“Darth Vader as the master of the game?” : You have surely forgotten these revolutionary games!

Game News “Darth Vader as the master of the game?” : You have surely forgotten these revolutionary games!

Fear is the path to the dark side

“Live your worst nightmare!“. It was through this interpellation printed on the back of its game box that Atmosfear (Nightmare in the United States) tried to sell its daring concept in the very early 1990s.. Three to six players were actually invited to gather around a game board with their eyes glued to the television, which was not common at the time. Via a VHS cassette inserted beforehand in a video recorder (the ancestor of the DVD/BR player if young people pass by here), a gloomy game master – The Lord of the Keys – amused himself by insulting the participants while putting obstacles in their way. The concept of the board game using a video cassette was not new, Cluedo having done so in 1985, but it was one of the first times that this technique was used to stage an antagonist pulling the strings, shortly after the unrecognized Skull & Crossbones from 1988.

The rules were quite simple. Based on the proven notions of the game of goose, Atmosfear asked players to roll a dice in order to move from space to space in order to recover six keys thanks to the board, Chance/Time/Destiny cards or sometimes thanks to the goodness of the Lord of Keys. Once a player had collected the precious keys, they had to go to the central coffin, roll a six, and read a Nightmare card. If the latter did not include the nightmare entered at the start of the game, then the mission was accomplished and the Lord of the Keys was defeated. Players only had 60 minutes (the length of the VHS) to complete their objective.

It was therefore a race against time punctuated by the untimely apostrophes of a voluble game master that Atmosfear offered. The Lord of Keys did not hesitate to insult the players of “vermin“, of “old debris” or even “woodlice”, when he did not send them directly to the common grave, namely the prison of the game. Of course, the originality of Atmosfear was counterbalanced by the extreme linearity of the parts: the scenario of the cassette remained identical over the parts. However, in an effort to provide variety and replayability, Brett Clements and Phillip Tanner’s game relied heavily on pick-up cards capable of influencing the course of progression.. Extensions featuring other diabolical game masters (as well as new cards and sometimes new rules) will be released between 1992 and 1994 with Baron Samedi the Zombie, Anne de Chantraine the Witch and Élisabeth Bathory the Vampire. Atmosfear – The Emissaries will land in 1995 and will offer to face the Lord of the Keys once again via a new video, a new board and new rules. Definitively, “the interactive video board game” – as he calls himself – was on the rise in the early 1990s.

A dice is not worth a good laser gun

While Atmosfear haunts the nights of horror fans by drawing inspiration from the classic monsters of popular culture (ghosts, witches, vampires), it is one of the most famous villains in the history of cinema who marries his turn this fusion between board game and video game. “Star Wars, the interactive game” lands on planet Earth in 1996 with a game board on board as well as a VHS featuring the ruthless Darth Vader as game master. Participants embody rebels of the D’rinba system who must unite to prevent the destruction of their planet by the Death Star, the famous space combat station equipped with prodigious firepower. The goal is to destroy the structure by placing six explosives in a precise order, with the only weapon being a dice, all in less than 55 minutes. Like Atmosfear, gamemaster Darth Vader regularly steps in to slow players down in their quest. It can stop a participant (and their R2D2), close doors, disable explosives, and even convert a player to the dark side of the Force. In the shoes of the student, his mission will then be to annoy his former classmates.

This new attempt by Parker in the interactive video board game had the good idea of ​​placing Darth Vader in real settings worthy of those of the films, unlike the black backgrounds of Atmosfear. Other characters, such as Stormtroopers, were also present during the video. Better, excerpts from episode IV punctuated the progression, while the official music of John Williams brightened up the progress. There were, however, several issues raised by fans of the saga. The first came from the character of Darth Vader, whose lines did not really fit with the idea that we had of the character. The lack of rhythm of the games despite the race against the clock was also pointed out, while the important events of the video (Darth Vader who chooses the student) were no longer very impressive once the first game was over. A year earlier, Atmosfear – The Emissaries had however succeeded rather well in integrating players who transform into opponents, by dissociating this change of role from the script of the video. As you will have understood, this Star Wars was reserved for fans of the saga who agreed to play it for only one evening before putting it away definitively in the closet.

If Atmosfear has regularly tried to rekindle the flame with DVD (2004) and mobile (2019) episodes, the basic concept has ultimately not been so popular with the franchises already in place despite attempts at DragonStrike, Star Wars, Star Trek or 24 Hours Chrono. Board games using video have been released, sometimes based on famous licenses such as X-Files, Wayne’s World or The Office, but the latter are often content to be only quizzes. Regarding Star Wars, the saga continued to exist in the sphere of the board game, and even had the right to an edition of the Trivial Pursuit… with a DVD provided inside containing extracts from the films.