Night Trap had a mixed reception when it released alongside the Sega Mega-CD in October 15th, 1992. In terms of game play it is almost universally panned now, but when it first released it was comparatively well received. It didn't really sell well at first, due to the expensive cost of both the game and the Mega-CD.
Things changed when in December 9th, 1993, Senators Joseph Lieberman and Herbert Kohl held a hearing about the effect of video game violence on children.
(Left to right) Joseph Lieberman and Herbert Kohl
The proceedings started with Mortal Kombat. Mortal Kombat is a game that had actors that were digitized into realistic looking sprites. The game was first released on arcade machines, but was ported to the SNES and Sega Genesis. The senators at the hearing were advocating censorship of arcade games, due to the violent and gruesome fatalities (ripping out hearts and spines, for starters) in Mortal Kombat which was a problem since any child could access an arcade machine without hindrance.
The proceedings quickly shifted its attention to Night Trap. Since it used film and looked very realistic at the time, it became the target of strong criticism. One of the senators at the hearing, Byron Dorgan, called it "sick, disgusting trash," and claimed the game was "an effort to trap and kill women."
Like this one, which you actually can trap and kill if you complete a perfect run!
The criticism was off-base; the game was about saving women, there was only a little blood, and the blood that was featured was not shown in a gruesome manner (nobody was disemboweled or even cut). The violence was largely limited to shoving and pushing, and a few explosions when Weird Eddie and Danny use their laser guns to blow up some Augers. Some of the girls were dressed in night gowns and other sort-of inappropriate wear, but again nothing explicit at all.
The senators were not the only ones building up Night Trap as some sort of women-murder simulator. Nintendo of America's Howard Lincoln was pushing to make Sega look bad. He would edit the footage presented to the committee, which lead to the spread of the infamous Bathroom scene.
Tom Zito, head of Digital Pictures and creator of Night Trap claims to have attempted to defend the game, but was silenced at the hearing. Rob Fulop, a co-creator that would go on to create the Petz games, also claimed that the game was simply a victim of politics rather than any serious censorship; Lieberman and Kohl wanted to gain easy credibility and political capital, and leading the crusade on games was a safe bet since no large group of people were going to protest applying ratings to games.
A week later, on December 16th, KB Toys and Toys 'R' Us pulled Night Trap from their shelves, to maintain a family-friendly image. These bans and the hearing gave Night Trap a ton of free publicity, and many people began buying the game to see what the controversy was about. As a result, Night Trap was financially successful despite all the negative attention and criticism.
The committee decided that games must be rated, censored, and regulated. They issued an ultimatum; come up with a ratings system, or the government will make one. Fearing extensive repression, multiple game companies began scrambling to create a system. Sega had a system in place, but the criteria for ratings and the ratings themselves were considered too vague. Several companies banded together to form the Interactive Digital Software Association [IDSA] (now the Entertainment Software Association[ESA]).
Since the IDSA doesn't seem to have a logo, this one will have to suffice.
The IDSA would eventually become responsible for a lot of things. It handles the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), which is considered to be the biggest trade fair for games. It also handles copyright infringement cases involving games, and combats government censorship and regulation of gaming. Most relevantly to Night Trap, though, is that the IDSA would create the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB).
The ESRB does exactly what the name suggests; rate games. A game is sent in for certification and after having volunteers play through the game, it is given a general rating which is elaborated on by content descriptors. For example, a game might be rated 'Teen' because of mild gore, mild violence, foul language, and so on.
Some example ratings.
Retailers began building policies around the ESRB rating system. Unrated games would never be sold. Games rated 'Adults Only' would also not be sold in most stores. As a result, most game developers try to avoid the 'Adults Only' rating and in effect censored themselves in order to sell through brick-and-mortar stores.
Other countries also followed suit. Germany and Australia in particular expanded government regulation to games shortly after the United States hearings on Mortal Kombat and Night Trap. Australia in particular can ban games by simply refusing to classify them.
Night Trap is not much of a game, at least by modern standards. The level of player input is very minimal; the player switches between camera feeds in a house and activates traps to defend innocent in said house. Not particularly exciting by any stretch of the imagination. Truthfully, such was the fate of most FMV (Full Motion Video) games.
The game places you in the role of 'Control' in the Sega Control Attack Team (Special Control Attack Team on all other consoles), or SCAT. Apparently, a bunch of teenage girls went missing at the Martin house a week ago for some reason, and SCAT, some sort of SWAT team knockoff, is the team to solve this mystery!
It's a good thing I didn't take this game seriously, or my brain would be in deep trouble already.
The game starts off by the player getting a sit-rep from SCAT leader Lieutenant Simms. Belligerent and mustachioed, he told me how one of their agents hacked the camera/trap system last night and that I would be operating it to protect another wave of five teenage girls accompanied by an undercover agent, Diff'rent Strokes star Dana Plato Kelli (or Kelly, or Keli? Each release has a different name). Also, one of the girls brought her little brother Danny along.
You quickly find out that the Martins are a bunch of vampires that capture people, bottle their blood like wine, and occasionally give the bottle blood to lesser vampires, called Augers. They are called Augers because they use a device that is a combination of a catch pole, a manacle, and a drill. The manacle latches around the victim's neck, and the drill pokes through a hole in the manacle into the victim's neck. Sounds scary and dangerous right?
Of course not.
Instead of stopping this immediately with a SCAT raid, SCAT decides to continue this undercover infiltration for... some reason. Not that the Augers are all that scary; apparently, they are the loser vampires that don't have fangs or superpowers and can't suck blood on their own; hence their goofy weapon. The costumes for the Augers are bizarre, and apparently they wear these all black clothes with balaclavas to keep their skin from falling off (which can be prevented by drinking blood).
Regardless, the proprietors of the house, Sheila and Victor Martin, greet the teenage girls and Dana Plato Kelli, take some bottled blood and leave the house in order to give it to the Augers so they'll stop raiding the house (the reason why the camera and trap system is there in the first place). This leaves Sheila's and Victor's children Sarah and Jeff Martin, and cousin Tony to trap and 'bottle' the girls.
SCAT actually does send in a single guy early on for... some reason, but he gets caught by the augers and then is completely forgotten. Why he didn't shoot them with his gun, I don't know. Meanwhile, the teenage girls decide to have a party and sing the song "Night Trap," completely oblivious to the drilling and struggling noises.
Jeff walks in and tells Sarah that someone has hacked the trap system. All the other people in the house kinda just sit in the background pretending to not hear Tony and Sarah talking at a normal volume. Cousin Tony (who takes a cue from Corey Haim and wears sunglasses at night) falls for one of the girls because she looks like an old flame. Danny gets attacked by Augers and runs out the back door.
Another SCAT agent, a black man, decides to pose as a Jamaican looking for his boat, and knocks on the front door. One girls decides to change and apply makeup upstairs while the others go down to see Jamaican boatman. Tony and Jeff just brush the Jamaican aside like you would a hobo. The girls then proceed to eat cookies and ice cream while the girl beautifying upstairs is assaulted by augers, and flees out the second story window. Kelli snoops around but is caught by Tony, who warns her to mind her beeswax.
Danny returns and tries to warn two of the girls, but is interrupted by screaming outside. A neighbor named Weird Eddie startled one of the girls. He tries to warn them of the danger of the Augers and Martins, but only Danny listens. Weird Eddie gives Danny a laser gun and they decide to fight the Augers. Dana Plato Kelli confides in one of the girls that she is an undercover agent.
Tony threatens one of the girls to leave and reveals the true nature of the Martins, and Dana Plato Kelli responds by pulling out a gun. Tony then teleports next to her and disarms her. He leaves, telling them to leave again. Dana Plato Kelli tries to call for backup, but the radioman gets ambushed by Augers. Danny proceeds to go on a rampage, killing Augers until he is disarmed and flees. Two of the girls discover bodies in the kitchen and panic, running upstairs to flee from more Augers that have invaded the house.
The girls and Dana Plato Kelli regroup upstairs, but are split apart by Augers. One by one, they are all split apart and escape, except for Dana Plato Kelli. Tony appears and uses lightning powers to scare away the Augers chasing Dana Plato Kelli. He then attacks Dana Plato Kelli, but gets caught in a trap (which he could've teleported out of but didn't).
What impressive lightning powers.
Sheila and Victor return and realize the Augers tricked them into leaving so they could loot the house's blood supply, while the SCAT team FINALLY launches an assault on the house. The SCAT assault team and Dana Plato Kelli confront Sarah (who has returned from doing... something in the control room, I guess), Sheila, and Victor. After the SCAT assault team loudly introducing themselves as SCAT with the straightest face they could muster, Victor invites everyone to the living room, where it is more comfortable.
Sheila and Victor give the SCAT assault team the straight dope on the Augers, the cameras and traps, to which the fake Jamaican black guy flips out in a very funky manner. Jeff shows up in a manner similar to Sarah. After Lieutenant Simms says "You're in serious trouble," Victor retorts with the oh-so-witty "No Lieutenant, I am afraid it is YOU who don't understand!"
Victor manages to toss a SCAT agent out the window behind him with an underhanded throw, not even bothering to turn around. It's as if he knows that every SCAT agent is the biggest chump on the planet. Fake Jamaican agent unloads his shotgun into Victor, and stands there with his jaw agape as Victor just laughs it off and chews the scenery. Naturally, Augers and the Martins take everyone down except Dana Plato Kelli, although Jeff does get trapped in the process.
Dana Plato Kelli gets chased around the house by the Martins as they teleport and flash lightning (because they simply can). Dana Plato Kelli is cornered, but tricks Sheila into falling for a trap that flings her out the second floor bedroom via a catapult made out of the bed. Victor and Sarah chase Dana Plato Kelli into the bathroom but Victor makes the mistake of touching the closet, which is trapped.
A WALL TRAP! AGHHHHHH!!!
Dana Plato Kelli runs into the hall, and Sarah is trapped in a hall trap. Dana Plato Kelli then congratulates you, and stupidly gives you a chance to trap her as well (which is in my opinion the canon ending). The credits roll, and play "Night Trap" again, for our pain.
Like I said earlier, there isn't much actual gameplay to review, hence the heavy plot summary. I'm not going to analyze it much, since there isn't really much worth analyzing. This game was more an experiment in interactive television and cinema than a standard game. In the end, Night Trap turns into an exercise of memorization: You have to remember where each Auger comes and when, as well as trap them in order to perform well in the game. If you want a perfect run with all Augers caught, you will be almost constantly flipping through the camera feeds, which makes it very difficult to absorb the story in one sitting.
As you can see, the story becomes very disjointed.
Night Trap bears many peculiarities. While it's clearly intended to be a parody of 80s slasher film given the hammy acting, SCAT team name/antics, and complete goofiness of the laser guns/auger devices/traps, the game completely fails to capture the sense that you are actually controlling a security camera system; the camera follows characters, zooms, change position, and can even cut shots on the fly! Not very immersive at all, unlike say Paranormal Activity.
The plot holes are pretty noticeable too; Why don't the Martins just use their vampire powers to incapacitate everyone, or to escape traps they get caught in? Why can't the BULLETPROOF VAMPIRES just break out of the traps, especially if Victor can toss with an underhanded throw a fully armored man out the window? So much is not explained particularly well. Certain game over sequences don't make sense either. If Jeff deactivates the player's control over the camera/trap system, the player gets trapped and falls into an abyss. How? In the game over sequences at the end of the game, if the player fails to trap the Martin vampires, Dana Plato Kelli gets restrained by Augers who were previously invading the house to steal from the Martins. Why the sudden cooperation?
Night Trap was released in 1992 for the Sega CD, an expansion device for the Sega Mega Drive. However, Night Trap originally started as a different game in 1986, called Scene of the Crime. Scene of the Crime was shot using live actors, sets, and props. Since it was a trial game, it was only four minutes long.
Night Trap was originally intended for the Control-Vision console. The Control-Vision, better known by the in-house developer codename NEMO (Never Ever Mention Outside) was being developed in 1985 by Axlon, a company that was founded by Nolan Bushnell. This would be his attempt to break the Nintendo-dominated market at the time, filled with Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) consoles.
Nolan Bushnell
Nolan Bushnell is an important figure in video gaming history. He founded Atari in 1972, which would lead to the Atari 2600 console and the establishment of Chuck E. Cheese's and essentially introduced video games to the public. However, Bushnell was ejected from the company in 1978 after Time Warner bought it from him in 1977. Bushnell would later form Catalyst Technologies Capital Ventures Group, which would fund Axlon.
Axlon partnered with Hasbro to make the Control-Vision. The Control-Vision was designed to use VHS tapes instead of ROM cartridges to store games, and Scene of the Crime was developed as a tech demo to the "InstantSwitch," a technology which would allow for seamless switching between video tracks in games. Because VHS was the storage format, a much higher video and sound quality was possible than on other consoles, and even PCs of the time.
Bushnell also put a man named Tom Zito to work on the project. In 1987, they expanded Scene of the Crime and filmed the entirety of Night Trap in three weeks (which explains the out-of-place 80's aesthetics for a 90's game and the hammy B-Movie acting).
Hasbro ultimately decided to scrap development of the Control-Vision two month's before its intended release date of January 1989. The console was simply too expensive. Specifically, the RAM costs for the console would have been $100 alone, which would force the console to retail at $299. This was far too much in comparison to the NES which retailed at $100.
Tom Zito
Axlon was absorbed by Hasbro, but Tom Zito purchased the rights to Night Trap. He took the film and put it in archive, where it would sit until Zito later founded Digital Pictures, a company known largely for making FMV games. Because the CD format had enough storage space to hold video (albeit with shoddy quality due to high compression), Night Trap was ported to the Sega CD.
I wouldn't call myself particularly skilled or capable as an artist, but I do try. Here's some game related sketches I've tried my hand at recently.
Bastion
the Metal Gear Solid series
I need to find a way to break from screenshots and concept art, make something more original. At least you learn how to render different things when copying.
Back to the regularly scheduled Night Trap updates!
I have to write an analysis of a game that focuses on more than just the game itself. The possible avenues I could explore are whether the game met the needs of the demographic it was targeting, how monetization affected the development of the game, how the game created or responded to a social or legal issue, examination of constraints imposed by the owner of an intellectual property a developer was using, or something else along those lines. Something that shows 'strategic' rather than 'tactical' thinking, essentially.
I choose Night Trap.
Night Trap was a game that, along with Mortal Kombat, Lethal Enforcers, and Doom, led to the eventual creation of the ESRB. Out of all these games, why Night Trap?
Night Trap wasn't particularly gruesome or violent. It's a bit of a mystery why this game, of all games, was chosen to be regarded as "sick and disgusting."
As I do research and think about the nature of censorship and how games create outrage based on their content, I'll post my findings here.
