Hey, Remember the Obscure Early 90's?

I've been pondering things these past couple of days... about how the government is up in arms about random things... games, radio, etc. And I decided to check out stuff on the "classic" Sega CD game Night Trap. Everyone remembers Night Trap, of course... it was the game that sparked a war on games, spearheaded by Senator Joseph Lieberman. Eventually it led to the creation of the ESRB and the games rating systems (E for Everyone, T for Teen, M for Mature, etc. etc.)

The plot of Night Trap is rather simple, yet rather campy... in fact it reads like your average campy horror film:

You are part of a group of... well, basically marines it appears, calling themselves the Special (or Sega depending on which version you're playing) Control Attack Team or S.C.A.T. (naturally, my first thought going in was... "Glad they didn't call it S.K.E.E.T.)

Anyways, the Lieutenant of the group tells you that numerous girls have gone missing from the home of this family. S.C.A.T. has planted an undercover girl (played by the late Dana Plato of Diff'rent Strokes fame) to infiltrate tonight's party to find out what's happening to all these girls. You're in charge of the house's security system which S.C.A.T. tapped into. The catch is: The code is changed at certain times (a color code system is used and the baddies basically yell out what code they plan on changing to.) and you need to know this in order to spring the traps on the other baddies once they come into play.


You end up seeing the family involved: A mother, father, daughter, son, and cousin, then the girls (plus the usual younger bratty kid.) The mother and father leave to visit "The Augers" which you find out later are actually the bad guys who stalk the girls during the game. The Augers (or simply Augs) end up being "half-vampires" as you learn toward the end of the game. They basically look like your average burglar complete with ski masks (you're told by the Mom and Dad... who end up being full-vampires that the Augs slowly peel away if they don't have the proper food... namely blood... to feed them.) to conceal their deformed appearances.

The game appears to be pretty much a find and trap kind of game. You need to trap specific Augs at times (while also watching each monitor for them... which apparently gets tricky since the game plays in real-time.) so they don't kill the girls... by kill I mean one of the Augs carries a device that kind of looks like a Jai Alai stick which wraps around the victim's neck and supposedly drains the victim of blood. So you, the person in charge of the traps, are supposed to prevent this by springing traps on the Augs before they can drain the women-folk. Like I mentioned earlier, the game's footage is rather campy, like your average campy horror film... at one point the girls are in a room singing the game's theme song, though it probably would have suited them better to sing "Yay, we're all gonna die soon." or something like that.

Basically the game offers you a choice... save all the girls (while watching your proverbial ass by keeping an eye on the wiretap that S.C.A.T. has you connected to the security with.) or Game Over. There's also a humorous ending where you can decide to turn on Dana Plato by trapping her after all the Augs and Vamp Family Members are "dead."

I remember hearing about the game when it first came out... allegedly the rumor was that it was banned from stores due to rape and nudity... what I saw on YouTube shocked me....



Female Victim (I say this because by now, there's already one victim... that being one of the S.C.A.T. members tried to infiltrate the house and check the basement, only to be attacked and drained by Augs... not sure if this is something you can stop... like I probably mentioned, i've not played the game... nor do I plan to.) #1 is a girl named Lisa. Lisa decides not to join the Theme Song Singing Slumber Party downstairs and instead chooses to take a shower in the apparently one bathroom inside the rather large (and unnecessary for no other reason than the game) house. While Lisa is running around preparing for her shower, an Aug decides to sneak into the shower. Lisa returns, in what today could be considered a very reasonably harmless nightie. Eventually, Lisa discovers the Aug and in campy horror fashion thinks someone is messing with her, realizes it's something bad, scream, scream, then depending on whether you spring the trap or not (this of course is assuming you didn't.) the Augs grab Lisa and the one with the "device" wraps it around her neck as she's drained of blood. Then Lisa's taken off screen and is apparently dead.

So... if you're keeping score at home... The United States Government got up in arms over a game with no rape, no nudity, virtually no violence basically in an attempt to police video games with the ESRB rating system, while ruining a few programmers, producers, etc. in the process (of course the fact that it was on Sega CD didn't help much either.) But still... I can't help thinking what the government would have done, had a Gears of War or a Grand Theft Auto come out in the early 90's. I imagine they would have grabbed their pitchforks and torches and made a beeline to Epic/Rockstar HQ and sentenced all who had a hand in the making of these games to death by stoning.

Though, of course Rockstar now is actually under fire for that whole Hot Coffee mod debacle... but this is definitely a different scenario altogether. Honestly, if I wanted sex in my GTA, i'd buy GTA: Playboy or something. But the whole thing with Night Trap just gives me a "WTF?!" feeling towards our government. Kinda makes me glad kooks like Fallwell are dead. x_x