More Like The RMS Frightanic

Greetings, ghouls and buoys! Sometimes, when a video game (especially a JRPG, for whatever reason, or really anything to do with the ocean or space) wants to have a bit of horror-filled fun to mix things up a little, they'll sic a haunted vessel on you. Occasionally the whole game will be based on or around a ghost ship. Here's just ten examples, because it's October and 'tis the season for ghosts. And watercraft.

So prepare to ship yourselves, as we move portergeists to monsterboard and say "anchorribles aweigh!" on some spooky schooners. Um, with apologies to the Crypt Keeper?

List items

• 

  1. Grandia

  Grandia pretty much has the Ur-example of how a JRPG might use a ghost ship (though to be specific, it's a ship graveyard in Grandia's case). Which is to just drop one on an unsuspecting player for no reason. Final Fantasy V and Tales of Vesperia are two other JRPGs that have ghostly sea adventures "just because". I'd like to think the others on this list are a little less arbitrary with their maritime spookfests. (Why am I sounding so indignant about this? Good lord, I need to take stock.)

• 

  2. Suikoden IV

  For instance, Suikoden IV actually gives some plot significance to its inevitable (the whole damn game is ships after all) ghost ship encounter. The hero's unfortunate run-in with an enormous ship of the dead leaves a lot of questions unanswered, not least of which is the fate of Ted, a rescuee and immortal carrier of the Soul Eater Rune (though attentive Suikoden I fans already know how that'll turn out).

• 

  3. Rogue Galaxy

  Rogue Galaxy is another game with an emphasis on sailing, but in space. As such, it also has a ghost ship, but it also happens to be a colossal end-game bonus dungeon with reams of interesting backstory thrown in among the usual superbosses and weapons so powerful as to render the actual end boss fight a trivial spat.

• 

  4. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

  In case the person reading this isn't a JRPG fanatic, for some weird reason, here's a few examples from other types of games. Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker's ghost ship (and for that matter the one in LoZ: Phantom Hourglass also) manages to score a few chills with just how damn mysterious the elusive thing is. It only seems to appear in special circumstances, though any player brave enough to figure out how it gets around will score some free loot out of it. And some of those friendly headrape zombies too, if I recall.

• 

  5. Super Metroid

  Super Metroid, being the atmospheric sci-fi adventure that it is, has a derelict vessel haunted by a very real and very pissed off spectral ghost squid. Metroid Prime 3 one-upped it with a rather morbid hulk full of corpses that Samus visits for some McGuffin or another.

• 

  6. Echo Night: Beyond

  One of the few survival horror examples I'm aware of, Echo Night: Beyond follows a rather timid bespacesuited fiancé as he searches an abandoned lunar base for his missing other half. Abandoned, that is, except for the many tortured ghosts milling around, which can only be removed temporarily until their souls are finally put at rest.

• 

  7. USG Ishimura

  Of course, the daddy of spaceship horror games is the original Dead Space, set onboard this giant mining ship. Instead of the usual holograms, last humans, evolved cats and cuboid androids one would expect to see on a colossal mining vessel, it just has horrible monsters made out of limbs and spikes. And they're terrible at making goofy jokes about swirly things and Pot Noodles.

• 

  8. Von Braun

  Of course, the granddaddy of spaceship horror games is the second System Shock, set onboard this less-giant experimental spacecraft. Though not so much haunted by ghosts than psychic monkeys and a lady computer with a serious superiority complex, its tense and creepy atmosphere is as horrortastic an experience as you're likely to encounter in this great medium of ours.

• 

  9. FTL: Faster Than Light

  Rounding out the spaceship side of things is this recent Roguelike-like-sorta-similar-maybe. I've not encountered it myself, but I tend to hear second-hand information from all sorts of places about an entirely incongruous derelict of lost souls. When a ghost ship's presence in a game has only hearsay and whispers supporting it, it makes it all the more effective a scare when it finally appears.

• 

  10. Cryostasis

  I haven't even played this one. I just dimly recall Dave getting the chilly willies from ice zombies or some other subzero spook in an ancient Quick Look. Somehow I feel like a list always needs an entry I have little experience with, just to keep things on the level. Some apropos of nothing honesty for everyone, there. And isn't sharing one's feelings the true horror?