Night Trap: The Sega CD's 'Bad Boy'.
NIGHT TRAP: THE SEGA CD'S 'BAD BOY'.
(Image from Wikipedia)
Once upon a time there was a game that was provisionally titled 'Scene Of The Crime'. Created by Digital Pictures, it was commissioned for release by the toy firm Hasbro, who were keen to break into the multimedia market. At this point it became known as Project Nemo and someone whose face may have been vaguely familiar filled its lead role. This was the actress Dana Plato, who played Kimberly in the sitcom 'Diff'rent Strokes'. In this FMV-heavy game, she played the part of a cop called Keli Medd. The actual premise of the game was designed to appeal to a predominantly male audience. Vampires chased pretty girls around a creepy house and the choices made by the player affected the eventual outcome. When the game went on sale, it was called Night Trap.
(Dana Plato. Image from Wikipedia)
In another article, I talked about Senator Lieberman who led a campaign that eventually led to the establishment of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB). Senator Lieberman did not just concentrate on Mortal Kombat. Other games came under fire too and none more so than Night Trap, which, if anything, looked even more worrying than Midway's Beat Em Up. After all, cartoonish decapitations were one thing, but here was video-quality footage of women being stalked and killed. At least, that's what the videotape of gameplay footage seemed to show. Although he would eventually settle for a ratings system, Senator Lieberman initially called for much more drastic action. A study had revealed a growing rise in the number of violent games and that these were far more popular among gamers than non-violent titles. Although Sega and Nintendo had helped make videogames very successful in commercial terms, they still had a rather dubious image in the minds of the public. Gamers were viewed as antisocial types, sitting alone in darkened rooms. The last thing the world needed was for these sad cases to be aroused by footage of harassed women. Accordingly, the Senator called for the banning of all violent games and demanded that Sega and other companies who provided such fair be closed down.
(Image from Niche Gamer)
However, some people held the view that such drastic action was not necessary. Dr Steven Stilburn of Auben University pointed out that pretend violence was a regular and possibly important part of growing up. After all, didn't children pretend to shoot each other when they played Cops And Robbers? Also, Tom Zito of Digital Pictures pointed out that the hearings had completely misunderstood the objective of Night Trap. They claimed the aim of the game was to stalk and kill women when, in fact, the player's objective was to protect the women. He argued that, with careful editing, even Bambi could be made to seem like an horrific product.
All this publicity weighed heavily on Sega, whose products took a downturn as a result. The company Toys 'R' Us removed Night Trap from the shelves and Sega CEO Tom Kalinske pulled the controversial game off the market in order to censor the offending footage. If this indicated a reversal in the tide of violence, the opposite turned out to be true. A short while after the Lieberman hearings, Nintendo released Mortal Kombat 2 and, due to pressure from the fans, the company chose not to cut the gore. The banned, bad boy Night Trap also surfaced-uncut-for the PC CD market. Cheekily, Hasbro used the controversy of previous years to promote it as 'the game congress tried to ban'.
Was Night Trap really as bad as the controversy had made out? Well, it was certainly bad but not in an offensive way. It consisted of little more than poorly-strung FMV sequences. Had it not been for the hearings, Night Trap would almost certainly have joined the ranks of all the other forgotten Sega CD games. But, as things turned out, it was later released for both PCs and the 32X and sold 50,000 units one week after the hearings. It just goes to show that a combination of controversy and promotion can make a bad game quite popular.
REFERENCES
The Ultimate History Of Videogames by Steven L. Kent
Always wanted to play it, such a classic type of game that they could possibly do it right now in days
This would probably be some kind of mini-game in a larger title these days. For example, think of a mission in GTA where you have to break into a place with CCTV cameras and then use the feed to coordinate your team to accomplish some goal.