Nightmare Fuel / Video Game Systems

The one screen no PlayStation 2 owner ever wants to see after putting their game in and then booting up the console.

Wait, what? Nightmare Fuel in...game consoles? Obviously there's plenty and plenty of disturbing things to be found in Video Games, but from the consoles themselves?!

The short answer to that: yes. Yes, they absolutely can.

Believe it or not, there's a surprisingly large amount of pretty frightening things that can be found solely in the devices that run all those scary games. Like for example, if they run into a problem. Ah, okay - especially when they run into a problem.

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Microsoft (Xbox)

• The original Xbox Dashboard, with its already slightly unsettling ambience, combined with the Easter Egg of a distorted Machine Monotone voice that's far too easy to interpret as wanting to kill you.

  Xbox Voice: Die-ie. Talking to you. Repeat module. Die humans.

  • An alternate mishearing is that the voice is saying "Work until you die, human."
• The Xbox 360's Red Ring Of Death. Imagine coming home to your console after a long and hard day of work and seeing the accursed rings for the first time just as you're getting ready to hop into a game of Halo 3.

Nintendo

• Nintendo, being a Lighter and Softer game company, did not have these terrifying sounds... until the GameCube. In this case, the manual of the Game Boy Player gave extra care in warning you to first go through the Eject option in the Game Boy Player menu before ejecting the Game Boy Advance cartridge. Failing to do so would have the Game Boy Player "punish" you by suddenly triggering this error, changing whatever game you are playing to a white message on a red text box on a black background while a loud Scare Chord plays.
• The loud screech let out by the Wii when the system froze up, triggered by the console turning off every driver but the video driver after a freeze. Definitely the last thing you want to hear during a Super Smash Bros. Brawl fight. And when you realize that the sound is far louder in person, it's very unsettling.
  • The sound returned on the Wii U, though thankfully on that console it only plays for about 5 seconds.
  • A lower-pitched version of the sound was heard whenever the GameCube froze, and like the Wii following it, continued playing until the system's power was turned off.
  • If a Wii or GameCube encountered a severe error and didn't crash with the sound, it would often instead suddenly trigger an equally terrifying error message, typically on a black screen, asking you to remove the disc of the game you were just playing (Wii only), turn the console off, and to read your Wii Operations Manual/GameCube Instruction Booklet to determine the cause. Ironically, if this error popped up on the Wii, like with the sound crash, the only way to turn it off would be to either hold down the power button for a few seconds or by unplugging the system, which doesn't sound too bad.
    • This error message is even more terrifying if you were to get it on Pokémon Colosseum or Metroid Prime (the only known games that do this), as those games' own error messages would pop up for a split second before the default GameCube error message appears.
    • This error message also doubles as the anti-piracy screen on New Super Mario Bros. Wii and appears after 3-10 minutes of gameplay if an anti-piracy measure is detected. However, there's a slight chance of this also happening on legit discs, so if you haven't saved and see this error, you might as well stay away from the game.
• Game Boy Advance:
  • If you power on the GBA without a valid cartridge inserted, it just hangs on the Game Boy logo indefinitely and ominously, without the Nintendo logo present, remininscent of a face with No Mouth. Granted, this is part of the procedure for playing a multiplayer game in single-cartridge mode — the host has the cartridge in their unit, links up the other players' units, and then activates a special transmit mode, while the other 1-3 players power up their GBAs with no cartridge inserted; the still Game Boy logo means the GBA is waiting for game data to be transmitted from the host (and the GBA will move on from that once there is game data ready to run). It's when you try to play with a cartridge inserted but the GBA cannot read the cartridge correctly, or when you forget to insert a cartridge to begin with, that the indefinite Game Boy logo gets quite spooky.
  • When a GBA game crashes, the console plays a flurry of glitched noise which sounds like a demented fax machine as it starts feeding the entire address space to the speakers as sound data^note This can be exploited to dump the contents of a GBA ROM, though the process is somewhat impractical.
• If the Nintendo DS runs low on battery, the power light will turn from green to red, then flashing red. Ditto with the Nintendo 3DS, but the notification lamp (which normally glows amber for online friends, blue for a SpotPass notification, or green for a StreetPass notification) will also blink menacingly bright red. In addition to potentially making the player panic into saving their game or plug their 3DS in to charge, it's rather reminiscent of a time bomb about to go off.
• The Nintendo Entertainment System is infamous for the problem of the system failing to read the inserted cartridge correctly and instead just flash a blank cyan screen slowly. If you're even more unlucky, the system may load the game, only for the screen to explode into a hideous mess of garbled text and graphics while a hellish droning sound plays.

Sega

• Have you ever been curious enough as to put a Sega CD disc into a CD player? If so, you'll probably remember the experience of hearing a female voice telling you to press pause and to eject the disc, as it contains CD-ROM data which can damage the speaker system. All of this sounds creepy enough already, but to make matters worse, SEGA decided it would be an even better idea to have an extremely loud, distorted guitar riff that sounds like it's playing from the utter depths of hell. Of course, if you skip past the data track, you'll most likely find the game's soundtrack on there; since most Sega CD games used red book CD audio for BGM. However, if you fail to do so, or play the disc on audio equipment incapable of skipping data tracks, you'll be treated to loud, grating static and high-pitched sounds liable to catch you off guard.
• The voice returns for Sega Saturn CDs, this time swapping out the demonic guitar screams for an even more unsettling Creepy Monotone and a questionable British accent. Except that some games would have specially recorded versions by a prominent character, which could range from Nightmare Retardant to The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You, making it even more tempting. Even worse is, like the Sega CD example above, some games do come with red book CD audio containing the game's BGM.
• The voice returns for the Dreamcast discs, which is identical to what they did for Sega Saturn CDs. There are unique warnings not just for different games, but for different regions, too. The vanilla warnings for North American and Japanese discs are comparatively tame, but the European warning, read in multiple languages^note English, French, German, European Spanish and Italian, in that order, has an unsettling reverb delay effect throughout. It can give the impression of disembodied voices in an empty void.

Sony (PlayStation)

• The PlayStation's startup splash can be this for those who've only ever seen 16-bit consoles. The brash and loud synth-and-brass fanfare (if you want a benchmark to compare it to, the THX fanfare is a good one) can be disconcerting to people who were not expecting it, especially with the TV's volume turned up, or on a home theater system- the fanfare is actually tuned to produce deep basslines.
  • One of the most notorious examples is when the PlayStation 1 models (including the slim ones) would let out a terrifying Death Cry Echo on their boot screen if it failed to boot properly (usually, this is caused by a corrupted BIOS) - this sound can only be described as an outright blood-curdling screech followed by creepy sounding chimes (actually a really glitched version of the regular boot sound, but still, it sounds terrifying). Even worse is when you realize what that sound means. It was given the Fan Nickname of "Personified Fear" for very good reason.
  • If an unmodded PlayStation attempts to run an unauthorized disc and it suddenly fails a check during runtime, there is a chance of the game abruptly cutting to a pitch black screen with a bright red "No" symbol and a very blunt message:
    SOFTWARE TERMINATED. CONSOLE MAY HAVE BEEN MODIFIED.
  • Fearful Harmony. It's caused by putting a non PlayStation disc on a modded/chipped system. What makes it creepy it's the creepy and unsettling chimes that suddenly play irregularly. (also not helping that this particular error occurs for any people who waits, as it usually starts after a few seconds or a minute.)
    • This error is also caused by the modchip, as it basically prevents the console from going to the dashboard if it can't read a disc (a normal system would just throw the "Please insert a PlayStation format disc" error instead). In other words, it's forcing the system to keep reading the disc even though it very obviously can't.
• The PlayStation 2 is no better, especially to those who have an irrational fear of grandfather clocks. The loud bong at the start can be disconcerting to such folks especially when played at high volume. Thankfully, this is the last of the Sony consoles to have audacious boot screens; the startup splash from the PlayStation 3 onwards is much more subdued.
  • The PlayStation 2's infamous "red screen of death" (pictured), which would often show up whenever it was unable to read a disc (due to a disc in poor condition; worn-out drives; an unknown format; or an incorrect region, such as putting an NTSC disc into a PAL console and vice-versa). Especially the background noise the console plays while in that screen. Fortunately, if you're lucky enough for getting used to it, there's a good chance that this turning into Nightmare Retardant instead.
• The PlayStation 3's yellow light of death (or the red blinking light of death). Definitely something you don't want to experience while in the heat of a Tekken tournament.
• There have been occasions where a PlayStation 4 does something like this (WARNING: Loud!).

Others

• If you attempt to turn on an Atari 2600 without a game cartridge, you'll get this. (If you're lucky, the screen will stay blank.)