted to play that level again
If you're talking about Enter: Electro (one of the boys), then I'll be honest. I watched the death and it was the funniest stuff I've ever seen. I know things are different as children, but the way the scream is cut off is hilarious
The main thing that creeped me out about this game as a kid was that it always felt very "isolating". It's like, you're exploring all these big worlds, but they're all so... empty? You're like the only human character throughout the whole game (except for Peach of course but she only shows up in the beginning and in the end). And in general you barely talk to anyone. Pretty much all the NPCs you encounter are just enemies, and some stages don't even have that many enemies either. Besides the invisible toads and some mysterious signs that are randomly placed throughout the levels, nothing really talks to you, you just feel like you're completely on your own, and you never really feel safe either, not even when you're in the castle hub. Add that isolating feel with all the other creepy things mentioned in this video and I think you can start to see why so many people are coming out saying that this game is "creepy".
Yes, THIS!!! I feel this so much. As a kid, I always hated how empty the castle was like you could just walk everywhere and still, nothing but paintings surrounding you. Even the talkable NPCs creeped me out because NPC being NPC, they'd always have the same dialogue no matter how many times you talked to them. And with talkable NPC already being so rare, it always made me feel like they were just a non-living entity watching over the castle, and also watching over Mario at all time too, in case he messes up and then they'll ----- Mario. Lol I know it's dumb as all hell, but that's the narrative dumb kid me made up in her head. That's why I never ended up finishing the game.
This is one of the reasons I prefer the DS version over the original. Maybe I'm biased because I'm basically a child who played the DS version first, but I always thought the game was a bit less... empty in the DS version thanks to the new playable characters. Things like the toads saying different stuff based on who you're playing as, Mario being the only one who can access boss levels, etc.
@@pellaria8012 The 2d games don't feel as "real" because they are 2d. It's like you're watching the character rather than actually being the character, and exploring the 3d world around you. When it comes to the 3d games, I'd say Mario Sunshine doesn't give this isolating feeling. You're in a shiny tropical island with a bunch of island natives to talk to. And even when you enter the worlds, you'll often find people to talk to. Mario Galaxy on the other hand goes back to the isolating feeling, and I think that one could be explained with space in general just being an isolating place.
A lot of early 3D games are like this, some of my favorite examples are MOTHER 3 [the N64 version], Sonic Adventure's adventure field hub worlds, and Luigi's Mansion.
yeah tbh I suspect this is why all subsequent 3D Mario platformers have featured plentiful NPCs, like the piantas and nokis in Sunshine, or all the weird beings you encounter in both versions of Galaxy (and all kinds of NPCs in Odyssey, including the uncanny valley regular humans in New Donk City and elsewhere), because basically apart from the scattered toads in the castle, SM64 is practically devoid of life apart from Mario and various enemies (I guess there are also the pink bob-omb buddies and occasionally some others like the penguins or Koopa the Quick, but in general, non-enemy characters are rare). I think the developers kind of realized how unsettling and vacant this made the game world feel.
I honestly though the Mario 64 Personalized thing was just okay until I watched "Mario 64's Personalised Copies and Psychological Operations" that goes into much more detail into the lore, and it becomes so much more scary.
The N64 and PS1 era was full of this uncanny and wonderous feeling of discovery and the unknown, especially for many of us that were children when we experienced it. This is extremely personal and I haven't heard anything related to it ever, not online, nor in real life, but something similar to the Mario 64 phenomenons happened to me while playing Yoshi's Story when I was barely out of toddler age, it's something really miniscule, but something that captured my imagination so heavily I never forgot about it. While playing Yoshi's Story there comes a point in cavern level in which you get to fight a skeletal-hydra-dragon thing, I had done the fight many times before, but for some reason this time there was a random black cube among the ground that had never been there before, it was probably just a texture glitch, but that little thing was enough for it to spark my imagination in a manner so great I kept looking for answers for about a decade, I was convinced I had found some sort of secret. It's crazy, anything and everything in videogames seemed to hold so much more meaning back in the day, it's really kinda sad, the last time I felt that kind of wonder was in my first blind playthrough of Undertale, something that I think made many people in the same generation-bracket as me appreciate the game as much as they did.
I have this feeling to, but with the ps2 and ps3 since im not from the 90s. In infamous 1 and 2, probably my two firsts games that i played in a serious way, there was this boss called Sasha or something that was scary for me, i finished that boss quickly and now that i play that game i see things that i dont remember, this also happens with infamous 2, the map with Zeke face in a building, random corpses in different locations that then they are not in there, some powers that seem destructively and big and now they are little and not that epic, fights with enemies that looked like a big war. I just wonder how our imagination as kids creates and removes things from everything
The aspect of Mario 64 that creeped me out the most was how lonely it feels, especially in the castle. normally places in the other 3D Mario games like Sunshine and Odyssey feel more populated, and like they're part of a bigger world, but in Mario 64 it really feels like nothing exists beyond Peach's Castle, and Mario just exists alone in this vacuum
Wet-Dry world fills me with a lot of nostalgia, it is one of my favorite levels on Mario 64. The background texture reminds me of my hometown and every time I play it makes me feel home sick. Man, every copy of mario 64 is personalized.
The Boo's laughter is actually Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario, coincidentally. They got it from a sound archive. The laugh that plays before you enter the mansion sounds a lot like Charles Martinet so it could be the boo laugh slowed down
It's weird when your birthday is in October, you get all excited for your birthday all happy and giddy and shit, while the rest of the world has scary skeletons running everywhere It's a weird type of vibe
I was literally so scared of Mario 64 as a kid I never even made it to the first bowser fight. I think something about how empty the castle was really freaked me out lmao
The laugh that you hear in boo's mansion isnt strange, it's a development mistake. The Boos and Bowser's laugh are both sped up and slowed down versions of a normal laugh. It's just when you activate the scene of opening the door, the audio file "resets", causing the otherwise sped up laugh to default to the original audio. Mystery solved. You're welcome. 😎😁
Something neat about their laugh is that it’s performed my Charles Martinet for an audio sample completion I think. Nintendo ending up using it was pure coincidence. So Charles voices a lot of characters in the game unintentionally. In a way you can say that’s Mario’s laugh slowed down.
The eels in Galaxy and some of the water and ghost levels as well as the hell valley sky trees, the weird alien appearing on the tree in 3D land as well as a hidden UFO, the ghost houses in mario world, the t-rex in that terrifying lower forest in odyssey... that's all I remember that hasn't been covered
This totally reminds me of playing the Spyro Reignited trilogy. Like, in the first game, those tree things that ate you used to freak me out but in the remake, I can actually more clearly identify what they are and it really takes out a lot of the terror of those vague polygons coming at me.
Mario 64 always creeped me out because the castle just felt so incredibly empty. Like you were the only one left alive in what used to be a bustling place. Almost like a very early "liminal space" or something haha.
The reason lower resolution is creepier is that the vagueness gives your imagination room to fill in the blanks. Less detail has always been a cornerstone of horror because nothing is more horrifying than ever expanding imagination. Not knowing is worse than knowing.
You talking about how old graphics are scarier reminded me of when I was a kid I was so terrified of the starfox 64 multiplayer and something about starfox 64 in general was kinda scary to me as a kid lol
Def feel you on the low poly one being scarier. When I was younger i used to be scared of 8/16 bit horror games cause they felt way more creepy than something realistic. Not sure why exactly though.
mario 64 was such a special game for me because it technically wasn't a horror game yet it managed to freak me out every once in a while. But the thing that messed me up the most was bowsers portraits that come up before entering his levels. The dark red light along with his creepy face always freaked me out, specially the first time since its peach at first and BOOM bowser is staring at you.
I was born after the mario 64 era but I had the game on my 3ds and I remember always being scared of the black balls that are chained to a certain spot and try to bite you, and also that one pit in front of one of the levels, I can't express how many times I got freaked out when I accidentally fell
That ominous noise you hear right as you enter peach's castle followed by browsers laugh is what scared me the most as a child. I even found the eel super cute XD I still do.
you know this talk about Mario dying reminded me how unnerved I was with his death animation via being electrocuted in Mario Galaxy,he just turns into a skeleton and just falls down
When I was a kid my nana rented this beach house every summer and the owners had an n64 we could use. You can bet that’s what I spent half my time there doing and of course, the game me and my cousin played the most was Mario 64. I really can’t even describe it but I did always feel some strange discomfort playing that game, there always felt like something wasn’t right even when there was nothing strange going on. After she stopped renting that house I bought my own n64 and a copy of Mario 64 and it just never felt the same as the one we played back then. Could just be some form of nostalgia I guess but it’s still weird to think about
SMG has one of my most traumatic and awesome childhood fears attached to it, which is my fear of black holes. The appearance of the deep emptiness and perfect void of a black hole is terrifying on it’s own, but SMG did something it did not have to do, but made it infinitely more terrifying. They added sound. I’m extremely sensitive to auditory horror, as I have phonophobia (the fear of loud noises). The sound that a black hole makes in SMG is so deeply unsettling and horrifying to me in a way that is hard to describe without giving myself goosebumps. The sounds of the wind howling around this tunnel to nowhere, as falling in would result in the absolute destruction of your very atoms. It’s the most morbid death option they’ve ever put in a mario game. And the winds are just the ambient sound of being near them. Actually falling in is far, far worse. They play this sound on what I am assuming are string instruments that sounds to me as though they just scraped all of their instruments to do a chromatic slide downward. The instruments are not perfectly in sync with each other, which adds to the distortion and uneasiness. Amongst this horrible, almost unrecognizable noise is mario’s howling scream, fading as he falls deeper and deeper into the void. It’s so upsetting to me as an adult, but when I was a child, it was that type of fear that only one or two things in your entire life will give you. It’s not a realistic horror, as the chances of ever happening across these galactic anomalies are pretty damn low for somebody like me, but the fear was there nonetheless. The rest of the game was so cheerful and colorful, with big swelling orchestral music that fills my heart with joy to hear to this day. To have something so freakish and uncanny amongst it all gave me an unforgettable relationship with black holes. Not to mention the shear distance some would grab you at! I remember the feeling of falling off platforms in that game and hoping to god that I was far away enough from the black hole to just fall into the void instead, but it was almost always all for naught. There were other points in the game where you would be walking right next to one, and it would have no affect on you! This inconsistency made me even more fearful, as I never knew when their infinitely powerful pull would grab me. To this day, I am absolutely fascinated by them, and wish that one day I may be able to see one with my own eyes to conquer my fears, and perhaps even jump in if it’s that time. If anyone else shares this experience with the game I’d love to hear your perspective!
What I think is so great about the Mario 64 Iceberg is that it's hilariously absurd, but conceptually terrifying. It explores ideas that are actually scary, often on a existential level, but it's also funny that they're being explored with the fun ya-hoooo man. And the fact that any of it sounds somewhat plausible adds to that comedy.
BRO that laugh I randomly hear that when I was playing as a kid when I was like 6 years old and never before or after it ever played again I was to this day convinced that was actually a witch or ghost irl haunting me I can-t believe is actually in the game? also I had similar thoughts about wet dry world background sky box, all this video is so relatable to me
The outside of the castle always kinda spooked me. The silent stillness of it all, how alone you are, how there's no way to escape, I never spent more time out there than I had to.
I can just remember playing old, low res, 3D games when I was younger. I specifically remember a Winnie The Pooh game level that just terrified me as a kid. It was probably the audio but it was a hide and seek level. I remember having horrible nightmares from it too.
While I personally never got scared by anything in Mario 64, Luigi's Mansion on the other hand didn't bother me as a kid but now it's really unsettling.
-The ghost of the lady in Super Mario 3D Land, she looks at you from a window, and waits for you at the flagpole. -Although not creepy, Rosa's Backstory. Oh, and the hell valley trees. -Luigi hanging glitch -The dead bodies at Luigis Mansion 2 beta footage. And I'm sure there's more.
For me it's the unsettling lonely vibe in the castle and grounds. Sure there are toads but they don't move. they are not much better than a signpost. There's a feeling for me. What if something is around the next corner. It's never happened and it never will. But he mind loves to bargain the impossible
I remember playing King Kong on the ps2 and I was in a level where I had to go up these wooden beams over a deep dark cliff. I remember falling and my character made the most blood curdling scream I ever heard. I stopped playing that day
No, that happens to be coincidence of the laugh happening at the same moment as the door creak. If you look into the other iceberg videos they cover it more. Some seem to think it was initially intended as an alternate laugh for king boo, but even then its still unknown as to why it was left in. But pretty much everyone agrees it is a laugh.
Man, watching this brought back a ton of memories. I think you're spot on with it being a) the first 3d game many people played, b) low poly/res textures seem off to us (possibly because we can project our imaginations on them - monsters unseen are more terrifying, cartoons are easier for us to see ourselves in, etc) c) dying was not only a pain in the ass, but TERRIFYINGLY animated. I wasn't as creeped out by Bowser's laugh as I was by Ganons in Zelda 2, but it's similar. The haunted piano was terrifying as shit because it was such a surprising scare, it was so loud and vicious, and it made you dread that room every time you had to run through it. I never really realized how creepy the background for WDW was until I saw it in retrospect. A lot of the music is haunting if not outright creepy. THE ENDLESS STAIRCASE! The penguin mom who totally rejects a baby because it isn't hers?? (am I remembering that right?) And in general, the game totally encourages you to find secret pathways with little to no signposting or explanation - akin to earlier 2d Marios with secret shortcuts etc. And then there's a level of jank that comes along with early 3d game development, where unexpected glitches happen - like once, I remember my sibling doing a backflip that got us caught between the front door of the castle, stuck on red carpet between the two door textures (inside and out.) Besides the game openly fucking with your sense of scale and space, like in that level where you could be big or small depending on the painting, both of which appeared to be the same size at a distance, while you could literally see the camera-lakitu in the mirror, the world itself seemed just.. unstable. Weird dreams. Worlds that didn't have much if any lore. Weird cursed creatures intent on killing you, with the geography to match. It's sometimes just hard to tell what was intentional, what's a glitch, and what's just some random junk hidden away in the code where they thought no one would be able to see it. As I read stuff in the 'mario iceberg' pic, so much of it was like 'oh yeah, I knew that' or 'totally plausible' in my brain lol. I'll have to check that other video now lol. Thanks for the nostalgia and creepiness!!
When it comes other Mario games. “River Twygz Bed’s” is up there on my list of most disturbing OST’s in gaming. Also the whole vibe of that area was just really dark and creepy. Oh and the “Hell Valley Sky Trees” we never had explained in Galaxy.
7:33-8:11 Dude, yes. As a kid, the noises Mario made when he passed out or drowned disturbed me so much, I was always terrified of dying. It was to the point that I was scared of watching my siblings play it.
The Ice Palace in Paper Mario 64 scared the heck out of me as a kid. The music was so ominous, and when your "reflection" fails to break the wall at one point, and remains standing there, I actually had to leave the palace because I was so jostled.
What scared me as a kid in Galaxy was one particular death. I remember, in that one bubble galaxy where you have to travel over some dangerous goop, and I remember, if one fell down... Mario's hand would stick out of the goop, desperate. And then it went limp, like he lost his life instantly after going deep enough. It scared me, because it made me realize why I saw skeleton hands sticking out of quicksand earlier in my childhood.
With Galaxy, I had a fear of black holes for years because of that one stage in the begining of it where you had to walk around the core of a dying planet. Not sure if everyone else got spooked by them too but they deff spooked me.
Oh bowser's laugh, that's the most legit thing that give me the creeps everytime i played SM64, more because when i had to go to the bathroom when i was a kid in my old house you had this very narrow but short hallway that connected both the living room and the kitchen, in the middle of it was my room so everytime i had to go to the bathroom at night i had to pass away throught said hallway, and my parents had the habit of leaving the house pitch black when we were going to sleep, the only light that the house had at night when everybody was sleeping was the light that come from the huge window the front door used to have. So imagine a 10 yrs old kid walking down a very narrow hallway at 3 AM, with nothing but the light of outside the house illuminating the hallway, pitch black in front of him and then he faintly hears bowser's laugh for no reason whatsoever and suddendly he can see the bowser's logo in front of him vagely laughing at him in the pitch black darkness, yeah that was my fear for like 3 or 4 years until i just realized it was all in my head. Nowdays i just look at that very fondly even if it scared the shit out of me, because somehow it reminds me of a simpler time when things were threatening but not because it was meant to be "edgy spooky" but because your mind couldn't comprehend what was happening and then tricked you to think this things were real adding to the fear factor even more, an evil atmosphere only made up in your mind even if you werent in a horror movie/video game, the true horror personified.
For some reason one of the things I found the most scary about SM64 was the Chain Chomp at Bob-omb Battlefield, I think a lot of people do. When compared to later renders of Chomps the one in SM64 was almost uncanny for me, maybe it was that the eyes were more at the front rather than the sides of its head, idk, but it creeped me out every time I had to get a star there, specially in that one star when you had to release it from its chains to retrieve the power star behind the gate
I felt this on another level. This was such a great video. I watched it twice and probably going to watch again. I JUST got my 4th Boo tattoo (just tiny ones in random spots) and I get asked “why?” Well, you explained it perfectly. The memory of that character haunted my childhood in a way. It fascinated, entertained, and scared me. Thank you for covering this.
I loved this video so much, I love how traumathon is coming this year!! If you're doing a video about video game drowing/water levels? Please include the old sonic "warning" music for when youre about to run out of air in the water!! literally that shit scared me so much and I think it deserves a place here!
i fucking love when people take sweet hearted shit and find the horrific scary things within it. it’s so much better than things that are MEANT to be scary. it’s just so much more interesting.
That mysterious laugh is both Bowser's and Boo's laugh at regular speed. I remember because I was messing with the files, I didn't even know that existed in game
The music in the turn about piano part of the boo mansion really messed me up as a kid because I couldnt forget its eerie sound it was like it was calling me to my death, like it was daring me
Yes! I always think of the creepy sound effect music with Bowser laughing whenever I can’t open a door because I don’t have enough coins yet. Those sounds terrified me as a kid.
I think the reason Mario 64 creepypastas are so effective at being scary is because they take us back. Back as a kid, we'd always be questioning the boundaries and limits of Mario 64's walls and hidden secrets. I recall having tons of dreams about rooms in Peach's castle that never existed, and one time even a separate castle entirely. These seemingly ridiculous theories and horrifying stories found surrounding the iceberg all make us question the game we remember so fondly, just like we did when we were kids, as if there actually was something lying beneath the walls that no one had ever found before. Something best left undisturbed.
i think the scary thing about mario 64 is the isolation factor. despite having a few toads and rabbits wandering around, the castle feels lonely. same thing with wet dry world - you get this wide view in the skybox of a large town but no villagers of any sort. just bowser's machines.
For me, it was the castle itself that creep me out. It was so empty. There's just a few toads here and there and some of them are kinda hidden. The fact that it was kinda like a labyrinth, and that, it didn't had any proper rooms of a castle. They bake you a cake at the end but, were is the kitchen? Where is the dinning room? Where are the toads chambers? There are several secret rooms and buttons and water here and there, platforms... You spend a lot of time in the castle so of course you want to explore it, and I always felt that there was more stuff than it seemed to be
The death when mario gets electrocuted in super mario galaxy creeped the shit out of me to a point that the last stars i ever get where the ones in galaxies where i could die by lightning
Mario 64 had this unsettling emptiness that I don't remember other Mario games having, I think it was the music, from what I remember the music was lowered and footstep noises were added and that kind of grounded the game in a way. Those details made it feel "real" in a sense and that really freaked me out.
My most traumatizing moment happened when I played Morrowimd as a kid on the original Xbox. There's this one time in the game where a masked assassin tries to kill you in your sleep. I didn't play the game for weeks because it spooked me so bad.
This was one of my favorite games as a kid! Granted, I had a version with better graphics that wasn't so low-poly, and there were some changes made to it, mainly that the character you first play as is Yoshi instead of Mario, and you instead have to free Mario, Luigi, and Wario, who you could then play as once they're unlocked. (Though I could only ever free Mario and couldn't figure out how to free the others.) Most of the game's darker tones flew right over my head, and I just enjoyed the game for what it was. The emptiness of the game's areas didn't even really bother me that much, as the different worlds in the paintings always had enemies walking about so the worlds felt populated, and Peach's castle always had friendly, homely music playing inside, so it felt nice. The front yard, though, was a little unsettling to me, since there was only ambience with no music. And there WERE a few things in the game that did scare me, so I'll list them now. The endless staircase, for one. The area darkening, the Bowser paintings, and the constantly rising music just put this sense in me that something terrible was about to happen. I completely understand why so many others were terrified of this moment as well. The haunted piano was another. It was the first kind of jumpscare that I ever got, and I actively avoided it ever since I knew it was a sentient creature. The version of Super Mario 64 that I had (with better graphics, etc.) also had a different animation for the piano; instead of just shaking around while its upper jaw wobbled up and down, like in the original game, it actually opened its jaw wide and slammed it down fast, even rearing back and doing a hop forward as it did it. And each slam of its jaws were in tune with the slamming sound of the piano keys, so it was doing that animation FAST. If I saw the original animation for it as a kid, it certainly would've startled me, but this updated animation actually scared me. There were also sometimes these rabbits that I had to catch - sometimes to get keys from them, sometimes to get hints as to where treasure is - and they eventually had this very ominous feeling to them. I recall there were these "glowing rabbits" that I could find much later in the game, in the castle, and I could've sworn one of them said something that gave me the creeps. I don't know if it was foreshadowing or a warning - probably a warning - and I don't even remember what its words were, but it just made me feel very worried. Finally, when I entered the front doors of the castle for the very first time in the game, and it did that transition from being outside to being inside, I was immediately greeted with a piece of creepy music that played for like 2 seconds, followed by Bowser's laugh, and this dialogue box also popped up that said "Welcome - no one's home. Now scram, and don't come back! Gwa ha ha ha!". After the dialogue box left, it just went straight to playing the friendly music in the castle that I mentioned earlier. But getting that message and that music cue for the first time really did freak me out for a minute, until I realized that nothing bad was going to happen and it was just a message from Bowser to Yoshi. So yes, while I did love Super Mario 64 (and still do to this day, even though I haven't played it in years), there were still a few things about it that scared me back then. But nowadays, as a fan of darker themes and horror stuff within content that's supposed to be wholesome and kid-friendly, these revelations of scarier aspects in Super Mario 64 just makes me love it all the more. :)
In Mario 64, when you open a door or read a sign, everything pauses, and sound effects slow down. The laugh is a boo laugh, just slowed down from opening a door at the same time.
Honestly nothing ever really scared me about Mario 64, besides maybe the piano, but all the iceberg stuff genuinely creeped me out a little. I think it’s because I wasn’t scared of it as kid, so then taking that happy childhood experience and twisting it really messed with my brain. It was actually really fun to watch this unfold, it kinda took over the Internet for awhile
Hey y'all! Happy Traumathon!
If this is your first time around the rodeo, essentially Traumathon is a marathon of 31 videos all throughout October showcasing the scariest things we experienced through popular media as kids.
New this series is the stellar intro by Tre Watson! Plus! Traumathon Arcade is a new thing we'll be doing in the second channel "Goose Boose Live and Reloaded"! In that series I'll be playing horror games all month long, so check it out! (Link in the description)
Stick around everyone! We'll be doing this all October, 62 new videos in total (combining this channel and the second) so sit back, relax, and enjoy the spookies!
Excited to see this! Just a note though, I don't see the video from another TH-camr you said you linked in the description, am I missing something?
The boo laugh is just the original recording of it because the pitch is randomly chosen
you're talking about how low poly thing look uncanny which they do and by that I feel like you would really enjoy cry of fear great horror game and perfect for this time
That intro music is DIABOLICAL.
What’s the song in the background
Nintendo: yeah let's just make a blue city, don't spend too much time
Fans: this is the abandoned city and hope of a lost civilization whos legacy is lost to eternity
The world as a whole becomes a lot more interesting when you realize that everything that isn't natural, has been designed. Wet Dry World isn't just a bunch of assets tossed together haphazardly, none of the other normal stages are. Multiple people sat down and thought up what they wanted to do with this flooded city stage, and decided on every detail in the final level.
@@aortaplatinum Every level is just a bunch of random bullshit thrown together, with little to no thought after it was implemented. The game was slightly rushed but still became an icon of gaming
@@Mewtwo_150 Well, for the most part, there really isn't anything deep to it. They had a theme, made shit around that theme, and compiled it into a level. I really dont think they just went "We want a level which causes claustrophobia and exhaustion" when making dry wet world.
@@therealbubble4696 That's what I said lol.
They made the map, threw some enemies in it, and put a random mechanic in it and called it a day.
There wasn't much they could do back then due to hardware limitations
A lot of people also seem to forget about the cage in the corner of wet dry world. Depending how high your jump is into the painting, that’s how high the water is. So if you backwards flip high enough, you can swim into the cage, into a tunnel. There, you find an abandoned city. Idk if it’s in the remastered version, but it in is the DS and Original
Ok so can here anyone agree that it's odd that Peach's backyard is haunted by ghosts? Like why is it haunted by ghosts? I mean sure it COULD just be Bowser's minions but what if it's something more?
Definetly sus
Fun Fact, if you actually wait in one of the rooms in the castle for a really long time a Boo would come in that room and attack you. It freaked me out as a kid.
It could be the rebellious toads that were slaughtered by her.
But Boos aren’t ghosts. Ghosts don’t die
@@skweezee Yeah, ghosts don't die. Boos don't die. Therefore making them ghosts
7:40 a lot of older games had terryfing death scenes. One i never forget is a level on Spiderman 2 on the PS1. It was a level at night, next to dark, deep waters. If spidey falls, he screams and just... vanishes. I never wanted to play that level again
If you're talking about Enter: Electro (one of the boys), then I'll be honest. I watched the death and it was the funniest stuff I've ever seen. I know things are different as children, but the way the scream is cut off is hilarious
@@Jx_- Yeah, it is that one
The newest Spider-Man game on PS4, doesn't let you die from heights or water, you just basically do a ground pound or swimming in the water.
Heart of darkness is probably the most infamous example.
I won't be playing that game ever.
The main thing that creeped me out about this game as a kid was that it always felt very "isolating". It's like, you're exploring all these big worlds, but they're all so... empty? You're like the only human character throughout the whole game (except for Peach of course but she only shows up in the beginning and in the end). And in general you barely talk to anyone. Pretty much all the NPCs you encounter are just enemies, and some stages don't even have that many enemies either. Besides the invisible toads and some mysterious signs that are randomly placed throughout the levels, nothing really talks to you, you just feel like you're completely on your own, and you never really feel safe either, not even when you're in the castle hub. Add that isolating feel with all the other creepy things mentioned in this video and I think you can start to see why so many people are coming out saying that this game is "creepy".
Yes, THIS!!! I feel this so much. As a kid, I always hated how empty the castle was like you could just walk everywhere and still, nothing but paintings surrounding you. Even the talkable NPCs creeped me out because NPC being NPC, they'd always have the same dialogue no matter how many times you talked to them. And with talkable NPC already being so rare, it always made me feel like they were just a non-living entity watching over the castle, and also watching over Mario at all time too, in case he messes up and then they'll ----- Mario. Lol I know it's dumb as all hell, but that's the narrative dumb kid me made up in her head. That's why I never ended up finishing the game.
This is one of the reasons I prefer the DS version over the original. Maybe I'm biased because I'm basically a child who played the DS version first, but I always thought the game was a bit less... empty in the DS version thanks to the new playable characters. Things like the toads saying different stuff based on who you're playing as, Mario being the only one who can access boss levels, etc.
I actually agree with your view but... isn’t many Mario games like this? Then why SM64 is particularly creepy?
@@pellaria8012 Ik but I’m saying that I grew up with the less “creepy” version you could say I guess
@@pellaria8012 The 2d games don't feel as "real" because they are 2d. It's like you're watching the character rather than actually being the character, and exploring the 3d world around you. When it comes to the 3d games, I'd say Mario Sunshine doesn't give this isolating feeling. You're in a shiny tropical island with a bunch of island natives to talk to. And even when you enter the worlds, you'll often find people to talk to. Mario Galaxy on the other hand goes back to the isolating feeling, and I think that one could be explained with space in general just being an isolating place.
The only terrifying thing is that gay bowser isn’t in the remastered version
Hes actually bi, not gay.
Mario helped his journey of discovery.
Where did he go? Thats the real mystery
@@LiamLimeLarm ah I see. Bi bi!
pain
so long, gay bowser
The entirety of Mario 64 is basically a liminal space honestly
Likes are at 69! Thank you, whoever liked this last!
A lot of early 3D games are like this, some of my favorite examples are MOTHER 3 [the N64 version], Sonic Adventure's adventure field hub worlds, and Luigi's Mansion.
bomb bomb battlefield:
@@Cat-ki3hy Bob-omb
yeah tbh I suspect this is why all subsequent 3D Mario platformers have featured plentiful NPCs, like the piantas and nokis in Sunshine, or all the weird beings you encounter in both versions of Galaxy (and all kinds of NPCs in Odyssey, including the uncanny valley regular humans in New Donk City and elsewhere), because basically apart from the scattered toads in the castle, SM64 is practically devoid of life apart from Mario and various enemies (I guess there are also the pink bob-omb buddies and occasionally some others like the penguins or Koopa the Quick, but in general, non-enemy characters are rare). I think the developers kind of realized how unsettling and vacant this made the game world feel.
"That's not how a boo's laugh sounds like. Here's what it sounds like:
*NEED A PROFESSIONAL LOGO FOR YOUR WEBSITE?*
lol
I honestly though the Mario 64 Personalized thing was just okay until I watched "Mario 64's Personalised Copies and Psychological Operations" that goes into much more detail into the lore, and it becomes so much more scary.
The N64 and PS1 era was full of this uncanny and wonderous feeling of discovery and the unknown, especially for many of us that were children when we experienced it. This is extremely personal and I haven't heard anything related to it ever, not online, nor in real life, but something similar to the Mario 64 phenomenons happened to me while playing Yoshi's Story when I was barely out of toddler age, it's something really miniscule, but something that captured my imagination so heavily I never forgot about it. While playing Yoshi's Story there comes a point in cavern level in which you get to fight a skeletal-hydra-dragon thing, I had done the fight many times before, but for some reason this time there was a random black cube among the ground that had never been there before, it was probably just a texture glitch, but that little thing was enough for it to spark my imagination in a manner so great I kept looking for answers for about a decade, I was convinced I had found some sort of secret. It's crazy, anything and everything in videogames seemed to hold so much more meaning back in the day, it's really kinda sad, the last time I felt that kind of wonder was in my first blind playthrough of Undertale, something that I think made many people in the same generation-bracket as me appreciate the game as much as they did.
the monolith
I have this feeling to, but with the ps2 and ps3 since im not from the 90s. In infamous 1 and 2, probably my two firsts games that i played in a serious way, there was this boss called Sasha or something that was scary for me, i finished that boss quickly and now that i play that game i see things that i dont remember, this also happens with infamous 2, the map with Zeke face in a building, random corpses in different locations that then they are not in there, some powers that seem destructively and big and now they are little and not that epic, fights with enemies that looked like a big war. I just wonder how our imagination as kids creates and removes things from everything
This is one odd personalized copy.
fuck off justin y
@@mintyeye1203 bruh
@minty eye wut??
minty eye bruh
I'm finding you everywhere I go...
*That's kinda sus.*
When you see that traumathon is back you know it’s spooky month!
It's a spooky month??
@@ebox147 *starts spooky month dancing*
Or just... Check the date to see if its October lol
@Mini Medals *zombies start dancing* No it’s not spooky month it’s june.
Skid and pump are here!!
The aspect of Mario 64 that creeped me out the most was how lonely it feels, especially in the castle. normally places in the other 3D Mario games like Sunshine and Odyssey feel more populated, and like they're part of a bigger world, but in Mario 64 it really feels like nothing exists beyond Peach's Castle, and Mario just exists alone in this vacuum
Wet-Dry world fills me with a lot of nostalgia, it is one of my favorite levels on Mario 64. The background texture reminds me of my hometown and every time I play it makes me feel home sick. Man, every copy of mario 64 is personalized.
The Boo's laughter is actually Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario, coincidentally. They got it from a sound archive. The laugh that plays before you enter the mansion sounds a lot like Charles Martinet so it could be the boo laugh slowed down
It's Bowser's laugh sped up.
@@nibiru2x410 Yeah they're the same sound but it's still Charles Martinet
@@nibiru2x410 "The Secret Origin of Bowser's Laugh" - Thomas Game Docs 8:24, it explains where they got it from and how its Charles Martinet
@@thepokeybird Ahhhh, gotcha. My bad.
I thought it was just at a speed between Bowser and Boo-
September 30th: 😴 💤
October 1st: 👀 🎃🦇🌙 🕯
wake me up when september ends
November first?
December:🌍 --> ⚪
What better way to celebrate spooky season than with another TRAUMATHON.
When I was playing Mario 64, Mario looked directly at the screen and blinked, it was fuckin scary man.
It's weird when your birthday is in October, you get all excited for your birthday all happy and giddy and shit, while the rest of the world has scary skeletons running everywhere
It's a weird type of vibe
Ha im a June crybaby so I wouldn't know that feeling-
mines in three days
@@lucasgeton9546 October 4th?
If you live in an english speaking country, yes.
I'm a third world spooky birthday kid and I wish people had plastic skeletons everywhere :(
@@flankumi128 5th but its almost midnight lol
I was literally so scared of Mario 64 as a kid I never even made it to the first bowser fight. I think something about how empty the castle was really freaked me out lmao
I would turn the game off whenever I heard Bowsers laugh and that little sound that plays with it
The laugh that you hear in boo's mansion isnt strange, it's a development mistake. The Boos and Bowser's laugh are both sped up and slowed down versions of a normal laugh. It's just when you activate the scene of opening the door, the audio file "resets", causing the otherwise sped up laugh to default to the original audio.
Mystery solved. You're welcome. 😎😁
Something neat about their laugh is that it’s performed my Charles Martinet for an audio sample completion I think. Nintendo ending up using it was pure coincidence.
So Charles voices a lot of characters in the game unintentionally. In a way you can say that’s Mario’s laugh slowed down.
Super Mario 64 has always given me the feeling of being alone, but you just have that gut feeling you aren’t.
The eels in Galaxy and some of the water and ghost levels as well as the hell valley sky trees, the weird alien appearing on the tree in 3D land as well as a hidden UFO, the ghost houses in mario world, the t-rex in that terrifying lower forest in odyssey... that's all I remember that hasn't been covered
This totally reminds me of playing the Spyro Reignited trilogy. Like, in the first game, those tree things that ate you used to freak me out but in the remake, I can actually more clearly identify what they are and it really takes out a lot of the terror of those vague polygons coming at me.
Mario 64 always creeped me out because the castle just felt so incredibly empty. Like you were the only one left alive in what used to be a bustling place. Almost like a very early "liminal space" or something haha.
The reason lower resolution is creepier is that the vagueness gives your imagination room to fill in the blanks. Less detail has always been a cornerstone of horror because nothing is more horrifying than ever expanding imagination.
Not knowing is worse than knowing.
You talking about how old graphics are scarier reminded me of when I was a kid I was so terrified of the starfox 64 multiplayer and something about starfox 64 in general was kinda scary to me as a kid lol
9:09 those hands in Super Paper Mario terrified me as a child. The music didn’t help either lol.
*Mmm, yes, Boo's laugh certainly does sound like a McDonald's ad.*
Def feel you on the low poly one being scarier. When I was younger i used to be scared of 8/16 bit horror games cause they felt way more creepy than something realistic. Not sure why exactly though.
Fun fact about the Big Boo's Haunt one, that laugh is actually a clip that Charles Martinet coincidentally recorded long before voicing Mario.
mario 64 was such a special game for me because it technically wasn't a horror game yet it managed to freak me out every once in a while.
But the thing that messed me up the most was bowsers portraits that come up before entering his levels.
The dark red light along with his creepy face always freaked me out, specially the first time since its peach at first and BOOM bowser is staring at you.
Yeah that genuinely frightened me the first time I saw it
I was born after the mario 64 era but I had the game on my 3ds and I remember always being scared of the black balls that are chained to a certain spot and try to bite you, and also that one pit in front of one of the levels, I can't express how many times I got freaked out when I accidentally fell
That ominous noise you hear right as you enter peach's castle followed by browsers laugh is what scared me the most as a child.
I even found the eel super cute XD
I still do.
Lol love the content, just started watching a while ago but I do enjoy keep the content train rolling
you know this talk about Mario dying reminded me how unnerved I was with his death animation via being electrocuted in Mario Galaxy,he just turns into a skeleton and just falls down
When I was a kid my nana rented this beach house every summer and the owners had an n64 we could use. You can bet that’s what I spent half my time there doing and of course, the game me and my cousin played the most was Mario 64. I really can’t even describe it but I did always feel some strange discomfort playing that game, there always felt like something wasn’t right even when there was nothing strange going on. After she stopped renting that house I bought my own n64 and a copy of Mario 64 and it just never felt the same as the one we played back then. Could just be some form of nostalgia I guess but it’s still weird to think about
SMG has one of my most traumatic and awesome childhood fears attached to it, which is my fear of black holes. The appearance of the deep emptiness and perfect void of a black hole is terrifying on it’s own, but SMG did something it did not have to do, but made it infinitely more terrifying. They added sound. I’m extremely sensitive to auditory horror, as I have phonophobia (the fear of loud noises). The sound that a black hole makes in SMG is so deeply unsettling and horrifying to me in a way that is hard to describe without giving myself goosebumps. The sounds of the wind howling around this tunnel to nowhere, as falling in would result in the absolute destruction of your very atoms. It’s the most morbid death option they’ve ever put in a mario game. And the winds are just the ambient sound of being near them. Actually falling in is far, far worse. They play this sound on what I am assuming are string instruments that sounds to me as though they just scraped all of their instruments to do a chromatic slide downward. The instruments are not perfectly in sync with each other, which adds to the distortion and uneasiness. Amongst this horrible, almost unrecognizable noise is mario’s howling scream, fading as he falls deeper and deeper into the void. It’s so upsetting to me as an adult, but when I was a child, it was that type of fear that only one or two things in your entire life will give you. It’s not a realistic horror, as the chances of ever happening across these galactic anomalies are pretty damn low for somebody like me, but the fear was there nonetheless. The rest of the game was so cheerful and colorful, with big swelling orchestral music that fills my heart with joy to hear to this day. To have something so freakish and uncanny amongst it all gave me an unforgettable relationship with black holes. Not to mention the shear distance some would grab you at! I remember the feeling of falling off platforms in that game and hoping to god that I was far away enough from the black hole to just fall into the void instead, but it was almost always all for naught. There were other points in the game where you would be walking right next to one, and it would have no affect on you! This inconsistency made me even more fearful, as I never knew when their infinitely powerful pull would grab me. To this day, I am absolutely fascinated by them, and wish that one day I may be able to see one with my own eyes to conquer my fears, and perhaps even jump in if it’s that time. If anyone else shares this experience with the game I’d love to hear your perspective!
That intro is AMAZING.
Thank you! :D
@@TreWatsonMusic is there or will there ever be an extended version in the future? Its so good!
Felix Gomez there might indeed
@@TreWatsonMusic I was actually trying to find it since it now became my favorite instantly
The water at the castle of Mario 64 terrified me, there was just something about that empty water and made me want to cry
awe hell yeah here we go
traumathon 2 babeyyyyyy
Hazy Maze Cave, Dire Dire Docks and the Courtyard all scared the shit out of me as a kid.
I remember thinking that the castle being empty was kinda creeping and theirs something about the infinite staircase that still haunts me
What I think is so great about the Mario 64 Iceberg is that it's hilariously absurd, but conceptually terrifying. It explores ideas that are actually scary, often on a existential level, but it's also funny that they're being explored with the fun ya-hoooo man. And the fact that any of it sounds somewhat plausible adds to that comedy.
BRO that laugh I randomly hear that when I was playing as a kid when I was like 6 years old and never before or after it ever played again I was to this day convinced that was actually a witch or ghost irl haunting me I can-t believe is actually in the game? also I had similar thoughts about wet dry world background sky box, all this video is so relatable to me
The outside of the castle always kinda spooked me. The silent stillness of it all, how alone you are, how there's no way to escape, I never spent more time out there than I had to.
This is still the most unnerving game I've ever played. Not the scariest, just the most uneasy.
i was horrified by 64 as a kid, something about the halls and emptiness just always got me
I'm excited for more Traumathon 2.
I can just remember playing old, low res, 3D games when I was younger. I specifically remember a Winnie The Pooh game level that just terrified me as a kid. It was probably the audio but it was a hide and seek level. I remember having horrible nightmares from it too.
funny story when i was younger i was so scared of the bowser laugh and jingle i would turn off the console and not play it until weeks later
Right when I'm playing SM64, you cover it.
I'm down.
Lol I started a casual playthrough too recently, on the Switch.
Original or 3d all stars?
@@gamerthehoopa I was playing original
While I personally never got scared by anything in Mario 64, Luigi's Mansion on the other hand didn't bother me as a kid but now it's really unsettling.
-The ghost of the lady in Super Mario 3D Land, she looks at you from a window, and waits for you at the flagpole.
-Although not creepy, Rosa's Backstory. Oh, and the hell valley trees.
-Luigi hanging glitch
-The dead bodies at Luigis Mansion 2 beta footage.
And I'm sure there's more.
there was dead bodies in luigi's mansion 2/dark moon beta?
Not gonna lie, these theories got me hyped enough to buy a Nintendo 64 and Super Mario 64 with it.
For me it's the unsettling lonely vibe in the castle and grounds. Sure there are toads but they don't move. they are not much better than a signpost. There's a feeling for me. What if something is around the next corner. It's never happened and it never will. But he mind loves to bargain the impossible
I feel like the background for Bowser in The Dark World is so underrated in it's creepiness levels
3:33 I've fought so many low poly dragons in Skyrim I'm not even suprised when it happens.
Also that opening music is a fucking jam holy shit
This game scared me quite a bit as a kid. It had a strange vibe to it and was ominous and lonely.
I remember playing King Kong on the ps2 and I was in a level where I had to go up these wooden beams over a deep dark cliff. I remember falling and my character made the most blood curdling scream I ever heard. I stopped playing that day
Nintendo in 1996: **trying to make a fun 3D Mario game**
Internet in 2020: wario apparitionz
Perfect! some late-night spooky content for me to enjoy! Thank you, Goose, you always post high quality content for everyone to enjoy!
6:53 it’s supposed to be the door creaking
Nvm people in the replies debunked it
You can hear the actual door creek during that though
No, that happens to be coincidence of the laugh happening at the same moment as the door creak. If you look into the other iceberg videos they cover it more. Some seem to think it was initially intended as an alternate laugh for king boo, but even then its still unknown as to why it was left in. But pretty much everyone agrees it is a laugh.
k p ohhh my bad
Man, watching this brought back a ton of memories. I think you're spot on with it being a) the first 3d game many people played, b) low poly/res textures seem off to us (possibly because we can project our imaginations on them - monsters unseen are more terrifying, cartoons are easier for us to see ourselves in, etc) c) dying was not only a pain in the ass, but TERRIFYINGLY animated. I wasn't as creeped out by Bowser's laugh as I was by Ganons in Zelda 2, but it's similar. The haunted piano was terrifying as shit because it was such a surprising scare, it was so loud and vicious, and it made you dread that room every time you had to run through it. I never really realized how creepy the background for WDW was until I saw it in retrospect. A lot of the music is haunting if not outright creepy. THE ENDLESS STAIRCASE! The penguin mom who totally rejects a baby because it isn't hers?? (am I remembering that right?)
And in general, the game totally encourages you to find secret pathways with little to no signposting or explanation - akin to earlier 2d Marios with secret shortcuts etc. And then there's a level of jank that comes along with early 3d game development, where unexpected glitches happen - like once, I remember my sibling doing a backflip that got us caught between the front door of the castle, stuck on red carpet between the two door textures (inside and out.) Besides the game openly fucking with your sense of scale and space, like in that level where you could be big or small depending on the painting, both of which appeared to be the same size at a distance, while you could literally see the camera-lakitu in the mirror, the world itself seemed just.. unstable. Weird dreams. Worlds that didn't have much if any lore. Weird cursed creatures intent on killing you, with the geography to match. It's sometimes just hard to tell what was intentional, what's a glitch, and what's just some random junk hidden away in the code where they thought no one would be able to see it.
As I read stuff in the 'mario iceberg' pic, so much of it was like 'oh yeah, I knew that' or 'totally plausible' in my brain lol. I'll have to check that other video now lol. Thanks for the nostalgia and creepiness!!
i was scared of the ghost lingering in the hallway when you went to the basement. just knowing that he was always there.
When it comes other Mario games. “River Twygz Bed’s” is up there on my list of most disturbing OST’s in gaming. Also the whole vibe of that area was just really dark and creepy. Oh and the “Hell Valley Sky Trees” we never had explained in Galaxy.
About the laugh when entering the mansion it's just the normal speed of Charles Martinet's laugh but it's still creepy
All I heard during the "They're coming" part in the title theme, all I heard was "they're coming for you Barbara"
Bitch who’s Barbara
7:33-8:11
Dude, yes. As a kid, the noises Mario made when he passed out or drowned disturbed me so much, I was always terrified of dying. It was to the point that I was scared of watching my siblings play it.
There’s something so eerily empty about Mario 64, and the game just feels so claustrophobic and isolated.
The Ice Palace in Paper Mario 64 scared the heck out of me as a kid. The music was so ominous, and when your "reflection" fails to break the wall at one point, and remains standing there, I actually had to leave the palace because I was so jostled.
I'm currently playing 64 on 3D all stars. The difficulty spike in tic toc clock is terrifying
Your description of wetdry world explains why I love the level so much.
It had an air of mystery to it no other level has.
Aw YES!! ITS SPOOKY MONTH!! *dance*
_"...but that's not how a boos laugh sounds like. It sounds like this-"_ *ad plays*
Completely unrelated, does anyone remember the monster in the cemetery of goat simulator? It scared the hell out of me as a kid.
What scared me as a kid in Galaxy was one particular death. I remember, in that one bubble galaxy where you have to travel over some dangerous goop, and I remember, if one fell down...
Mario's hand would stick out of the goop, desperate. And then it went limp, like he lost his life instantly after going deep enough. It scared me, because it made me realize why I saw skeleton hands sticking out of quicksand earlier in my childhood.
I thought I was the only one that found this game scary at times
yooo the new intro is awesome
btw I love how chill you can be when talking about spooky stuff, it's a big reason why I'm a fan of your videos.
With Galaxy, I had a fear of black holes for years because of that one stage in the begining of it where you had to walk around the core of a dying planet.
Not sure if everyone else got spooked by them too but they deff spooked me.
Oh bowser's laugh, that's the most legit thing that give me the creeps everytime i played SM64, more because when i had to go to the bathroom when i was a kid in my old house you had this very narrow but short hallway that connected both the living room and the kitchen, in the middle of it was my room so everytime i had to go to the bathroom at night i had to pass away throught said hallway, and my parents had the habit of leaving the house pitch black when we were going to sleep, the only light that the house had at night when everybody was sleeping was the light that come from the huge window the front door used to have.
So imagine a 10 yrs old kid walking down a very narrow hallway at 3 AM, with nothing but the light of outside the house illuminating the hallway, pitch black in front of him and then he faintly hears bowser's laugh for no reason whatsoever and suddendly he can see the bowser's logo in front of him vagely laughing at him in the pitch black darkness, yeah that was my fear for like 3 or 4 years until i just realized it was all in my head.
Nowdays i just look at that very fondly even if it scared the shit out of me, because somehow it reminds me of a simpler time when things were threatening but not because it was meant to be "edgy spooky" but because your mind couldn't comprehend what was happening and then tricked you to think this things were real adding to the fear factor even more, an evil atmosphere only made up in your mind even if you werent in a horror movie/video game, the true horror personified.
For some reason one of the things I found the most scary about SM64 was the Chain Chomp at Bob-omb Battlefield, I think a lot of people do. When compared to later renders of Chomps the one in SM64 was almost uncanny for me, maybe it was that the eyes were more at the front rather than the sides of its head, idk, but it creeped me out every time I had to get a star there, specially in that one star when you had to release it from its chains to retrieve the power star behind the gate
I felt this on another level. This was such a great video.
I watched it twice and probably going to watch again. I JUST got my 4th Boo tattoo (just tiny ones in random spots) and I get asked “why?”
Well, you explained it perfectly. The memory of that character haunted my childhood in a way. It fascinated, entertained, and scared me.
Thank you for covering this.
I loved this video so much, I love how traumathon is coming this year!! If you're doing a video about video game drowing/water levels? Please include the old sonic "warning" music for when youre about to run out of air in the water!! literally that shit scared me so much and I think it deserves a place here!
i fucking love when people take sweet hearted shit and find the horrific scary things within it. it’s so much better than things that are MEANT to be scary. it’s just so much more interesting.
That mysterious laugh is both Bowser's and Boo's laugh at regular speed. I remember because I was messing with the files, I didn't even know that existed in game
The music in the turn about piano part of the boo mansion really messed me up as a kid because I couldnt forget its eerie sound it was like it was calling me to my death, like it was daring me
Yes! I always think of the creepy sound effect music with Bowser laughing whenever I can’t open a door because I don’t have enough coins yet. Those sounds terrified me as a kid.
I think the reason Mario 64 creepypastas are so effective at being scary is because they take us back. Back as a kid, we'd always be questioning the boundaries and limits of Mario 64's walls and hidden secrets. I recall having tons of dreams about rooms in Peach's castle that never existed, and one time even a separate castle entirely.
These seemingly ridiculous theories and horrifying stories found surrounding the iceberg all make us question the game we remember so fondly, just like we did when we were kids, as if there actually was something lying beneath the walls that no one had ever found before. Something best left undisturbed.
i think the scary thing about mario 64 is the isolation factor. despite having a few toads and rabbits wandering around, the castle feels lonely. same thing with wet dry world - you get this wide view in the skybox of a large town but no villagers of any sort. just bowser's machines.
For me, it was the castle itself that creep me out. It was so empty. There's just a few toads here and there and some of them are kinda hidden. The fact that it was kinda like a labyrinth, and that, it didn't had any proper rooms of a castle. They bake you a cake at the end but, were is the kitchen? Where is the dinning room? Where are the toads chambers? There are several secret rooms and buttons and water here and there, platforms... You spend a lot of time in the castle so of course you want to explore it, and I always felt that there was more stuff than it seemed to be
The death when mario gets electrocuted in super mario galaxy creeped the shit out of me to a point that the last stars i ever get where the ones in galaxies where i could die by lightning
Mario 64 had this unsettling emptiness that I don't remember other Mario games having, I think it was the music, from what I remember the music was lowered and footstep noises were added and that kind of grounded the game in a way. Those details made it feel "real" in a sense and that really freaked me out.
Honestly, the levels in Mario 64 feel very much like a fever dream compared to most other Mario games.
My most traumatizing moment happened when I played Morrowimd as a kid on the original Xbox. There's this one time in the game where a masked assassin tries to kill you in your sleep. I didn't play the game for weeks because it spooked me so bad.
To me, the Boo laugh before entering the Boo's castle sounds like Mario's scream after falling into lava or running into fire just sped up.
This was one of my favorite games as a kid! Granted, I had a version with better graphics that wasn't so low-poly, and there were some changes made to it, mainly that the character you first play as is Yoshi instead of Mario, and you instead have to free Mario, Luigi, and Wario, who you could then play as once they're unlocked. (Though I could only ever free Mario and couldn't figure out how to free the others.) Most of the game's darker tones flew right over my head, and I just enjoyed the game for what it was. The emptiness of the game's areas didn't even really bother me that much, as the different worlds in the paintings always had enemies walking about so the worlds felt populated, and Peach's castle always had friendly, homely music playing inside, so it felt nice. The front yard, though, was a little unsettling to me, since there was only ambience with no music. And there WERE a few things in the game that did scare me, so I'll list them now.
The endless staircase, for one. The area darkening, the Bowser paintings, and the constantly rising music just put this sense in me that something terrible was about to happen. I completely understand why so many others were terrified of this moment as well.
The haunted piano was another. It was the first kind of jumpscare that I ever got, and I actively avoided it ever since I knew it was a sentient creature. The version of Super Mario 64 that I had (with better graphics, etc.) also had a different animation for the piano; instead of just shaking around while its upper jaw wobbled up and down, like in the original game, it actually opened its jaw wide and slammed it down fast, even rearing back and doing a hop forward as it did it. And each slam of its jaws were in tune with the slamming sound of the piano keys, so it was doing that animation FAST. If I saw the original animation for it as a kid, it certainly would've startled me, but this updated animation actually scared me.
There were also sometimes these rabbits that I had to catch - sometimes to get keys from them, sometimes to get hints as to where treasure is - and they eventually had this very ominous feeling to them. I recall there were these "glowing rabbits" that I could find much later in the game, in the castle, and I could've sworn one of them said something that gave me the creeps. I don't know if it was foreshadowing or a warning - probably a warning - and I don't even remember what its words were, but it just made me feel very worried.
Finally, when I entered the front doors of the castle for the very first time in the game, and it did that transition from being outside to being inside, I was immediately greeted with a piece of creepy music that played for like 2 seconds, followed by Bowser's laugh, and this dialogue box also popped up that said "Welcome - no one's home. Now scram, and don't come back! Gwa ha ha ha!". After the dialogue box left, it just went straight to playing the friendly music in the castle that I mentioned earlier. But getting that message and that music cue for the first time really did freak me out for a minute, until I realized that nothing bad was going to happen and it was just a message from Bowser to Yoshi.
So yes, while I did love Super Mario 64 (and still do to this day, even though I haven't played it in years), there were still a few things about it that scared me back then. But nowadays, as a fan of darker themes and horror stuff within content that's supposed to be wholesome and kid-friendly, these revelations of scarier aspects in Super Mario 64 just makes me love it all the more. :)
In Mario 64, when you open a door or read a sign, everything pauses, and sound effects slow down. The laugh is a boo laugh, just slowed down from opening a door at the same time.
7:05~ "But... that's not how a boos' laugh sounds like. It sounds like THIS-"
*Loud fucking Arby's ad loads*
Huh... The more you know, I guess🤔
Honestly nothing ever really scared me about Mario 64, besides maybe the piano, but all the iceberg stuff genuinely creeped me out a little. I think it’s because I wasn’t scared of it as kid, so then taking that happy childhood experience and twisting it really messed with my brain. It was actually really fun to watch this unfold, it kinda took over the Internet for awhile