From Scandal to Switch Port: The Wild Ride of Night Trap

[OpenVMS]

Hey everyone,
I’ve been diving back into Night Trap lately, and it’s wild to think how much has changed since this game first dropped.

When Night Trap came out in 1992 for the Sega CD, it caused a huge stir. The gameplay was basically you flipping between security cameras, trying to protect a group of teenagers (mostly girls at a slumber party) from weird vampire-ninja guys called Augers. Pretty tame by today’s standards, right?

Well, back then it was anything but. The game actually became one of the focal points of the 1993–94 U.S. Senate hearings on video game violence. Senators like Joe Lieberman went after it hard, saying it promoted violence and misogyny. It got pulled from stores, Sega stopped production in early ’94, and Night Trap basically became a symbol of the “games are corrupting our youth” panic.

And yet... this goofy FMV game helped lead to the creation of the ESRB, the same rating system we still use today. That’s a pretty big legacy for a game that honestly looks like an episode of a forgotten late-night soap.

What blows my mind now is that Night Trap has had a total reappraisal. You can play it today on the PS4, Switch, and PC, and nobody bats an eye. What once got Congress in a twist now sits happily next to Animal Crossing in the eShop. It’s a fascinating look at how the public perception of games (and maybe our tolerance levels?) have changed.

Anyone else remember the controversy? Or better yet—did anyone actually own it on the Sega CD back in the day?

 

[SleepyRyGuy]

I bought it for ps4 and For science, of course. Upon the games release, I remember there was a year in elementary school where this was a hot-button topic for nearly every boy my age on the playground to at least have some opinion about. There was always one kid whose parents would buy them this trash and he would talk it up real big. Women in bras being chased around by men in ski-masks. HOW SCANDALOUS. Whatever can be said about its content, it's not a good game lol. It's terrible. However the acting is actually better than it has any right to be. Was there any bewbs in this game or was it just suggestive? Does it matter? Sometimes the notoriety of a thing gives way to more relaxed appraisals of a games architecture and after all this time I can say with absolute clarity that this game is still big shite. lol

 

[Nebulon_Galaxy]

i played it on OG hardware, just typical QTE from its time. There are better games in the system that did the QTE right. Plumbers dont wear ties is better than this tbh.

 

[OpenVMS]

At the time, people were so enamored by anything that wasn't a straight up sprite in video games. It's hard to imagine now, but FMV was sold as the future of video gaming. Anyone that spent a couple of minutes playing any one of these knows how fast the novelty wears off. When you combine this with the totally crap video quality on some of the platforms (like the SegaCD) it makes the trend even more confusing.

Needless to say, the FMV trend got big and disappeared pretty quickly. Other than historical curiosity, not many of these games have a lasting fanbase.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 6:00 PM

Was there any bewbs in this game or was it just suggestive? Does it matter?

One thing that greatly added to this was this happened in a pre-internet era. The same boys that were going crazy for Night Trap were the ones trying to sneak the Sears' catalog off to their bedroom to get even a hint of nudity. It can't be overstated how much easier it is as a teenager to access pictures of totally naked or semi-clothed women now vs. then.

 

[bjork]

i played it on OG hardware, just typical QTE from its time. There are better games in the system that did the QTE right. Plumbers dont wear ties is better than this tbh.

Wirehead is a good example, even if it's impossible

Anyway, as for Night Trap, it came out when I was in high school so I knew dudes who had it, but they were all like, "it's kinda cool but it isn't great or fun" and they'd never want to play it if you came over. I didn't experience it until years later, and I don't know if "kinda cool" even fits, heh.

 

[Raggs]

Never underestimate the stupidity of the US government.

 

[Jon-Patrick-S]

Honestly I quite enjoyed the modern re-release version. The fact that you can actually see what's going on in the other cameras at all times without having to click into them makes for a much better overall experience. I also enjoy the fact that you can play back any video clip you've already seen in the gallery so you can actually enjoy all of the fun cheesy acting at your own leisure.

The other bonus material like the addition of previously deleted scenes into the game, some documentary footage from both the time of release and the modern day, and the playable build of the Control-Vision prototype Scene of the Crime that was never made available to the public before were also nice additions.

Maybe I just have a soft spot for it but I think its an interesting title for its place in gaming history and the re-release made for a great package in capturing that history. The full documentary, that's shown in part in the re-release bonus features, on the youtube channel My Life in Gaming is a good watch if you're into that kind of thing.

 

[UnDubious]

It was a manufactured scandal that politicians latched onto to boost their careers while casually admitting that they had not played it. They played the classic trick of pretending it was so reprehensible that even verifying for yourself whether it really was made you suspicious, a trick that still works today. So in that sense I don't think it's indicative of our tolerance levels increasing (which they may have), since it wasn't the actual contents of the game that created the scandal, but rather the lies they made up about it. There were TV movies at the time more violent than Night Trap, never mind actual horror movies.
IIRC the same thing happened later with Rule of Rose in the UK, but the lies were worse.

 

[_oBSOLEte_]

3DO version emulated on Opera will be better than any modern port. With fastforward and savestates. Specially on Retroarch with CRT shaders to upscale the FMV.

But why get it for free here when you could pay a stupid amount to whoever owns this dead IP nowadays? Gotta make those scammers fat.