

In the boss battle itself, the player has to plug the controller into the second controller port to avoid being mind controlled by Psycho Mantis. The Playstation controller’s rumble feature then activates and causes it to vibrate across the floor as the character moves.

He then asks the player to put their controller on the floor and says he can manipulate objects. Psycho Mantis will directly comment on any Konami-published games that the player has save data for. Behind the scenes, the game checks what other video games the player has saved on their memory card, and pre-recorded voice dialogue plays based on what games it finds. In the boss fight against Psycho Mantis, the character tells the player that he has psychokinesis and can read their thoughts. Released on the Playstation One in 1998, the game went above and beyond to confuse and scare its players. While Metal Gear Solid isn’t a horror game itself, it does have one of the first and most famous instances of this type of scare. These games do everything from creating files on your computer to purposefully crashing the game back to the start menu. Instead of just including scares within the world of the game, they attempt to make the player question reality by messing with the console or computer itself. Many horror games take the psychological thriller route and aim to mess with the player’s perceptions, but some take things outside of the realm of the game.
