Switch 2: 10 GameCube Classics That MUST Be Added

2. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

If any one screenshot has come to identify Eternal Darkness, it's this one.

2002's GameCube-exclusive survival horror may be filled with nightmare demons, cosmic gods and scenes of good people meeting brutal ends, but its most well-known horrors are the ones that make the player question what's happening in the real world.

Silicon Knights' magnum opus became famous thanks to its brilliantly executed Sanity Meter. Whenever any of the game's dozen protagonists encounters an otherworldly horror or scene of horrific violence, the aforementioned meter begins to dip and the likelihood of the character losing their mind goes up. While some of these mental breaks made use of standard horror tropes - bleeding walls, moving statues, etc. - the best made the player think something was wrong with the game itself.

Some effects were relatively minor, like the volume slider turning itself all the way to zero on its own. Others were more drastic, such as the fake Blue Screen of Death that occasionally appeared, or the game suddenly inverting the controls. But by far the most well known trick was the one seen above, where the game would apparently delete all the players' save files. Seeing hours of effort go up in smoke generated a stomach-dropping horror entirely unique to Eternal Darkness, and it's a trick worth experiencing even when you're aware of it. 

Like Carrie's hand rising from the grave, or the corpse standing up at the end of the original Saw, even when you know its coming you can still appreciate the brilliance of the moment.