Fear of sprites

Back when i was a kid, the world of 8-bit games scared the bejeebus out of me.  I assumed every enemy had a complex personality driven by anger and fear, and that it could be coerced by the intimidating presence of my character, and that each attack by by character could cause this fear in an enemy.  But these things showed no fear, no mercy.  They just ran and jumped straight towards me.  All they had on their minds was the eradication of my character, who must be feeling all kinds of things by being trapped in this world and facing such monstrosities.

Later did I realize only  bounding boxes and some graphics were in my way, which could be quickly disposed of by rapid shots and knowing when to move out of the way.

Basically, it was the difference between roleplaying a little 2D guy and his experience traversing a level built by the ultimate evil, to realizing this was just a game and that graphics were only dressing to keep it from being "my block vs your block" like the atari.

But with modern games like Ninja Gaiden, enemies do have reactions to your character- they may anticipate attacks or move around based on how close you are.  So is it really so naive to think this could happen with the first level boss in the original Ninja Gaiden?

In a good game, you SHOULD sometimes think that sprites and characters are "alive." It implies a better immersiveness into the game. As far as it giving you the fear, that's a bit too far, man, but understandable.

I always used to read into the 'intended' detail on sprites and in isolation with the game, fear a few of them.
Whenever I encountered a new sprite, it seemed 10x as fearsome, having some unknown behavior towards killing me.

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