“We All Have Our Own Very Special Cravings around Here.”
“If you don’t have the brains or the guts for this assignment, give the controls to
someone who does!”
North American Sega CD box art.
The relationship between the games industry and the film industry is a curious, fascinating one. Video games have always taken cues from movies, and movies have more recently begun to take an equal measure of cues from games. They’re locked in fierce competition with one another for consumer dollars, and yet they have become increasingly codependent on each other. They are as unmistakably distinct entities as they are remarkably alike. However, amidst all these confusing contradictions, there are two undeniable facts: Movies that try to be video games suck, and video games that try to be movies suck. To be clear here, I’m not talking about “video games based on movies” or the reverse, since time has proven that at least an occasional good can come of those combinations. I’m talking about movies that try to emulate the game-playing experience and games that try to emulate the movie-watching experience.
For example: Zack Snyder’s 2011 film Sucker Punch tries its damndest to evoke the same feelings from viewers as they might get from progressing through a game, presenting each mind-numbing action scene as if they are progressively more difficult levels. The action itself is heavily game-inspired as well, with the impossibly coordinated protagonists pulling off sequences of choreographed fight movies and attacking what can only be described as their enemies “weak points.” For contrast, 2014’s The Order: 1886 serves as an example from the video game side. The developers (‘Ready at Dawn’) seemed to focus the majority of their efforts on “filmic presentation,” going so far as to force a 2.40:1 aspect ratio with the addition of non-optional letterboxing. Hell, there were even talks pre-release of the game being locked to a “cinematic” 24 frames per second, which they eventually realized was a very bad idea and raised to a more sensible 30. But the biggest problem with the game isn’t the result of any misguided technical aspect, but more to do with what feels like a lack of interactivity. The action feels passive, with far too many instances where your control is restricted to walking as you listen to characters rattle off dialogue; constantly giving and taking back control from you, until you’re left feeling like you never really had it to begin with. A quote from game director Dana Jan shines a light on this design approach:
“Gameplay is something that… it’s a game, we make games, we can’t get around it. We love games, but we also love telling stories, so I think story is always going to be at the top because it’s what we start with. It’s at the top of the pyramid and everything else supports that. I think it’d be more challenging to make a game for the gameplay’s sake, then try to make a story that fits in there.” – Dana Jan
This approach seemed to translate to a game devoid of engaging gameplay or replay value, leaving mixed reviews and disappointed consumers to show for it. On the one hand, developers are entitled to approach game design however they choose to, and should be free to experiment with the medium as they please. On the other hand, isn’t the unique aspect of games as a medium that the audience is supposed to feel like they’re in control of something? By taking away or limiting that functionality, you’re putting players in a passive role, effectively daring them to compare your game to the movie-viewing experience you’re trying to evoke. As it turns out, the game often loses the battle in this matchup. But we shouldn’t need to keep running this experiment just to see the same result repeated and over again: The industry ran enough tests in the early-to-mid 90’s to last us a lifetime. The rise and fall of the FMV-powered “interactive movie” genre tells us all we need to know, and the lessons the industry can learn from it are the sort that remain relevant even as the medium continues to evolve.
If there’s one game that can be seen as emblematic of this era, it would have to be Digital Pictures 1992 release of Night Trap. For a game with so little to it in terms of – y’know – gameplay, there’s certainly a lot to discuss about it. In this article, we’ll try to touch on every aspect of it; including its production, reception, impact on the industry, and that one time an American Senator referred to it as “the nightmare before Christmas.” As if that weren’t enough, we get to talk about not one, but two instances where Nintendo made decidedly underhanded business moves. This article has it all!
“Older Than You Might Think.”
Our story follows Tom Zito: An NYU film graduate who had shared classes with Brian De Palma and studied under Martin Scorsese. After completing his studies, he took a job as a music critic for the Washington Post, becoming a ‘General Assignments’ editor before moving into freelance for Rolling Stone and The New Yorker. It was in this line of work that Zito met Nolan Bushnell, the former founder of Atari, who would become a fast friend and business partner. At some point in 1985, Zito accepted a job as Vice President of Marketing for Axlon – one of several companies owned by Bushnell’s Catalyst Technologies venture capital group – and before long he was helping develop a teddy bear that could parrot what children said to it.
As you can tell, Zito had dabbled in all sorts of different potential career paths up to this point, and seemed to be something of a jack of all trades. This whole time though, Zito had been brainstorming this idea he had for “interactive television,” which he clearly saw as something like his dream project. From his perspective, giving players a sense of control over real actors would be the height of realism in gaming, and the combination of games with film and television would create the most immersive media experience. Not only did he believe this concept was possible, but he believed it was possible at that moment in time. All he needed was a team to handle the technical end.
After pitching the idea to Bushnell, the former Atari founder used his connections to help hook Zito up with some of the best and brightest minds in the American games industry; including Rob “Demon Attack” Fulop, David “Pitfall!” Crane, and Steve “Spacewar” Russell. They also picked up one Kenneth Melville along the way, who had worked on an arcade game by the name of Freedom Fighter: A LaserDisc affair similar to the likes of Dragon’s Lair, adapted from the anime Galaxy Express 999. This was a veritable supergroup of game developers being formed here – some of the most brilliant and forward-thinking programmers around – all to help Zito make his dream a reality. Naturally, their first step was to analyze the hardware of a failed console on the verge of death — 1982’s ColecoVision!
There’s actually a decent reason for this. One of the functions of the ColecoVision hardware was that it was capable of displaying its graphics on top of transparent backgrounds. What this effectively meant was that if there were a way to feed full motion video into the display, it could play in the background while the console generated graphics overlaid on top of it. Zito’s pitch was for the console to act like a cable box of sorts, allowing games and other interactive content to be streamed to the console via cable signal. The team got as far as developing a proof of concept prototype, but faced a similar funds issue when it came to producing some pieces of software to showcase their idea. Zito guesstimated it would take somewhere around seven million dollars to produce a new console design (divorced from the Coleco hardware), as well as to produce a few pieces of software for it to demonstrate its potential. Bushnell, however, decided he would not be the one to fund the project: By 1986, Catalyst Technologies and all its subsidiaries were winding down, and Bushnell simply didn’t have the money to invest in what was now being referred to as “NEMO” — short for “NEver Mention Outside.” Axlon was left to peddle their project to other potential investors, and soon found one in Hasbro. The deal they made gave Hasbro ownership over the video game rights to the technology, which they believed would be the primary purpose and selling point of the console (or at the very least, the most profitable). Eventually, Zito and his team would leave Axlon and Bushnell behind, forming a new company named Isix working under Hasbro.
It was at this point that development of potential software for the console could begin in earnest. This, of course, meant filming a whole bunch of video footage for use in games; an area where Zito could finally demonstrate his film school chops. The inspiration for their first piece of software came after Rob Fulop and director Jim Riley’s viewing of Tamara — an “interactive play” which saw audience members having to pick which characters they wanted to follow during the course of the story, following them from room to room, and thereby keeping them from viewing the actions of other characters who might be performing for other audience members in one of five other rooms at that same time. The translation of this concept to a game format would serve as the basis for several Digital Pictures releases in the future, but it would first produce Scene of the Crime as an initial proof-of-concept. Though no footage of this game seems to exist in publicly accessible form, as the game itself was seemingly never intended for retail release, footage of a boardroom of Hasbro executives reacting to the game can be found as an easter egg on the Sega CD version of Night Trap. The success of the demonstration resulted in the approval by Hasbro to continue work on the project, resulting in more proof-of-concept softwares going into production. Noteworthy examples included a baseball game by the name Bottom of the Ninth Inning and an interactive music video for the Cars song “You Might Think I’m Crazy” — the latter of which would eventually morph into what we’d later know as the Make My Video series on the Sega CD. Worryingly though, and perhaps demonstrating a limitation of the hardware, none of these early demonstrations ran longer than ten minutes.
At this stage of production of the NEMO hardware (as best as I can gather), footage was stored and loaded from some form of cassette format and loaded into the system’s memory, where it was muxed together with whatever UI elements were output by the console hardware itself before spitting the image onto a television display. Of course, that theory is based on speculation and guessed system specifications, as the NEMO hardware was never fully completed. Most folk in hindsight seem to agree that whatever method the NEMO used to function was inferior to the already proven LaserDisc format as seen in arcade games such as the aforementioned Dragon’s Lair or Freedom Fighters. Admittedly not fully understanding or having any added insight to the technical situation myself, I can only guess as to why the team was so committed to it. Perhaps Zito’s long-term plan for cable-streamed content wouldn’t have worked if the games had to rely on one-time writeable discs rather than rewriteable cassettes? There’s no saying for certain, unfortunately, since it’s around here that development of the NEMO hardware seemingly reached an impasse: The amount of video RAM necessary to store any longer than several minutes worth of video in the system memory was huge. And to make matters worse, the cost for VRAM chips would soon skyrocket from $30 a chip to $80, thanks to the beginnings of the personal computer boom. Hasbro’s vision for a console under the $100 mark – part of their plan to compete with Nintendo’s Entertainment System – was quickly fading.
While the hardware team struggled with technical issues, Zito saw himself caught up in business hassle of sorts. In his mission to demonstrate the multimedia potential of the console, he wanted to produce a long-form interactive movie experience (even if that meant filming more footage than the console could feasibly process at the time). To this end, he wanted to secure the rights to an actual movie license, which would certainly lend a bit of credibility to the project as well as giving it a bit of a name-recognition rub. The franchise he had in mind was A Nightmare on Elm Street, the first entry of which had been a surprise hit in theaters some three years earlier. However, the deal fell through, and Isix eventually found themselves going down the route of creating a new IP. Terry McDonell, then-editor of Esquire magazine, was called on to write the screenplay for the project. Sticking with a horror theme, the plot would revolve around a slumber party gone awry, as bloodthirsty monsters attack a group of vulnerable young girls who the player must attempt to defend using traps hidden around the location. Diff’rent Strokes actress Dana Plato, looking to establish herself as a performer outside of the sitcom world, took the lead role in the production. The game that eventually came of it would boast of containing “OVER 1½ HOURS OF REAL VIDEO,” despite a full playthrough only actually running around 30 minutes — with the other hour of footage running off-screen of wherever the player’s view would be pointed at a point in time.
Also going into production at this point in time was Sewer Shark, which would serve to demonstrate the “range” of FMV-style games. A first-person rail shooter set in a seemingly endless series of repeating sewer tubes, you take the role of gunner on a ship made to traverse the tunnels, shooting a small variety of mutant animals who appear as sprites on a different layer from the constantly-moving FMV backgrounds. Your pilot Ghost and your commissioner Stechler constantly berate you in close-up cutaways from the gameplay, as well as a couple of other characters who will interrupt the flow of gameplay to comment on various matters. It’s all pretty primitive by today’s standards, obviously, and one might contend it lacked variety even compared to then-fledgling 8-bit rail shooters (Operation Wolf, Freedom Force, etc.). But graphically, it was impressive enough to make corporate-types in the industry salivate. The supposed strengths of Sewer Shark would go a long way in securing Zito and Digital Picture’s futures, proving visually impressive even several years after project NEMO fell apart.
At some point in the development of NEMO (early 1988 most likely), the name of the hardware had been changed to ‘Control-Vision’ in preparation for marketing and retail release. Unfortunately, it never did see that release, as the endeavor was canceled prior to January 1989. Realistically, Control-Vision with its predicted $300 price tag would have never stood a chance in the games market against the $100 NES, even given the different and impressive nature of Hasbro’s product. And to be clear here, it was the games market specifically that Hasbro had been interested in getting into, not placing any major value on Zito’s grander plans for streaming interactive television content through the console. David Crane would later recount Hasbro’s mindset at the time, shedding light on their vision for the Control-Vision:
“The bigwigs at Hasbro made no secret that they envied the money the game business was making. After the crash when other traditional toy companies were hurting, they patted themselves on the back for staying out. But behind closed doors they admitted the truth. One told me that they wanted to get into video games so bad they could taste it.” – David Crane
An earlier demonstration for the NEMO I neglected to mention earlier went by the name Armchair Quarterback, and challenged players to predict upcoming plays in televised footage of American football matches. Isix had reached out to CBS baseball producer Ric LaCivita to pitch the possibility of cooperating with the production teams behind sports broadcasting, which would see them doing additional work on their end during broadcasting of matches in order to make a potential game work. Mr. LaCivita would respond telling them that their idea was “not doable.” Zito’s idea for combining the console with live cable content was way ahead of its time. In fact, it was too far ahead to be feasible — not to mention the fact that Hasbro’s interest was in selling games software rather than novelty television. Between Zito’s experiments and the fact that the price tag on the console would no longer be competitive, it’s easy to understand Hasbro’s frustrations eventually leading to the cancellation of the project. With Hasbro twenty-million dollars poorer for their investments and Isix now folded, various assets and leftover equipment from the project went to auction. Zito, still seeing a value in the footage that had been shot for Sewer Shark and the interactive horror movie, purchased the rights to both for himself and grabbed the raw footage and software components that comprised the work that had already been done. It wasn’t long before you-know-who came knocking on his proverbial door, interested in developing full-motion video games for their upcoming CD-ROM peripheral. Yes, that’s right: Sony, in cooperation with Nintendo.
The development of the SNES-CD (later to become the ‘Nintendo Play Station’) is a fascinating chapter in gaming history, and one which has been getting more of its rightfully-deserved attention in recent years thanks to the discovery of a working prototype console. There’s a honestly a surprising amount of documentation on its history — more than I kind of expect there to be for a project that never truly got off the ground. With Sony’s work on a CD add-on for the SNES beginning as early as 1988 (back when Hasbro still had hope for Control-Vision), 1990 would be the year that they actually began trying to secure content for the system. Sony reached out to the aforementioned Ken Melville, who had landed a job at Cinemaware (responsible for such “hits” as the abysmal The Three Stooges game in 1987, as well as such actual hits as the excellent Wings in 1990). In an amusing mishap, Sony sought to buy the company as a means of getting their hands on Sewer Shark, Make My Video, and a Mad Max game that unfortunately never came to be. The problem was, Cinemaware didn’t actually own the rights / footage to any of those games: Sony was looking for Isix, either unsure or mistaken as to who held the rights to those titles after the company’s folding. Melville informed Zito of Sony’s interest, who brought what existed of those games [as well as that slumber party horror game] with him on a plane to New York to make a deal. Digital Pictures was born shortly thereafter, bringing Zito and Melville together again. With a cash advance from Sony helping to get the company started, work began on repurposing their Control-Vision games for new hardware.
And then came the Consumer Electronics Show in June of 1991. During the event, Sony formally announced their Play Station; featuring both CD-ROM functionality as well as SNES cartridge compatibility as part of their collaboration with Nintendo. Behind the scenes, there had been some disputes between Sony and Nintendo as to how the profits and licensing would be divided between the two companies, but Sony believed their working relationship was still strong despite this. The next day, Nintendo performed the ultimate double-cross, making their own announcement that they were instead working with the American company Philips (long-time rivals of Sony, adding insult to injury) in order to bring their SNES-CD to market. This was surprising and shocking for a multitude of reasons, one of the most pressing of which being that Nintendo making this deal was in direct violation of their contract with Sony. Of course, this wasn’t the first time that Nintendo had completely screwed a partner out of a business deal, as evidenced by their surprise breach of contract with secret Donkey Kong developers / manufacturers ‘Ikegami Tsushinki’ a decade earlier (if you’re curious what that’s all about, it’s covered here in our article on 1979’s Radar Scope). Make no mistake, folks: Back in the 80’s and 90’s, Nintendo were the dirtiest players in the games-making game, and they’ll prove that fact again later in this article.
Where did that leave Digital Pictures? Not as bad off as you might expect, actually. Quickly realizing that Sony’s standalone console wouldn’t see the light of day for at least a few years longer, yet still wanting to get in on the ground floor of this CD gaming trend (as well as wanting to make the most of the startup money they had been given by Sony), they shopped their games to another manufacturer getting into the CD games market. And so, Digital Pictures set about re-repurposing their games for yet another console: The Sega CD. With the December 1991 launch of the locally-titled Mega-CD in Japan, there was an additional ten month waiting period until the North American console launch in October of 1992 (Europe would have to wait yet for nearly another year to see the add-on released). This gave Digital Pictures the time they needed to have their games ready for release within a month of the console’s American launch window. This time, they would finally make it to retail, nearly five years after initial filming on them had wrapped. Sewer Shark would eventually become the system’s pack-in game in the States, as Sega of America felt it exemplified the strengths of the hardware and would be their killer app. Hey, speaking of “killer” apps, Digital Pictures also got that slumber party horror game up and running!
A transcript of the brief text scroll that is overlaid on top of the footage gives historical context to the footage: “ANNALS OF DIGITAL PICTURES. Pawtucket, RI… December, 1986… First demonstration of prototype NEMO system to gathered Hasbro executives…”
In the interview with David Crane that is transcribed by IGN, he mentions that Hasbro had called prospective retailers to inform them at some point that the price point on the consoles would be changing from an original projection of $105 to an increased $155. $145 in mark-up would’ve been the standard for the time reportedly, bringing the console to the $300 price tag and thereby making it the most expensive video game console on the market at that time. Retailers refused to make the deal, and Hasbro refused to sell the consoles at any more of a loss.
“Let Us Know When You Want to Die, Eddie.”
Night Trap is a game set in a sorority house, where the objective is to keep hooded men from hanging young women from hooks or drilling their necks to drain their blood. Night Trap uses actual actors and achieves an unprecedented level of realism. It is truly the nightmare before Christmas, and I believe it should be taken compl– wait, hold on, whoops. Sorry folks; I accidentally mixed up my notes here with Senator Joseph Lieberman’s talking points! Don’t worry, we’ll be getting back to him later.
So then, what exactly is Night Trap actually about? Vampires. Well, kind of sort of, anyhow. As a member of the unfortunately-abbreviated “Special Control Attack Team,” your mission is to observe and protect a group of young girls (and one of their younger brothers) attending a slumber party at their new friend’s house. A previous group of girls to attend a party at the house have gone missing, leading your team to believe there may be something sinister about the Martin family who owns the property. In order to ensure this new group of innocents remain safe, your team has already infiltrated the house in order to hack into the Martin’s elaborate security camera system, complete with control over traps hidden around the house that seem to instantly evaporate (?) anyone who lets themselves be caught by them. It is from these security camera feeds that the game presents its footage, with eight screens players are expected to keep tabs on. At different points in time, characters will move from room to room, with players having to decide who they’d like to follow and seeing how the story develops from their points of view.
Of course, it’s not as simple as just deciding who you want to follow, as you must also keep an eye out for the nefarious ‘Augers’: Vampiric minions who shamble around more like zombies, and who have to wear ridiculous ninja-esque get-ups in order to hide the lack of special effects budget their deformed appearances. It is them who you’ll most frequently use the traps on, and failing to do so can result in a game over for several different reasons. If you let too many get past the traps, your commander will take over your camera and pull the plug on you. At certain points in the game, the augers will directly attack the kids you’re charged with protecting, and you’ll have to hope you’re noticing when they do in order to trigger the traps at the right moments. If any of the kids are killed, it’s an instant game over. It should also be mentioned that one of these kids isn’t a kid at all, but actually a SCAT undercover agent by the name of Kelli (as portrayed by Dana Plato), who frequently turns to the cameras in the house and talks directly to you — sometimes in dangerously close vicinity to the other characters. Speaking of which, there are a lot of other characters to keep track of here – fifteen speaking roles in total – though most of them are pretty much one-note given how little screentime there is to go around.
The sequence of events in the game can be summated as such: After a briefing from SCAT Commander Simms, the kids (Lisa, Ashley, Cindy, Megan, Danny) along with Kelli arrive at the house by van to be greeted by the members of the Martin family (consisting of mother and father Sheila and Victor, with daughter Sarah, son Jeff, and nephew Tony). After an incredibly awkward meeting outside the house, the group heads inside, but not before the girls notice neighbor “Weird Eddie” watching them from afar. As the elder Martins announce they’re leaving for the evening, the girls excitedly make plans for the rest of their night, beginning with dancing and lip-syncing to the tune “Night Trap” as it plays on the radio. Danny leaves to investigate some of the other rooms in the house, discovering the augers and the body of a SCAT commando whose blood they’ve begun to drain. As the song concludes, Tony walks into the room and seems to be very surprised to see Ashley, who it is revealed looks almost exactly like a lover of his from years ago. After an incredibly suspicious visit from a disguised SCAT agent Collins, the girls split up and move to several different rooms. In perhaps the game’s most iconic scene, the first girl to be attacked is a nightgown-clad Lisa, who is assaulted by augers in the bathroom. Saving her, she escapes through a window, presumably to safety? She’s never to be seen again. Simultaneously, Kelli is caught snooping for evidence by Tony, as all the other characters in the house convene again in the living room. Splitting up shortly thereafter, the young Martins move to discuss the situation, Ashley and Kelli head outside, and Danny returns to try and inform Cindy and Megan of the danger they’re in. Outside, Ashley is surprised by Eddie, who also tries to warn the group about the augers, though only Danny stays with him in order to hear him out.
From here, it becomes much more difficult to keep track of the action. Kelli takes Ashley with her up to the bedroom to confess that she’s an agent, but is soon interrupted by Tony who warns the pair that they need to leave [while also demonstrating his vampiric power]. Danny, with a laser gun given to him by Eddie, re-enters the house and begins to kill the augers as he finds Cindy and Megan again. Still unconvinced by Danny, it takes Megan biting into a blood popsicle and Cindy discovering the SCAT commando body to realize the danger they’re in, heading back upstairs to regroup with Kelli and Ashley. Also occurring within the same minute in time, Danny meets with Eddie again, now wearing an auger disguise as he infiltrates the basement, never to be seen again. After killing another auger, Danny is disarmed by a group of more, before being chased out of the house… also never to be seen again. The group of girls is attacked by yet another group of augers, and players successively move to save Ashley, Cindy, and finally Megan. As you may have guessed, they each disappear almost immediately after being rescued. As the elder Martins return home, SCAT launches a full five-man assault on the home, while at the same time you must save Kelli by trapping Tony. The remaining Martins and SCAT meet face to face, moving to the living room where each side lays their proverbial cards on the table. SCAT reveals their surveillance of the house, and the Martins reveal their vampiric tendencies and the nature of the augers. All hell breaks loose as SCAT moves to apprehend the Martins, who quickly tear through much of the team (you can save a female commando by trapping Jeff) as Kelli flees upstairs. With Sheila, Victor and Sarah giving chase through several rooms, you’re meant to trap each of them one at a time, with your success or failure determining the ending.
The way the attack scenes are laid out, it really shouldn’t matter if the girls live or die, since their survivals don’t really impact the rest of the story. I suspect that this might’ve been the idea at some point during production, where your score / ending would be impacted depending on how many of the girls you manage to save. As it stands in the final product, the ending is determined by two factors: Which of the four Martins you’re able to capture in the final two minutes of gameplay, and whether or not you managed to trap all 95 augers without accidentally trapping any of the expendable “good” characters. Failing to capture either Victor, Sheila, or Sarah will result in one of them killing Kelli in the final moment of the game, while trapping all three but otherwise failing to get a “perfect score” will result in Kelli scolding you and telling you that you can do better. If you’re able to capture everyone you’re meant to [and no one you’re not], Kelli will praise and congratulate you for your hard work, before turning to walk away from the camera and past a trap in the hallway. As she passes through it, she stops and turns to say “Nah, you wouldn’t!” It’s here where you can perform a hilariously senseless double-cross, by activating the trap and sending Kelli to her death! Considering how many times you’d have to replay the game in order to learn how to get a perfect score – how many hours you’d have to spend watching Dana Plato utterly failing as an undercover agent – this “secret” ending may have come as a much-welcome bonus to many.
And so, here’s where I talk about how the entirety of the gameplay of Night Trap consists of switching between the eight available cameras; which without a thumbnail view or indicator to inform you that something is happening, requires constant camera switching in order to see for yourself what (if anything) is going on. This is as tedious as it sounds. In fact, it might be one of the most tedious, frustrating gameplay mechanics in all of video games. In order to keep up with the constantly invading augers and attacks on characters, you literally cannot focus on any one camera for more than a second or two, since there is a very good chance that at least one of the other seven might currently have an auger for you to capture. Sometimes, two or three rooms might be occupied by augers at the same time, requiring you to switch cameras immediately after triggering a trap in one room in order to trigger a trap in another! The micromanagement and memorization involved to pull off a perfect game is nothing short of ridiculous, especially given the split-second windows you’re given to successfully activate the traps (as indicated by a meter in the HUD which turns red when a trap can be triggered). This isn’t even taking into consideration the instances where you can accidentally trap non-hostiles, or the fact that you must also keep up with changes made to the security system’s access code.
Oh, I haven’t mentioned the access code system yet? In four scenes that occur as you follow members of the Martin family, they’ll discuss changing the security system’s access code to one of six different colors. The game begins with the code set to ‘Blue,’ but which colors it changes to over the course of a playthrough are randomized. That means knowing when you’ll need to switch to these scenes in order to hear which color it’s being changed to, promptly switching it, and in several cases immediately switching to another room within a second’s time to capture an auger using the new access code. If you’re not privy to this mechanic in your first playthrough, or if you miss a scene where the access code changes, you’ll find yourself trying to trigger traps to no avail and wondering what you’ve done wrong. So, unless you have a hyperthymesia-like level of recall akin to John Romero, achieving a perfect score in the game will require you to keep meticulous, time-coded notes on when every important instance in the game occurs: Every auger that needs to be captured, every code change, and which rooms they occur in. That, or consulting a walkthrough online that goes through the trouble of doing that for you. Back in 1992, this wasn’t so much of an option, unless there was some Usenet group that existed for hot Night Trap tips and tricks that I’m not privy to.
The problem with translating the “every room has a story” concept of Tamara to a video game is that requiring players to switch rooms – on a near-constant basis, at that – ruins the sense of immersion and choice that is the concept’s very appeal. The concept doesn’t work when you attach a “win / lose” state to it, let alone one which requires deliberately ignoring the story being told. The only way I can see about translating this concept to game (in a way that’s entertaining and plays on the narrative structure) is by setting it within the “choose your own adventure” genre. Y’know, something that requires players to make story-altering decisions based on the knowledge they’ve taken away from the scenes they chose to view up to that point. This would also be a proper way to instill the game with a sense of replay value, as it motivates players to paint a fuller picture for themselves by viewing the scenes they may have missed in previous playthroughs and by choosing different paths for themselves accordingly. Night Trap only has one story to tell, and it tells it in such a fragmented way that replays become more an exercise in frustration than of discovery. There’s no other way to describe it, other than that it consciously punishes players for daring to pay attention to the plot unfolding. To demonstrate just exactly how cruel the game is: If you decide to sit through the two minute introduction at the beginning of the game, you’ll already miss ten augers by the time it’s over. The HUD doesn’t appear over this introduction, giving the easily mistakable impression that the game hasn’t truly begun yet!
Seeing as that’s basically all there is to be said about the gameplay, the only other matter left to address is the presentation. Zito had his qualms about the Sega CD hardware’s ability to render video, as he would admit to historian Steven Kent in an interview years later: “The incredible irony of it was that the video we plugged into the Super Nintendo was just terrific because Super NES could display 256 colors at once. Sega CD could only put up 32 colors at a time, so you had this horrible grainy look to the images.” Sure enough, the quality of video in this original version of the game is quite horrid, lacking color depth and compressed resolution-wise to fill roughly one-third of the screen. All that being said, there was nothing that even close to it on home consoles at the time, save for other Digital Pictures releases. Yes, the arcades might still have provided several Laserdisc games, but this was still the era where consumers were trained to believe that arcade game hardware far exceeded the power of the consoles. Night Trap might not have been on the same level of visual fidelity as Melville’s previous arcade credit Freedom Fighters, but it was a major first step for home consoles. The illusion of eight different scenes running at the same time as one another served as another bragging point, and actually did add a layer of complexity that arcade Laserdisc releases would not match in their short lifetime.
So, just how seriously is Night Trap meant to be taken? As a “horror movie,” not very: It’s late 80’s cheese that found itself delayed into the early 90’s. The augers are far more goofy than terrifying, and the vampires ham it up so much it’d make Bela Lugosi blush. If you could watch the video play out in “movie form” without the interruptions of the auger trappings, it’d be a fun little story to watch unfold. In fact, there are several YouTube videos that edit together the footage in just such a format, as well as a video which shows all the cameras in the game running simultaneously in order to show the overlapping of different room events. Honestly, these videos are a way better way to digest the content of the game than actually playing it for yourself, which I imagine most will find to be a complete and total chore. Having to play through it again for this article – using the DOS version, for convenience’s sake – I’m reminded just how much more frustrating it would’ve been in an era before online guides or on a console without a save / load feature (such as the Sega CD version).
Of course, there were those at the time who might have happily been taken by the novelty factor and willing to overlook the thin gameplay. Reading comments on articles about the game and sifting through replies to YouTube videos, there are obviously those who look back at it with a sense of nostalgia; fondly remembering the story beats, and probably not so much the tedium of the auger trappings. In a way, Night Trap demonstrates that gameplay isn’t everything when it comes to how people can enjoy video games, and that some folk find a compelling story enough to justify their time spent playing. But at the same time – even considered within the context of its original 1992 release – it also demonstrated several of the limitations of FMV-driven games. Limitations that would soon come to define and doom the genre.
In the Sega CD and CD 32X releases of the game, a new introduction scene shot in 1992 [with William James Jones reprising his role as Commander Simms] changes this abbreviation to “Sega Control Attack Team”, as a means of making the game feel more exclusive. An insert shot in the redone scene even goes so far as to show close-ups on a Sega Genesis controller, used to illustrate how the game is controlled. For the 3DO, DOS and Mac ports, the original 1987 introduction is used with “Sega” changed back to “Special,” and sans Genesis controller.
Actually, there are two girls whose capture doesn’t result in an immediate game over: If Cindy is captured by Jeff or if Kelli is captured by Tony, the game will continue on its merry way for a few minutes longer, as if it’s on some sort of an alternate path. Eventually though, control of your camera is taken away, and you’re forced to watch as Jeff takes back control of the security system. You’re treated to a scene of him happily taunting you as he declares victory, before somehow turning the traps against you to kill your unseen character!
“Come on Studly, We Better Change That Code.”
As mentioned earlier, Sewer Shark was intended to be the flagship game for the Sega CD in North America. It was the game that both Sony and Sega had so aggressively sought to acquire, much of the console’s marketing centered around it, it eventually became the console’s pack-in title… It would seem Night Trap was always an afterthought — a bonus Zito would add to the package when he sold and re-sold Sewer Shark. But Night Trap seems like the game Zito was more fond of: It better reflected his film school sensibilities than looping tunnel crawls, and demonstrated his desire to produce media more along the lines of film and television. With his dream for interactive television dead (or at the very least “on hold” in his mind), the Night Trap format was the closest he could get to making the sort of movie experiences he wanted to make. 1993’s Double Switch would serve as a retread of the “trap-‘em-up,” Tamara-inspired gameplay demonstrated in Night Trap, though to even lesser critical or financial success. And it should be mentioned that Night Trap – at least initially – was not a success by any stretch. It had cost 1.5 million dollars to port Night Trap to the Sega CD (versus 3 million for Sewer Shark), which was relatively little cost considering that most of the footage had already been shot close to five years ago and paid for out of Hasbro’s pockets. Unfortunately, it failed at first to sell through its initial production run, likely failing to make back what it had cost for the port work alone.
That being said, it’s not as if the console itself was setting the world on fire, either: In Japan, the Mega-CD only managed to sell through 100 thousand units in its first year, due in part to a smaller install base existing for Mega Drives versus the Super Famicom in that region, and also to its only having two available launch titles. North America ended 1992 with 200 thousand units sold, with Europe managing to move 60 thousand units by August 1993. Sega would only manage to sell an estimated 2.24 million units by the end of its retail life in 1996; less than ten percent of the number of Mega Drive / Genesis consoles sold. There’s a number of different factors and reasons for the add-ons overall failure, but it should be noted it had less to do with the perceived quality of software available for it than many narratives suggest. It had far more to do with the nature of the hardware itself: Its high price point, lack of standalone functionality, difficulty to develop for and consequent lack of early available software. Ironically, it would’ve sold even worse had it not been for Nintendo’s failed attempt to sabotage Sega’s North American sales, which would inadvertently lead to increased demand for the products they tried to kill! And what exactly was their plan to attack Sega? To manufacture moral outrage with the help of the United States Senate.
The story of the Senate committee hearing as it is commonly accepted begins with Bill Andresen, a former chief of staff to Senator Joseph Lieberman. After his son supposedly asked him for a copy of Mortal Kombat for Christmas (presumably the Genesis version), he decided to look into what exactly the game was first, and was appalled by what he saw. Bringing the game to the Senator’s attention, Lieberman came to a conclusion that violent video games could be in part responsible for corrupting the youth of America and instilling violent tendencies in them. This would soon lead to a televised press conference where Lieberman (with none other than Bob “Captain Kangaroo” Keeshan and members of the National PTA at his side) would call out the games industry for its promoting of violence and sexual content to children. This press conference would set the stage for a subcommittee dedicated to the subject of regulating the games industry, with the two games most focused on being the incredibly recognizable and successful Mortal Kombat and… the not quite so recognizable or successful Night Trap?
In a quote which I cannot find any sort of attribution or source for, when asked about how he discovered Night Trap, Lieberman simply responded “I forgot how I heard about Night Trap.” Whether there’s any veracity to that quote is up in the air, but the question still remains: How did Lieberman hear about Night Trap? By all accounts it was a dud in terms of sales, and promotion for it by Sega was minimal at best. It would’ve taken someone with industry knowledge to think to suggest Night Trap as a potential target — someone tuned into Sega’s business, familiar with both their successful titles as well as their more obscure ones. It’s certain that Bill Andresen wouldn’t have known about the game, let alone to suggest a scene from it that Lieberman and the committee could focus their ire on. So, who did? Tom Zito had his theory:
“I think that all of this stuff that happened with the Senate was really orchestrated by Nintendo. […] I think Nintendo had taken such a trouncing that they sort of decided to go for broke and attack Sega. And they made these tapes that showed Night Trap and Mortal Kombat on Genesis versus Nintendo. They hired a lobbying firm, and the lobbying firm basically started going around banging on doors to see if they could find a congressman who would be interested in taking this up as a cause. And I think that Nintendo was hoping that the public would be so outraged at what Sega was doing versus what Nintendo was doing that there would be pickets in front of every Toys ‘R’ Us store saying, ‘Don’t buy Sega products.’” – Tom Zito
Let the records show that the Sega Genesis definitively won the “console war” against the Super Nintendo in North America, ending with 25 million Genesis hardware sales versus 23.35 million SNES sales. While Nintendo’s products were far and away outselling Sega’s in Japan – giving them the lead in overall worldwide sales – they seemed frustrated by the mere thought of being beaten in any market. Flaring their tempers further, the success of the far superior Genesis version of Mortal Kombat threatened to further lessen their North American reputation. It’s entirely feasible that, rather than simply take their lumps or make moves to reinvent themselves, Nintendo would attempt to demonize their competition instead. If Sega was positioning themselves as cool and cutting-edge, Nintendo figured they should double down on good ol’ wholesome American family values.
Beginning with a hearing on December 9th of 1993, Senators Joseph Lieberman and Herbert Kohl would begin to lead the call for regulation of the video game industry. “It has been quite a leap from Pac-Man to Night Trap” bemoaned one Senator Byron Dorgan, preparing those in attendance for VHS footage they were about to view of the soon-to-become infamous “bathroom scene.” Expressing his outrage further, “It is a sick, disgusting video game in my judgement. It’s an effort to trap and kill women.” The message as he had been instructed to convey it was that the goal of Night Trap was not to protect the young girls in the game, but rather to see to it that they are killed, much like performing the fatalities in the also-included footage of Mortal Kombat. Interestingly, with every mention of Mortal Kombat’s excessive gore came disclaimers from Lieberman, who made sure to point out that the Nintendo version of the game omitted the violent fatalities and blood. If the rumors of Nintendo themselves having edited and submitted the VHS footage to the Senator were true, these repeated disclaimers can be seen as something like preferential treatment: A tip of the hat to the company who handed the government officials their talking points. In fairness, there was already some amount of pre-existing moral panic prior to the hearings: A panel consisting of representatives from academia, education and concerned citizens included one Eugene Provenzo, who made use of his speaking time to contend that “Video games are overwhelming violent, sexist, and racist. Some of my more recent research, which I’d like to share with you today, suggests that video games are evolving into a new type of interactive medium: ‘Participatory or interactive television’ is what I’m calling it.” Zito’s vision for the future was finally seeing some form of confirmation, though the tone was obviously one of condemnation for it.
The next panel called to the table included two very important names in the games industry: Howard Lincoln and Bill White, the Presidents of Nintendo and Sega’s American branches respectively. Other names at the table included Ilene Rosenthal of the ‘Software Publishers Association,’ Dawn Wiener of the ‘Video Software Dealers Association,’ and Craig Johnson of the ‘Amusement & Music Operators Association.’ While most of the attention goes to the representatives for Nintendo and Sega, I feel I should at least take a brief moment here to point out the case that Ms. Rosenthal makes in defense of video games is perhaps the high point of the whole hearing; explaining the potential educational and developmental benefits to children playing video games, the entertainment it can bring to children contained to hospital sick wards, and stressing the fact that not all games contain violent themes and imagery. In a hearing consisting mostly of casting blame and finger-pointing, Ms. Rosenthal’s testimony provides one of the precious few moments of praise and support for the whole of the industry itself, rather than of any one games publisher over another. Credit where credit is due.
Which brings us to Mr. Lincoln and Mr. White. In their opening statements, they both state their company’s positions on the issue of violence. Lincoln explained Nintendo’s history of self-regulation by “[not allowing] sexually violent, sexually explicit, or other offensive games” on their systems. Taking the position that all games should be wholesome and family-friendly at all times, Lincoln goes on to call on manufacturers to not allow potentially violent or suggestive games into the market in the first place, taking a shot at Sega’s attempt to implement a system for content warnings on games packaging. From his statements, Nintendo’s stance seemed to be that violent video games shouldn’t be left to regulation: They shouldn’t exist in the first place. In perhaps one of the more choice quotes of his testimony, Lincoln takes a firm stance on the possibility of Night Trap ever being ported to a Nintendo console: “For the record, I want to state that Night Trap will never appear on a Nintendo system. Obviously, it would not pass our guidelines.” The irony of this statement, of course, being that Nintendo would have gladly allowed Digital Pictures to have released their games on the SNES-CD / Nintendo Play Station just a few years earlier. With the benefit of hindsight and historical context, it’s obvious Nintendo were still sore about their failed business venture with Philips and their ill-fated CD-i, and possibly resented Digital Pictures for aligning themselves with Sega.
White, for their part, argued that Sega was working hard to keep violent games out of children’s hands, and doing what they could to inform parents as to the content of games published on their consoles. Furthering the point, White made sure to point out that Sega’s products were not simply “aimed at children.” As a matter of fact, they explained that they had already been instrumental in establishing a games rating board with their introduction of the “Videogame Rating Council” earlier in the year, which dictated that suggested player ages be clearly visible on all their games’ packaging. Though Night Trap’s release predated this rating system, the back of the box did include a “MATURE: Realistic Violence” warning. By comparison, Mortal Kombat’s box art demonstrated the system by its display of a “MA-13: Parental Discretion Advised” warning on the front. In fairness, and as Lieberman would call White out on over the course of the next hour, Sega did sign off on advertising for their mature games that appeared to directly market to children. White could do little more than attempt to try to return the conversation back to their attempt at establishing a ratings system, largely ignoring the immediate concerns of the Senator. Lincoln would join Lieberman in tearing apart White’s constant references to the Videogame Rating Council, quite aggressively pointing out that the content warning on the original release of Night Trap was in no way visible from the front of the box.
The intent on the part of Lincoln and Lieberman was clearly to frame the hearing as putting Sega on trial, absolving Nintendo of as much guilt or responsibility as possible. But White did not come entirely unprepared: He provided a VHS tape of his own, demonstrating gameplay footage from the SNES and Genesis versions of Street Fighter II, in order to make the point that despite containing the same level of violence, Nintendo failed to include any form of content warning for their version of it. When Liebermann went on to show the room a revolver-modelled ‘Justifier’ lightgun accessory intended for use with the Genesis version of Lethal Enforcers, White pulled out a Nintendo ‘Super Scope’ to demonstrate that Nintendo were just as guilty of putting gun replicas in children’s hands. These counter-points failed to impress Lieberman, who was quick to point out that the level of violence in either version of Street Fighter II doesn’t begin to compare to that of the Genesis Mortal Kombat, and that Nintendo’s bazooka-esque peripheral was nowhere near as threatening as Sega’s revolver. As White continued to attempt to argue that the consumer base for video games consisted of more than just children, Lincoln fired back: “I didn’t realize the hearing was focused on market share. I thought we were talking about regulation of violence? My colleague must think differently.” The bickering and blatant digs at each other between Lincoln and White were getting to be quite enough for Senator Kohl, who chastised the both of them for their behavior. He made his position clear with a threat aimed at both companies:
“We will do everything we can to protect the American interest, considering our constitutional restrictions. But we will do everything we can, and I think we can do considerable, if we want to. We want you to take care of your problems yourselves. But I hope you walk away with one thought today; that if you don’t do something about it, we will.” – Senator Herbert Kohl
Both Nintendo and Sega could agree on one thing: Being regulated by the government would not be good for business. After all, if Lieberman and co. had their way, they would’ve saw to it that Night Trap would be “simply should be taken off the market.” Long-term, Nintendo knew they would eventually have to appeal to more mature audiences — perhaps after monopolizing the games industry as they clearly wished they could. Government regulation could make future marketing potentially tricky, and so they were forced to agree that industry-wide regulation was the way to go. As a result, the hearings would lead to the foundation of the ‘Interactive Digital Software Association’ — which would eventually become the ‘Entertainment Software Association.’ Not long after, we would see the birth of the ‘Entertainment Software Ratings Board’ (“ESRB” for short), which continues to serve as a self-regulatory organization to this day.
“You Are All in Serious Trouble.”
So, how did being one of the primary subjects of a Senate committee hearing affect Night Trap? Did Nintendo successfully squash Sega by painting the game as an affront to moral values? Well, as it turns out and as has been proven again on multiple occasions since, protests and public outrage against games cause them to sell more copies. Effectively, all Nintendo had managed to do was give Sega free publicity, as well as losing themselves whatever competitive edge had been afforded to them by positioning themselves as “the family-friendly company.” For Nintendo’s part in orchestrating the Senate committee hearing, the companies who benefitted most from it ended up being Sega and Digital Pictures. The caveat was that existing copies of the original release of Night Trap would have to be pulled from store shelves, replaced by a ‘Censored’ version which cut down the bathroom scene as well as a handful of other shots. Even with these changes, renewed interest in the game would eventually lead to it hitting a 50 thousand sales milestone. Not all that impressive a number admittedly, but an improvement to be sure.
With Night Trap now considered something like a success, it was only natural that it be ported to other CD-capable platforms of the time. Within the year, Night Trap was ported to the 3DO, DOS, and the Sega 32X [running in conjunction with a Sega CD]. Of these ports, the 3DO version boasts the best video quality, while the 32X version features only slight improvements in resolution and color depth over the original Sega CD release. The DOS version has video quality roughly similar to the 32X version, though it does have the added benefit of a Save / Load function, taking at least some amount of tedium out of the game. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?), it also features a programming issue which renders the “not-100% ending” unviewable; meaning that so long as you manage to save Kelli from the Martins in the last minute of the game, your overall capture score isn’t taken into account, and you get the best ending no matter what. It doesn’t matter if you failed to capture all 95 of the augers or not, or even if you accidentally capture any of the expendable non-hostile characters! To be honest, the conditions for getting the best ending in the other releases are kind of ridiculous as is, and so I’m almost tempted to applaud this bug for rewarding players who’ve suffered enough as is.
The DOS release would also include a short documentary by the name ‘Dangerous Games’, which featured Digital Pictures staffers and their associates commenting on the Senate committee hearings, giving the sense that they found all the controversy around the game ridiculous. As director Jim Riley claims in the documentary: “Our state of mind at the time was not about creating some horrible, frightening thing. It was really ‘how many augs can we trap in the house?’” You can tell that nobody involved really took the horror elements of the production too seriously, with cast and crew both admitting that it was hard to contain laughter in filming certain sequences (including the bathroom scene the Senators found so disturbing). There was never any intent to shock audiences or stir up controversy. In fact, they had consciously made design decisions in attempt to avoid causing any of the such. As Zito explains, “The whole sort of reason for having that thing that goes around the neck of the kids that get nailed was to make it something so fantasaical, and something so non-replicable, that there wouldn’t be any chance someone could mistake it for reality.” The fact that it did become so controversial was a surprise to all involved, and Zito wanted to be the first to state his case that he never intended for his game to cause such upset. But of course, Nintendo had already made up the Senator’s minds for them, and Zito was never permitted his chance to speak at any of the hearings:
“I flew to Washington to go to these hearings, and the morning of the hearings, they announce to us ‘Gee, we’re really sorry, thanks so much for coming. We’re really sorry, but we decided that there isn’t any time to hear your testimony today. And then at some point in the hearings, Dorgan is reading from something and says ‘And it’s a shame Mr. Zito couldn’t be here to defend his horrible filth that his company is putting out.’ And I said ‘Uh, Senator? I am here, and I’d be happy to talk about it.’ ‘You’re out of order! Be quiet back there!’ […] At the end of the hearings, I walked up to Lieberman and said to him ‘Senator, have you ever actually played this game?’ And he said ‘I don’t have to, this is filth.’” – Tom Zito
Digital Pictures would fold by 1996, leaving fourteen games to their legacy, as well as leftover footage for a fifteenth game intended to be titled Maximum Surge (which was eventually reworked in part into the awful 2003 television film Game Over). Tom Zito would re-emerge in 2014 seeking to milk one last dollar out of Night Trap’s infamy, setting a Kickstarter with a $330 thousand dollar goal to ‘ReVamp’ the game for one more re-release. The Kickstarter was plagued with problems from the start, largely criticized, and eventually failed having reached little over ten percent of its goal. Some may lay blame on the handling of the Kickstarter itself, but to me the answer as to why it failed is really quite simple: Night Trap’s accidental infamy is its lasting legacy, rather than any element of the game itself. That anybody is still talking about it and remembers it today is entirely due to its day in front of a Senate hearing committee, as it would’ve wallowed in obscurity otherwise. Nintendo could’ve found more shocking games to include in their VHS compilation, but they chose what they considered to be an unappealing flop because they probably figured “there’s no way in hell anyone is going to want to play this after seeing it!” Nobody could’ve predicted the rise in sales after its demonstration, and in a way its resurgence helped expedite the end of the very same FMV fad Digital Pictures had helped to create: Most who finally played it in 1994 quickly decided they had their fill of it and other FMV games like it, with sales of following Digital Pictures releases all failing to reach the same numbers as Night Trap. Even if 3D games hadn’t been knocking at the door, interactive television as Zito had envisioned it was already on its way out, having already overstayed its welcome.
Some will say that Night Trap’s impact can also be felt in the curiously popular Five Nights at Freddy’s series, which rose to its own level of infamy in 2014. Similar for its apparent “horror” theme and for core gameplay consisting of switching between a handful of security cameras, you can see how folk might make a connection between the two, or assume that developer Scott Hawthorn took some amount of inspiration from his game’s apparent predecessor. For my part, I couldn’t find any instance of Hawthorn mentioning Night Trap in any description of his game or interview, and I’ll tell you that his game is only superficially similar as is. I can’t even claim that the surprise success of Five Nights at Freddy’s prompted Zito to set up his Kickstarter in some attempt to capitalize on it, since the two entities released within literally days of each other. Furthermore, I can’t say that Five Nights at Freddy’s tries to evoke an interactive television or movie experience in the same way that Night Trap attempted to. It’s there where the comparisons between the two begin to fall apart.
Night Trap is a fascinating, infuriating piece of video game history. The story of its development reads like fate itself conspired against its release, attempting at every turn to see that it never saw the light of day. And for all the effort that went into seeing that it did — for all Tom Zito’s hopes and dreams of pushing interactive television, Night Trap ended up becoming a nail in its coffin. Taking the supposed controversy out of the equation, the single most damning thing you can say about Night Trap is that its simply no fun at all to play, as was the case with most other FMV games of the era. Sure, there’s a certain “cheese factor” that comes with looking back on these games now in the modern day, but most folk will simply load up a playthrough video rather than actually attempting to play the games themselves. And that’s perfectly fine! The best way to digest this sort of content is by sitting back and letting it play out on its own; watching it as if it were a TV show or movie. Funny how that works, huh?
For more information on the design and production that went into making Night Trap, Gamastura hosts an excerpt from Jamie Russell’s 2012 book Generation Xbox: How Video Games Invaded Hollywood. It can be read here.
