10 Video Games That Made You Face Your Own Worst Nightmares

10. Sonic The Hedgehog

I can understand why you might balk at the appearance of the original Sonic the Hedgehog on this list. After all, he’s nothing more than a slick, blue anthropomorphic cartoon hedgehog. Have I included it for the zoophobes amongst us? The cyanophobes? For those of us who are still members of early nineties, middle-America PTAs?

Shockingly, no.

Sonic the Hedgehog isn’t inherently scary unless you’re a balloon, nor is his adventure chasing Dr Robotnik. It’s as family-friendly as it’s possible for a videogame to be, and doesn’t even contain any of the inter-species snogging that the series would go on to become derided for.

The reason Sonic the Hedgehog manages to raise your heartbeat is because of its bonus levels. After jumping through a giant ring at the end of a stage, you find yourself curled up into a ball in a constantly spinning room, surrounded by things that bounce and ping you from garishly coloured block to garishly coloured block. The thing is, you have no control over it that you understand and, though you know you’re supposed to try and get to the emerald in the middle, no matter how hard you try, you can never seem to get there.

As a child, these stages are frustrating annoyances that have you slamming the pad down in irritation, but as an adult they recall those dreams where you’re running as fast as you can but can’t seem to escape your tormentor, they remind you of all the times you couldn’t help but fail, even though you knew exactly what you had to do… Worst of all, as you fall through the dissolving floor and the television screams at you and the world rotates faster and faster as you’re kicked back to the regular level, you can’t help but wonder if they’re not emblematic of real life.

Terrifying.