Atmosfear was a series of VHS-based horror board games from the early 90s, originally called Nightmare in Australia and the UK. You played around a board while a VHS tape played in the background showing the Gatekeeper, this creepy hooded figure who would yell at the players, change the rules, and force you to do things on a timer. It was absolutely terrifying as a kid and absolutely hilarious as an adult. There were multiple versions, each with a different villain, and the whole thing was wonderfully cheesy in that specific 90s horror way. Theres been a DVD reissue, a phone app version, and various reboots, but nothing matches the experience of playing it on an actual TV with the original VHS tapes in a dimly lit basement.
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes was Brad McQuaids attempt to make EverQuest 2 the way he wanted it, after he left Sony and started Sigil Games. It launched in 2007 with massive ambitions, a huge seamless world called Telon, three different gameplay spheres covering adventuring, diplomacy, and crafting, and a focus on hardcore old-school MMO design. The launch was a disaster, the game was buggy and unfinished and ran terribly even on great PCs. Sigil collapsed and Sony took over development but never really fixed it. SOE shut it down in July 2014. There have been a few emulator efforts over the years and its remembered fondly by the people who saw past the technical problems to the game underneath.
HeroQuest was Milton Bradleys 1989 collaboration with Games Workshop, and it was basically Dungeons and Dragons in a box for kids. One player was the evil wizard who controlled all the monsters and the dungeons, and the other players picked from the Barbarian, Dwarf, Elf, or Wizard and tried to complete quests through campaign-linked adventures. The plastic miniatures were great, the artwork was iconic late 80s fantasy stuff, and for a lot of people it was the gateway drug into proper tabletop RPGs. Hasbro and Avalon Hill brought it back in 2021 after a successful crowdfunding campaign, with new printings of all the classic content plus brand new expansions, so the game is back in print for the first time in decades.
