A short history of Atmosfear

Phillip Tanner and Brett Clements met while both were working as on-screen reporters on the popular Australian Children’s Magazine Program, Simon Townsend’s Wonder World! After filming a story with the game distributor Crown & Andrews, Brett was inspired to create his own board-game. OZ QUIZ, an Australian game packaged in a mini portable cooler, went crazy, selling over 300,000 units in Australia, with New Zealand and British versions following.

The two joined forces to film a television pilot based on OZ QUIZ that was pitched to the Australian Networks. It was during one of these meetings where they earned the ire of a programmer who referred to them as just a couple of cowboys, that their company name was established. While OZ QUIZ didn’t get up as a TV show, one government broadcaster who saw the pilot liked the idea so much they decided it was good enough to copy and produced their version in-house. The legal fees to fight it were too prohibitive for this couple of young producers.

Putting that behind them Brett and Phillip then created DARE, a board-game based on the popular parlour game of Truth and Dare. Picked up by Parker Bros, this game also became a smash hit globally and Australia’s Network TEN picked up the television rights. It didn’t get off the ground as a television show either, although the same Network did pick up a kids TV show called ‘Double Dare’ soon after.

Over the next few years A Couple ‘A Cowboys became a very successful production company filming television shows, commercials, music videos and lots of award winning tourism campaigns for Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and a number of international airlines.

In early 1991 Phillip suggested to Brett that they should consider doing a low budget horror feature film as a way to break into that market. Brett came up with something much
more interesting returning from the gym one night with a concept that combined their production skills and board-game success. The Video Boardgame NIGHTMARE™ was born. Over the next six months the game was developed; Brett wrote the scripts and the additional characters, and actor Wenanty Nosul was chosen to play The Gatekeeper. In a nearby TV studio Wenanty assumed the role and Phillip and Brett filmed his performance, set it to a video clock timer, added scary music and the game came to life. Test after test was played with Cowboys staff members and the game was refined until it was ready for presentation.

With a fully tested mock-up of the game, the duo presented to Greg Carmock, Marketing Manager at Roadshow Entertainment. Roadshow were one of the first companies in Australia involved in home entertainment via movie rentals and sales on video. Greg saw the potential and convinced his CEO, Milt Barlow, to be at the next presentation. By the time Brett and Phillip had completed the pitch to Milt, a deal was done. Not only was Roadshow going to distribute the game but also use their marketing muscle, including television, cinema advertising and ads at the start of their rental videos to promote the game.

At the time, an Australian game which sold 5000 units was considered a success. At the very first sales presentation to market a major Australian retailer committed to stocking 30,000 units for sale that Christmas. Christmas 1991 saw sales in Australia of over
70,000 units. Milt Barlow, then proceeded to travel the world and sell it into all the major territories, with the Cowboys following to ensure the quality remained consistent. Various actors were cast around the globe and flown to Australia to become Gatekeepers in their territories. The name NIGHTMARE was not available in certain countries around Europe in particular so we went with the title - The Video Boardgame ATMOSFEAR instead.

The game went global, selling over 4 million units across the brands over the years.