Thursday, March 3, 2011

Yes My Gatekeeper!

Delving into my obsession with all thing scary is well, pretty scary.

One area I have yet to post about is my love of horror related board games.

Horror board games?

Yup, there are plenty of horror themed games out there and as you have probably guessed I’ve acquired quite a few over the years.

The first one up for discussion is “Nightmare: The Video Board Game,” which debuted in 1991.

“Nightmare” is a FMV or Full Motion Video board game, a novel concept designed to plunge players into 60 minutes of terrifying playtime.


Here the description from the box:

“Turn the volume up, the lights down, press PLAY and your video cassette recorder and you are in for a night of frightening fun as Nightmare brings a thrilling new dimension to home entertainment; INTERACTIVE TELEVISION!

No game ever plays the same way twice, and there is no need to FAST FORWARD, REWIND or PAUSE the tape. All you need is ONE HOUR and a video cassette recorder.

Once you press PLAY, you only have 60 minutes to win or the game’s host THE GATEKEEPER wins! Only you can stop him!

To beat THE GATEKEEPER, you must collect 6 keys and make your way to the center of the board where you will face your Nightmare; the thing you fear most!

But your number just came up and THE GATEKEEPER wants to speak to you! If you fail to answer him or fail his tests, you are banished to the BLACK HOLE!”

That’s a lot of exclamation points and capitalization…regardless of the play value I love the concept and the idea of bringing an interactive horror experience to the mainstream.

We played this game once or twice and while it was unique it really wasn’t what you would call a lot of fun.

Whatever….”Nightmare” deserves a place in horror history gaming and if you ever see it at a thrift store or garage sale pick it up strictly for the nostalgia aspect.

3-6 Players aged 12 to Adult.

Contents…

60 Minute HI-FI VHS Cassette. Gameboard. 256 Cards (TIME, FATE AND CHANCE). 36 Keys (six sets). 8 Nightmare Cards. 6 Plastic tombstone Playing Pieces. 6 Numbered discs. Plastic Coin. Nightmare Cloth Bag. Marking Pencils. Die. The Rules.



P.S. Love the bat!

2 comments:

PumpkinBrain said...

My wife and I played a lot with this game when we started dating. We still have the game and we also have the extension set of the witch (Anne de Chantraine) which is better than the original Gatekeeper. Maybe I should copy the VHS cassettes to DVD before my old, dusty, VHS reader dies.

Max the drunken severed head said...

This was an interesting post and fun to read. Had all kinds of spooky games when I was a kid.

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