Especially the first one.
The graphics look terrible today, but Alone in the Dark is a creep show, not a splatterhouse. Freakish entities like the ghost in the sitting room and the ghastly thing at the front door are still creepy because of their sheer haunted-house WTF factor. The visuals are dated, but they hardly ruin the experience.

The first 2 were amazing. Never actually played 3. When Atari announced that The New Nightmare's demo was out, I eagerly downloaded it. Played for 5 minutes, then never looked back.
AITD1 was scary because it messes with your head. It looks ancient, dated, and its monsters are hilarious looking if you just look at the screenshots, but it's actually one of those rare games that understands what makes the human psyche tick. I'm still not quite sure how I can explain this anymore elaborately, but you'll have to play it to find out.
Of course, there's no accounting for taste, so even after playing it, you may not find it scary anyway.

Dated? Carbon dated more like. I remember seeing more polygons on screen in Elite. Had they stuck to good old 2D, like so many other awesome titles of the day it might not have aged so badly. But even in the early 2000s most genres weren't ready for 3D. Trying to make that technological leap a decade beforehand certainly didn't pay off.

Then maybe they should have made a proper remake of it with the 2008 game. Well, obviously anything would have been better than what they did release. Then again, maybe the real issue is that they lost that ability to really understand horror. What makes the human psyche tick, as you say. Whatever the case, I think it would actually need a remake now to retain that. I shouldn't be laughing at the screenshots of a horror game.

Yes, the first Alone in the Dark was amazing! And in my opinion still is. The game made sure you'd pay attention to your surroundings because it made you think something scary could pop out at every moment. The plot, the sinister Victorian house, the stories in the books and the camera viewpoints greatly enhanced that feeling. The simple polygon models didn't (and still don't) negate that.
Also, the game play was fantastic.
In my opinion, all the sequels couldn't live up to the first one because the emphasis was on combat instead of on adventure and horror.

You're on a site called GOG and you complain about graphics?
The game scared the hell out of me in 1993 - 2D wouldn't have worked even half as well. It's the smooth animation of the zombies and other creatures that does it.
Seriously, the atmosphere is still creepy and while you may find the graphics laughable, its still a great game.
Also, judging a game purely on static screenshots without hearing the noises, music, seeing the animations, etc. is pretty naive to say the least. Few horror games (or movies) look scary in screenshots.

Oh not that old bullshit again. Yes, graphics are actually important. Especially in a game that relies on atmosphere like horror games do. This shouldn't be a startling revelation.
I can't think of one significant game in the early to mid ninties in which the graphics weren't important. Never mind one of a genre in which the graphics are key. In fact it's pretty plain that Alone in the Dark was trying to be ahead of its time graphically. The same principals worked for Another World as that game kept it within workable constraints that actually made the game very stylish. It doesn't work here.
Also where you get off thinking all GOGers are clones of one another is beyond me. If you want to be an embittered stereotype complaining that anything new is crap solely because it's new and "they don't make them like they did in my day", that's fine. Just don't expect it of anyone else.
Of course you can't determine what is scary just by looking at screenshots. The point is that the screenshots should be betraying the fact that it's not.

I disagree. Derceto has to be explored in three dimensions. The game wouldn't have worked as well in 2D. Trying to imagine Alone in the Dark done in the style of Clock Tower or a LucasArts adventure kind of gives me a headache.
Yes, the graphics are archaic to a fault. Yes, the werewolf model makes me giggle, too. No, it doesn't really matter, because this isn't that kind of horror.
AitD was and still is a delicately-crafted and uniquely perverse horror game that I still go back to. If you don't believe that a horror game can be an eerie, chilling, mysterious, and yes, atmospheric experience even if the monsters (of which, by the way, there aren't even that many) look pretty silly by today's standards, then there's not much else for me to say. Nobody remembers Alone in the Dark for the werewolf in the attic.

Alone in the Dark 1 would have been an insta-buy for me. However, I already have Alone in the Dark 4. Here's hoping they get the full series.

All if this is only serving to remind me of how much I want to see Amnesia released already. As horror games that truly know how to scare you and keep you on your toes are few and far between, but that looks like one of them.

There was work on a port. Dunno what happened:
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=7445&highlight=free+dark
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fitd/
I may have a copy of the win32 ver at home.