Installation image. You’re walking around a large mansion, checking the keys of locked doors, investigating every nook and cranny, and just doing your best to figure out where you need to go and what you need to do. The rooms are well lit and the furniture is neatly arranged together. For all accounts, it’s a pretty nice environment, but something feels Turn off. Of course, that doesn’t help as the ambient sound in this part of the game is pretty bad, to say the least.
Sure, when you investigate a seemingly ordinary bathtub, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem Beat your friends with one of the most effective, terrifying jump scares of all time.
Is it a monster? Maybe a zombie? If franchise like Resident Evil and Lonely in the dark has taught us anything, it is that we generally expect any fear to be the result of some fearsome creature stalking our hallways or stalking us from dark crevices. Not so, in this case. Here, the camera quickly pans to a close-up of the bathtub, where our protagonist, Alexandra Roivas, witnesses her own corpse partially submerged in a pool of blood, head down, eyes invisible. The accompanying screams are in full effect, causing anyone who has witnessed the scene for the first time to jump in a chair and most likely stop while rummaging through a clean pair of underwear.
If you weren’t old enough to play games in the GameCube era – or if Lovecraftian blood, guts, and horror weren’t age-appropriate at the time – you’re missing out on that one-of-a-kind awesome punch that release of Resident Evil (Remake) and Eternal Darkness are only a few months apart. The pair are still considered two of the best survival horror games of all time and have dramatically changed the public perception of Nintendo’s “kid-friendly” GameCube. Indeed, Eternal Darkness came in at the first M-rated M position published by Nintendo since then, when.
While both are considered similar, the ways Resident Evil and Eternal Darkness approach horror is significantly different. The previous installment stuck heavily to the formula that made the series such a spectacular success in the PS1 era (obviously, because it was rework, do it again), while the latter gives us something completely different: an adventure that takes place over several time periods from 26 BC to 2000 AD that boasts more than just a variety of weapons including including primitive swords and modern-day guns but also magical systems. Sorry, magick.
However, it’s not the psychological trauma of the bath-jumping scare scene that really sets the Eternal Darkness apart from its other rivals. That prize is for the significant sober effects the game throws at you if you’re not careful. Indicated by a green ruler on the left side of the screen, this will gradually deplete as you encounter enemies and other nasty creatures; let it decrease by a certain amount and you will start to notice strange things start happening around you.
I remember seeing the ‘blue screen of death’… I let out a curse and quickly hit the reset button on the GameCube before the effect could end. I didn’t have much patience in those days.
At first, it could be something quite subtle, such as the camera tilting only slightly, faces from statues following you around the room, or perhaps blood dripping from the ceiling or a painting. . Eventually, however, the game will start to get pretty wild with its tricks. I remember the first time it came up with a ‘blue screen of death’ with heaps of error messages. I didn’t even hesitate; I let out a curse and quickly hit the reset button on the GameCube before the effect could end. I didn’t have much patience in those days.
Only when I restarted the game and the sober effect reappeared did I realize what was happening. By coincidence (or perhaps by design?), the same thing happened almost instantaneously, with the blue screen filling my vision. In the end, I thought something was seriously wrong with the console, so I just sat there for a while, staring at the screen with a blank expression. Of course, after a few seconds, the game will pop up accompanied by the anguished wail of any character you happen to be playing.
“OH,“I thought. This is a trick. Of course it is. Not only have I started noticing weird things happening to the character, but now the game itself is really trying to trick I. I felt rather silly pressing the reset button so quickly, but the feeling quickly turned into reverence; I can’t believe a game is so daring that you think it’s broken, and I absolutely love it. After that point, I purposely kept my sanity meter as low as possible purely to see what other types of effects could occur.
Of course, this isn’t the first time a video game has tried to break the fourth wall; several years ago, Konami’s Solid metal gears perhaps the most famous example with the boss Psycho Mantis. Famously, it reads your save files from other PS1 games before giving you the option to swap console ports, thus fooling Psycho Mantis and preventing him from “reading your mind”. It’s an incredibly clever moment in the game, but the way Eternal Darkness takes this concept and runs with it is arguably even more impressive. Is it any wonder that developer Silicon Knights continues to create a remake of GameCube Solid metal gears?
Despite how ‘Eternal Darkness’ formula was proven to work in 2002, it’s still ‘stuck’ on the GameCube; Nintendo has done nothing with the IP other than a few token trademark renewals. It’s a pity, especially when you consider the fact that the company really patented for the sober system concept (now expired), suggests variations on the theme that may appear in other Nintendo games. Alas, it is not meant to be. The spiritual successor to the game is called Shadow of the Eternals was planned by former Silicon Knights developers and at one point featured Metal Gear veteran voice actor David Hayter, but the project became bogged down in controversy and legal proceedings between Silicon Knights and Epic Games and nothing happened to it.
So here we come, exactly 20 years later, with no sign that the Eternal Darkness will be given a new life. The game has not been re-released in any way, and since the GameCube has yet to receive any kind of Nintendo Switch Online support, it hasn’t even been ported anywhere. That being said, I encourage everyone who hasn’t experienced the game to look it up – buy a GameCube, buy a Wii, hit Ebay, do whatever you need to do. Eternal Darkness is considered one of the best survival horror games ever created and you will completely lose your mind when you let it pass you by.
Still not convinced? Its Phil Spencer’s Favorite GameCube. That’s right, Uncle Phil!
For those you already know, feel free to share your stories about volume control and risk control issues below. Also, please visitlooks to us with the understanding that all the madness of the past few years has been just one complicated special effect of madness.
