1. Ecco the Dolphin

I’m still taken aback when I think of how unexpectedly dark this game turned out to be. It had a picture of a dolphin on the box, for Christ’s sake. Thirty seconds into the game and you’re happily chittering away with your dolphin buddies as you cruise around a pretty coral reef, not a care in the world. "Why not see how high you can jump out of the water Ecco?", my blubbery friend suggests. “What a jolly lovely idea”, Ecco must have mused to himself. Next thing I know there’s been a harrowing hurricane sequence and all the other dolphins are gone without a trace, leaving me with only vast expanses of deep water and eerie music. As it turned out the game was about as dolphin friendly as a truckload of cheap tinned tuna, leaving poor old Ecco to cautiously explore ever deeper into the ocean, constantly panicked about the ever present reality of drowning.

What could possibly be scary about a game like this, eh?

Right from the start you’re made to feel alone and powerless to the extent that it felt natural to have an immediate fear of anything else that moved, mainly because the game saw it fit to arm you only with sonar and your nose (neither of which were much use in combat, surprisingly). When playing as a child I cautiously spent about half an hour debating whether or not to approach the rather massive whale you encounter early in the game through a genuine fear that it’d probably try and eat me. Oh, and don’t even talk to me about the terrifying end boss, a scene that I’d imagine could have only been ripped straight from the darkest cryogenic dreams of Ellen Ripley herself. These mental scars aside, any game in which the protagonist is a dolphin and yet despite this manages to instil fish-based xenophobia into the mind of an innocent 8 year old seems clearly disturbing enough to gain a mention.

"IT’S FOR KIDS."

Skip forward a few years to 2008 and a whole generation of adults are inexplicably terrified of large bodies of water. Sega, we salute you.

GV hopes you’ve enjoyed Shock Tactics, but if you don’t agree or have your own opinions on what should have made the grade then please let us know in the comments. Your memories will fill me like warm marshmallows.