I think this one speaks for itself...
https://youtu.be/D30r0iRH73Q?t=2737
in a recent example; how about in Breath of the Wild the dark forest area? [Typhlo ruins]
That place was cool! Creepy for sure, but I thought it was a cool idea. Super Dark Land. I couldn't really get very far carrying a torch, and I couldn't see the lanterns, so eventually I just started running around everywhere with the move-metal-objects ability ready to use so it would draw little lines all over the terrain. It's not the same as having things lit up, but it was enough for me to navigate.
Everything scared me when I was a little kid,. There was one particular game that got to me; I think it was "Castlevania" for N64. It wasn't any particular thing that scared me, it was looking at this world and thinking "Is the whole world like this?" Imagining a world where *everything* is just spikes and evil and blood and junk. I was fine with Gauntlet Legends because I felt like the world had some cool areas still, and I had this sense that we were slowly fixing it. In Castlevania though, a lot of the gameplay is centered around getting through places, rather than fighting. From what I saw, there weren't even any enemies, it just felt like a big hollow world full of death and evil without a face or an identifiable form that you could fight back against.
As far as more immediate, concrete types of 'scary' go, the moment that comes to mind is a level in the N64 Star Wars game "Shadows of the Empire". There's a level with a former Imperial base and a bunch of catwalks, and those probes from Empire Strikes Back are one of the enemies. Unless they're firing, they're mostly silent, but they do occasionally make that weird 'comms' sound effect from the movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60ML-X0r9JgI heard one in the distance, but I couldn't find it. So I keep going through the level, and a minute later I'm pretty sure I'm past it. Then I'm on this catwalk, and I see something out of the corner of my eye, and I turn to the right, and there's... Nothing. So I turn to go ahead again, and to my *left*, one of these things is just silently floating *up* from below the catwalk, and its horrifying eye thing is staring into my soul, and it makes that creepy noise super loud right as I'm turning towards it, and it just scares the heck out of me. I think I just panicked and died
I'm sure I could think of others, but that's the one that comes to mind first.
Revisiting:
How could I possibly forget?
ReDeads!
Being 6'ish and thinking "Oh hey, Zelda" at cousin's house; you turn on the N64 and hit play, open a game, not realizing your cousin is much farther ahead than you. Your cousin is no longer in Happy Tree Land, and you go into Hyrule Castle Town thinking "This place seems scarier than usual, I'm going into town", and everyone you know is dead, and a horrible moaning creature made of rags jumps on you and starts biting the life out of you. That one got me.
And uhhh... In Wind Waker, they seem to have made it their goal to make the things as scary as possible, and they succeeded. I think my least favorite thing about them, aside from the scream, is how utterly *still* they are before you encounter them. Even if you hit them with a boomerang or an arrow or whatever; they just sit there. It makes a dull thud, and they turn only their head to look at you with their empty eyes. Then they turn away again silently. On a sidenote, what evil developer decided to stick one of those in the labyrinth under your cabana house? I wouldn't mind if I could at least turn the fireplace back on, but since I can't, I always have this irrational fear that once the fireplace it out, a ReDead could come out of the hole in the floor any time. Once the fire is out, playing the puzzle game makes me nervous. It forces you to stand with your back to the fireplace hole for an extended period of time. I know it's just a game, but once the fire is out, I don't like playing the wall puzzle... That fireplace is just wide open, and there's a ReDead in the basement. For all I know the thing is right behind me at any moment.