4 Horror Games Nintendo Made (or Published) That Prove They Can Be Terrifying

Nintendo is best known for its family-friendly games that let everyone join in on the fun. That doesn’t usually translate to great horror games, but every once in a while, Nintendo decides to dip its hands into the genre as a developer and publisher. Somewhat surprisingly, many of those efforts have been exceptional. Nintendo’s version of horror doesn’t always leave you cowering in the corner, but it does give players inventive ways of scaring themselves and friends. Heck, there’s even one game that has you scaring the in-game characters, turning the tables on the usual horror conventions.

Here are four excellent horror games developed or published by Nintendo.

4) Luigi’s Mansion

As mentioned, Nintendo is generally family-friendly, and Luigi’s Mansion is no different. From the first game to the third, none of these games’ scares will risk cardiac arrest, but the vibes are immaculate. Yes, you’re hunting ghosts, which can lead to a few jump scares, but the real “horror” here comes from the situation Luigi finds himself in and the haunting tone of the mansion.

Again, it’s not the scariest game you’ll ever play, but Nintendo has perfected its formula to give players a great horror-lite game that they can play with anyone. If you’re looking for a great way to introduce a kid to the horror genre, it doesn’t get much better than Luigi’s Mansion. All three games are great, but the original is probably the spookiest of the bunch.

3) Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club

Emio – The Smiling Man is the fourth game in the Famicom Detective Club series, coming out 27 years after the third game launched in 1997. When its teaser first popped up in 2024, players immediately noted the darker tone that was totally different from anything else Nintendo had put out recently.

The final product isn’t quite as terrifying, but the serial killer-focused murder mystery is still much darker than Nintendo’s usual work. And despite not being as scary as true horror games, the visuals proved Nintendo knows what it takes to make something spine-chilling. Hopefully, this was just the start of Nintendo getting deeper into horror-adjacent games.

2) Geist

Geist is a very weird game. At the time, Nintendo was looking to dive deep into the first-person shooter genre and decided to team with developer n-Space to create Geist. You play as a disembodied ghost who can inhabit different kinds of hosts. For the FPS gameplay, that means jumping into the body of a soldier, but you’ll also need to possess different objects and people to finish puzzles.

Unfortunately, Geist is let down by its technical issues, but using the ghost mechanic to scare NPCs and then host them was a fun new take on horror. Instead of being the one being scared, you’re now doing the scaring. It’s not a perfect genre mashup, but Geist features Nintendo’s typical inventive flair that could be great if someone went back to it in 2025.

1) Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem

Like Geist, Eternal Darkness is a Nintendo-published game. This time, the console maker partnered up with legendary designer Denis Dyack and his team at Silicon Knights. It’s also the closest a Nintendo game has ever gotten to true horror, as Silicon Knights developed an innovative new sanity system to give players something unlike anything they’d ever played before.

Eternal Darkness doesn’t have quite as many jump scares as something like Resident Evil, but the “Sanity Effects” are truly game-changing. Unfortunately, they were also patented by Nintendo, so we haven’t seen them as much as we’d like in the years since. That said, the way the sanity system plays with your mind is incredibly cool. From small things like a skewed camera angle to stronger effects like simulated technical malfunctions and a promotion for a fake sequel, Eternal Darkness does so much to throw players completely off their game.

Unfortunately, Nintendo has never done anything else with Eternal Darkness. Silicon Knights had a sequel in the works, but it never happened. Dyack tried to make a spiritual sequel relatively recently, but its Kickstarter campaign failed. The only new thing we’ve seen from Eternal Darkness is a cameo appearance in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Hopefully, that changes in the future, but it’s more likely Nintendo would partner with another studio to give fans another inventive horror experience.

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