My keen childhood "trauma"

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IceDuck347
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My keen childhood "trauma"

Post by IceDuck347 »

Long story short, when I was a kid (like five or six years old) the combination of the sprite and the sounds keen (galaxy style) makes when dying scared the hell out of me, and when I say it scared the hell ot of me I really mean it scared the freakin' hell out of me :lol I used to run out of the room with my eyes closed. And it seems it hit so hard on me that I feel weird when I see keen dying now, I've never played the game without cheats and only played them to explore the levels, for me, playing a keen game is like playing a sandbox game. I've never been able to enjoy it the way I enjoy other similar styled games like dizzy, contra, megaman or super mario.

Do any of you have anything similar you can relate to? I'm curious of knowing if I am the only one with such a disorder :spot
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Roobar
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Re: My keen childhood "trauma"

Post by Roobar »

I've never experienced such traumatic experience. It was just an awesome game that I enjoyed. I even played Doom and Mortal Kombat and I thought they were awesome as well. Never really scared me. Your case surely looks strange.

Kids these days are mostly making Super Mario Maker levels at the age of 3-5. I wonder what they're thinking about it. I doubt they thinking too much about it. I mean often these levels consist of gazillion bowsers, bullet bills, obstacles etc. Should adults be concerned? Could these be traumatizing in some way? At the age of 6-9 kids are starting to play Fortnitie and Among Us, both involved with a lot of killing and deaths, so... I dunno. Keen seems like a kids game, but I guess back in the days, when there weren't that many games and references, in a way even some parts of Keen might have been somewhat... scary for kids.
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IceDuck347
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Re: My keen childhood "trauma"

Post by IceDuck347 »

Oh no, you shouldn't take me as an example for anything. I was scared of that but when I was a child I was also scared (and I mean really scared to the point of getting desperate and cry if they exposed me to that) of exploding balloons, dogs, flowers and vaccines (this last one due to having been hospitalized because of pneumonia two times both at the age of 3 and 4, and they extracted blood from me all the days or so)
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RoboBlue
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Re: My keen childhood "trauma"

Post by RoboBlue »

I think I was scared of Keen dying when I was very young too.

The PC speaker always sounded loud and alien.
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Re: My keen childhood "trauma"

Post by Hisymak »

Much more than dying with the standard animation, I was really scared from being eaten by a Dopefish. It felt very uncomfortable.
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Re: My keen childhood "trauma"

Post by monochameleon »

Gargs. Just...gargs. The Vorticons didn't worry me as much, but the Gargs terrified me. The first time I saw one jump a gap I just about leapt out of the chair. I was 4 when I played Keen for the first time and I'm now 34 and they still leave me a little unsettled - always shoot into the gold tunnels. Always.
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Re: My keen childhood "trauma"

Post by Lower IQ than 314 »

The first time I saw the Dopefish, it freaked me out, because it was so much bigger than the other enemies...up until it ate a Schoolfish, and then looked at the camera and belched with a derpy expression, and then it became a lot more endearing.

To me, the scariest enemy was Robo Red. It was also a huge enemy, but much more aggressive than the Dopefish. The fact that you can see them talking on monitors in Energy Flow Systems implied that they were sentient, which was a scary thought in my young brain, since I automatically compared them to their fellow huge enemy, the Dopefish, which was stated to be dumb as a brick. King Boobus Tuber was also unsettling by virtue of being even bigger than the other two, even if he was pretty straightforward to take down.

Other enemies that were scary to my younger self included the Fleex, since they had so much health and moved so quickly and unpredictably; the Arachnuts, because they never stayed down, and in general just looked kind of freaky; and the Vorticon Elite, just because of how aggressively they bum-rushed you, appeared in groups, and could snipe you from across the level if you weren't careful. In Keen Dreams, the Asparagustos and Tomatooths (Tomateeth?) were both pretty intimidating to me back then, too, since they were fast and hard to land a hit on.
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Roobar
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Re: My keen childhood "trauma"

Post by Roobar »

Well, the dopefish were kind of scary, but in a way that you just want to avoid any contacts possible. It's not an easy task. And I was never really keen into entering that level. For me, the berkeloids were probably a bigger threat and I was avoiding them at all costs.
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Re: My keen childhood "trauma"

Post by Nisaba »

the blue bird. definitely the blue bird. they scared the garg outta me
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Re: My keen childhood "trauma"

Post by Benvolio »

Gargs were definitely the most frightening. I too did the shooting into tunnels thing for a long time. Those gargs with their at first seemingly unpredictable jumping, and sudden rapid movements, play tricks on the brain and get those adrenal medullae pumping.

I think that other Keen enemies are no less difficult - many more so - but psychologically it was easier to grapple with them having conquered the garg.

That said, arachnuts with their invincibility broke the mould and reignited a sense of fear in me. Slightly milder fear as I was an older and more seasoned keener than when I had first encountered the gargs. But a real unsettled sense of dread nonetheles. Other Keen4 enemies such as the Berkeloid are yet more formidable but I think that Arachnut sticks out because it's quite a commonplace enemy, so even a casual player who does not make it through the full game will encounter them and be traumatised.
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Re: My keen childhood "trauma"

Post by Soul Monster »

Maybe this was because as a little kid I had a fear of thunderstorms, but I used to be terrified of the Thunderclouds. Going up to that
section in the Chasm of Chills used to be unsettling to me because there was no way to tell which clouds were real or fake.

Also, the Blue Birds. I also used to be terrified of them because they're so big, they move so fast, and the look so angry.
At least they were stunnable.
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Re: My keen childhood "trauma"

Post by Grandy02 »

As I wrote elsewhere, I found the Vorticons to be quite scary (and I thought they are invincible). At least in level 4, I was able to trick the Vorticon into moving out of the level so that I didn't have to confront him.
I don't remember anything else from the Keen games that really scared me. Maybe the Dopefish a bit due to its sheer size. I only had the shareware episodes and the Keen 6 demo as child.

But I remember that in Cosmo 1, I was worried about the outcome of the final level, with its scary background and music and the very long drop, so I asked my mother to stand by. Fortunately, the still image of Cosmo falling into the creature's mouth wasn't as frightening as expected. :blush
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Re: My keen childhood "trauma"

Post by XkyRauh »

I had multiple nightmares about Vorticons when I was maybe in 4th or 5th grade. Mostly about the hopelessness of an entire planet of them, brainwashed, coming to get me. They're supposed to be a sort of goofy, gawky enemy, but they scared the crap out of me when I first played Keen!
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Re: My keen childhood "trauma"

Post by Soul Monster »

As a kid, I found the Arachnuts pretty terrifying. I used to play on easy, so I didn't come across them very often, but when I did, I was
always scared of them because they have that frantic movement to them where their mouths are constantly flailing around and they scuttle around so fast. Not only that, but they never stayed down. I remember being scared that they wouldn't die, and they would just get right back up and start chasing me again.
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