23. NOT-SO-FUN AND GAMES: Today’s terror has to include a game, could be a playground game or a board game or we’d even accept mind games if that’s your trip.
So… you want to play the game. My game, by my rules. I am… THE GATEKEEPER! I rule this game. And you, you will obey my rules. When I speak, you will stop. And you will listen!
Released in September 1991 by Australian media journalists Brett Clements and Phillip Tanner, Nightmare wasn’t just a board game. It was a VHS game.
The game drops 3 to 6 brave souls directly into The Other Side, a foggy domain divided into six distinct Provinces. Because plain old plastic top hats and silver thimbles were for basic family game nights, Nightmare made you adopt the persona of legendary monsters, moving gravestone-shaped game pieces around a sprawling graveyard circuit, such as Gevaudan the werewolf, Hellin the poltergeist (the only original creation by Clements, named after “In Hell” spelled backward), Khufu the mummy, Baron Samedi the zombie, Anne de Chantraine (a historical French witch burned at the stake) and Countess Elizabeth Báthory the vampire.
The mechanics are simple enough on the surface: roll dice, move around the graveyard, collect six key color-matched to your character and race to the center of the board. Before the game starts, every player writes down their greatest fear on a slip of paper and places it face-down in the center. To win, you must reach the center with all six keys and draw a Fear card. If you draw someone else’s fear, you conquer it and win the game! If you draw your own fear… you lose immediately.
What about that VHS tape? That’s where the Gatekeeper, as played by Wenanty Nosul, comes in. He’ll call you a maggot, banish you to a black hole and basically yell at you for an hour, making you yell, “Yes, my Gatekeeper,” like he’s a chef. Or a daddy dom. As the 60-minute digital timer clicks down, the synth soundtrack builds into a frantic tempo. The Gatekeeper’s face slowly degrades into neon-tinged, grotesque makeup, jumping onto the screen with increasing frequency to scream at everyone to hurry the hell up.
A game bound to a physical media format like VHS is inherently trapped in a time capsule. If you watch the YouTube uploads of the VHS audio today in broad daylight while scrolling on your phone, it loses its spell. That said, it definitely has a dungeon synth feel, and when I watch it without playing the game, I get super giddy and laugh along with the Gatekeeper.
Nightmare was a massive commercial hit, selling over 2 million copies by Christmas of 1993. It also spawned a run of VHS sequels hosted by different Harbingers, including Nightmare II (hosted by Baron Samedi), Nightmare III (Anne de Chantraine), and Nightmare IV (Elizabeth Báthory—famous for a controversial mechanic where Báthory could completely eliminate a player 5 minutes before the end). While a planned movie adaptation and later expansions fell through as sales cooled, the series left a permanent mark on horror culture.
Watch it on YouTube.
