Nightmare Fuel / Spyro the Dragon (1998)

Their diet just so happens to be you.

• The game's set up, while made kid friendly, is rather terrifying.
  • With one spell, Gnasty Gnorc crystallized all eighty adult dragons. Then with a second, he transfigured most of the kingdom's treasure into his mindless henchmen. Finally, Gnasty captured as many innocent fairies as possible and had the last twelve dragon eggs stolen.
  • Spyro, a child who can't fly, is forced to see his beautiful world become a madman's wasteland. More to the point, everywhere he goes, Gnasty's goons are trying to kill him.

• Spyro's classic death is simply him collapsing. However he can also be eaten alive, drown or fall into bottomless pits. Considering Spyro's environment is surrounded by the last two, everywhere he goes is practically a minefield.
• The three giant dragon heads in Gnasty's homeworld watch Spyro.
• Misty Bog is populated by the killer plants that sit idly by in groups before Spyro approaches them. Should he come within several feet of them, their already visible eyes fixate on Spyro and their leaves rustle. When Spyro edges any closer, the plants charge at him —very fast, might we add— with gaping maws and yellow fangs. And they eat Spyro alive if they catch him after Sparx is already gone.
  • In Misty Bog, there are these enemies called Attack Frogs. To put it more clearly, they're light blue frogs that will lash at you with their extremely long tongues if you get within ten feet of 'em! They hop around carefree, but there is always malice in their eyes.
• Whenever you can hear something, but can't see it, like, for example, when chuckling thieves are hidden out of view and when the trembling of the petrified dragon on a floor above in Haunted Towers can be heard (and the dragon is really tough to find).
• Dark Passage, the place where nightmares are literally made, as it's the scariest world in the Dream Weavers' set, and it is called "Nightmare Road" in the Japanese version of the game. It is populated by critters that, though tiny, adorable, and mostly harmless in the light, transform into hideous beasts in the dark. The armored turtles become invincible and get some fangs, and the puppies transform into giant red hellhounds with evil red eyes and a gigantic Lamprey Mouth lined with razor sharp teeth. If Spyro walks near one of the devil dogs in the dark, he better be ready to breathe some fire, because if he doesn't the demon will pounce on him with incredible speed (making the player jump), devour him, chew him up, and spit him back out. As for the turtles, their heads grow as they spit fireballs. Not as bad as the dogs, thankfully.
  • Not as bad as the dogs in the final game, but early prerelease builds of the game show that the original animation for the demon turtles' fireball spitting was them ripping open their own chest to reveal the hell-dimension within. And the fireballs were demonic flaming bats.
• In High Caves lurk giant metal beetles ready to chase Spyro down should he be daft enough to set foot on their ground. They are fast, invincible to standard attacks, and they have a tendency to hide just out of view. At one point, Spyro must dash past a couple to reach a powerup that allows him to kill them, and it is one of the most tense parts in the game. Thier sharp, horrible yellow eyes, constantly open mouths and screech they emit upon attacking or getting killed intensifies their grisliness. Spyro even expresses hatred for the creepy crawlies and a desire to kill them.
• The Doctor Shemp boss level of the first game comes with strange little tribal beings in huge faceless masks, who run at you screaming on sight, sent by their Brawn Hilda-esque "wives" (whether you'd noticed them first or not) via bitch-slap.
  • You can charge them, but if you dodge them, then they delibrately run off the bottomless edge. Their falling screams don't help matters in the slightest.
  • If you manage to kill a Fat Lady before she can send a Kamikaze Tribesman, the Tribesman will simply stand in place and watch you, making no threatening gestures or doing anything to indicate they can still hurt you. You may think that you aren't supposed to be able to kill the Fat Ladies before they can send all of their Kamikaze Tribesmen, and that you have broken their AI and rendered them harmless. If you go up to them at this point though, they will whip a knife out of nowhere and slash you before you can react.
• The dogs in the "Toasty" level are also known to scare players. They are usually found sleeping but if the player gets too close they will jump and try to flatten Spyro, accompanied by a vicious barking sound.
• Any enemy could just about give you a heart attack if you managed to get close to them without having them come into the frame - enemies only attacked if they were seen by the camera, so if you landed right in front of them and waited for the camera to catch up, you'd end up being ambushed seemingly out of nowhere. There's one spot in Misty Bog where this is very easy to do with the above-mentioned killer trees. Jump down a log facing a certain direction, and their leaves will rustle in anticipation until the view swings around...
• The level "Jacques" gives us the aptly named "Nightmare Beasts", which are also given the alternate moniker "Armored Horrors". Jacques himself is also scary it's a green-faced jack-in-the-box like Jester with a red shirt, always smiling and a spring on bottom of his body! He looks like the demon from your worst nightmares! Even more scary for players with the fear of clowns! The landscape for level looks like something out of anyone's worse nightmare with the red, purple, and grayish colors, lava pits, demonic monsters like Armored Horrors and Giant Pansies trying to kill Spyro in that level.
• The Beasts in Alpine Ridge look downright menacing with their red eyes, sharp teeth, and sharp tusks. The roars they make will make you want to run from the screen and hide under the covers. For even more cruelty, the latter half of the level likes to hide them and surprise you with them, meaning you're walking along and suddenly one pops up in front of you where it wasn't there before and roars right in your face. Those beasts are probably vicious enough to eat Spyro! Thank God they don't!
• The crystallized dragons are not in suspended animation; the statues trembling is them hopelessly attempting to escape. For those not freed until the end...yikes!