"Scarify!"
You may wonder what is so scary about a Harry Potter game. Well, little kids get scared of stupid things. I will say though I never cried playing it, I did scream bloody murder. It wasn’t about the quality of this tie-in: I was screaming about Hogwarts caretaker Argus Filch.
This was back in the good old days of Harry Potter games, before they tried to imitate the books and movies, and were just fun games. Harry Potter video games even had “Flipendo” as their go-to spell, which kind of sounds like Nintendo.
This particularly scary was a stealth level. As Harry, I had to sneak around Hogwarts without the no-nonsense hobo Filch catching me. Unlike some stealth games, you could not run or attack when seen. It was like stealth levels in a Zelda game—think Gerudo Valley—albeit far less enjoyable.
It probably did not help that I played this game in the dark. I now play scary games in the dark to enhance the mood, but back then I could not stand it. The anxiety of sneaking around in games has always scared me. Maybe it stems from the anxiety disorder I now know I have; maybe any existing problems I have in my life were caused by this game! Want to hear something really funny? Today one of my favorite series is Metal Gear. Imagine that! The kid who got scared by a stealth level in a licensed GBA game loves Metal Gear.
