Nintendo may have spent years building a family-friendly reputation with bright colors, non-violent gameplay and clearly-evil-but-ultimately non-threatening big bads, but that doesn’t mean that the occasional title didn’t contain a genuinely frightening scene or two. In honor of the annual celebration of all things spooky, I thought I’d take a look at what Nintendo-created images gave me a fright.

The Mad Piano

Situated rather innocently in the Big Boo’s Haunt area of Super Mario 64, the Mad Piano surely set a few gamers on edge. There Mario would be, tiptoeing pasted this possessed Baby Grand when all of sudden it would spring into a clanging, fang-bearing fury that would make a horror movie director proud.

I can remember walking in the room with this unkillable monster, realizing I had tread too closely and too loudly and still getting a start when this thing lurched after me. Easily the scariest part of this ghost-populated stage, which already included a merry-go-round complete with some of the best creepy-meets-carnival music I can remember.

The Shriek of the Redeads

Oh, poor Link. Just barely emerged from his seven-year-sleep and so quickly confronted with a Hyrule town square with leathery zombies standing where jolly townspeople once were. The Redeads should have given nightmares to the younger gamers who happened to play The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and at least heebie-jeebies to those of us jaded by zombie flicks.

The worst part: Easily, the shrieking, which stopped Link dead in his tracks and still echoes in my head. (Nintendo eventually gave us a revenge: smacking the hell out of Redeads in Super Smash Bros. Melee.)

All Hail Devil World

Okay, maybe not scary per se, but definitely worth mentioning on a list of Nintendo’s spookier doings. It is a little freaky to think about what could have led Nintendo developers to craft a Pac-Man clone in which a plucky dragon had to fight Satan himself… by navigating a shifting maze. What kind of logic could have led developers to say “You know what would be better than Power Pills? Crucifixes.”

I suppose the upside of this single venture by Nintendo into the world of repurposed religious iconography is that we may soon see Devil World’s characters outside of Japan with Old Scratch’s inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Then, I suppose, we’ll be able to judge just how scary the Nintendo devil really is.

Ghost of the Angry Lizard

Take a step back and forget that this is Donkey Kong Country 2 and look at this for what it is: Two children — simian children, but children nonetheless — riding the world’s worst most dangerous roller coaster though a haunted house and being pursued by spectral pirate lizards. Just compute that for a second, and note that that is one freaky ghost lizard.

The Warped Mind of Giygas

My all-time scariest Nintendo moment, however, would have to be the climactic final boss battle in Earthbound, in which Ness and company must tackle the alien invader Giygas. A recluse throughout most of the game — although that just might have been him in the black bikini at the zombie circus in Threed— Giygas finally shows his face at the end. And what a face it is: less the funny bobble-headed aliens you might expect from a Nintendo game, Giygas has this slowly warping, hideous demon face that even his mother couldn’t love.

Worse yet: Series creator Shigesato Itoi based Goygas’s dialogue (“It hurts… It hurts…”) from a childhood incident in which he walked into a rape scene in an adult film. Now that’s scary.

Creepy Mimi’s Transformation

Since most of my picks skewed toward older titles, I figured I’d include a scene from Super Paper Mario that struck me as considerably more freaky than most Nintendo fare: Mimi’s transformation from the cute little minx to the considerably more disturbing spider form. And this ain’t no puff-of-smoke costume change. Her head spins around, Exorcist-style, arachnid legs sprout out of her body, and her former torso hangs loosely from the bottom of her gross new head. Really, Nintendo? Yikes. Needless to say it, I loved it every time she transformed.

The Zora Mask Takes Over Link’s Face

Speaking of transformations, I’m hard-pressed to imagine a single scarier image from a Nintendo game than Link’s monstrous change into his aqua-friendly form when he puts the Zora Mask on in The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. I know turning into Zora Link does not end all that badly for link — in fact, he gets superpowers and a guitar — and I know that the Zora are not genuinely evil people. Nonetheless, this one image, with Link’s face seemingly merging with the stereotypical gray-faced alien, sticks out in my mind.

The Squishy Innards of the Metroid

A preface: So I was a sensitive child, a little high-strung and a little easily spooked. I’m choosing this last entry in this list to admit that when my six-year-old self first played Metroid and actually got to the part that features the actual Metroid enemies, they scared the crap out of me. Something about having my head jammed into their jellyfish insides and letting them sap out my life energies was so scary to me that I actually had nightmares that I was being pursued by the Metroids — lacking Samus’s space armor all the while.

I’ve yet to play the GameCube and Wii-era Metroid games, I suspect in part because I’m genuinely terrified that the realistically depicted Metroids might look a little too much like the ones in my head. Totally a personal one, I know, but a genuine Nintendo fright fest, for me, at least.

That’s as deep as I could dig. I’m sure I missed some good ones, and look forward to hearing from you all just how far I missed the mark. Happy Halloween.

Drew also writes about pop-culture minutiae on his blog, Back of the Cereal Box.