I've been OCDing my videogames collection over the past week, which has considerably shrunk in size since I left the States. During what can only be described as a monstrous act of purging, I gave away to friends my entire Super Famicom/SNES collection (some 65 cartridges), the Super Famicom console itself, my imported Nintendo 64 and collection of rarities (Japanese versions of Sin & Punishment, Bangiaoh etc.) as well as my White Japanese Sega Saturn.

Such a selfless act left me a bit raw I have to admit, but there was no way I was going to ship them all back to the UK (international moves do not come cheap). Plus I hadn't played any of the systems for a few years, in all honesty. Still, I decided to keep my extensive GameCube collection because I have a Wii and after throwing away all the plastic cases the discs easily fitted into a CD wallet.

Having been back in the UK since mid-March, I have only just got around to setting up my Wii (Will's promise of a copy of Super Punch-Out!! inspired me to dust it off). After a few online rounds of Mario Kart Wii and, though I'm ashamed to admit it, a few sessions on Wii Music with my lad, my mind turned to the GameCube wallet sitting in a box in the garage. Surely some of those now-classic titles were worth a spin down memory lane?

Do not want.

It was about 11 p.m. and the rest of the house was either asleep or really quiet. As I opened the wallet I saw Silicon Knights' Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem staring right back at me. Now I'm a big fan of games that creep me out; Resident Evil and Silent Hill remain some of my most-loved and most-played series ever. And it'd been so long since I played Eternal Darkness that most of the story seemed fuzzy in my memory.

The choice was clear. I decided to reformat my aging GameCube memory card and stuck the ED disc in the Wii. Armed with only a very dusty purple GameCube wired controller, I booted the game up and started a new file.

I think that Eternal Darkness' genius lies in the aspects of the game that you don't actually see on-screen. The game's sanity system -- which is ripped lovingly straight out of the likes of the Call of Cthulhu pen-and-paper RPG series -- is pure brilliance. How on earth could an aging GameCube title with reasonably low-resolution polygonal visuals instill such a sense of panic and dread in this day and age? As I chewed through the first three chapters of the game (it took perhaps two hours or so as I really like to take my time) my nerves were unbelievably shot to crap by the end.