A couple of weeks ago I discovered the joy of the old Usenet archives in Google Groups. This may not seem cool to you, but to a video game historian like me having the entire rec.games.video hierarchy dating back to 1987 is a pretty nice thing. Now I can search on a particular title to see what people thought about it when it first came out as opposed to reading modern-day reviews of old games that are jaded by advancements in technology.
When I initially stumbled on this treasure trove, I tried to see how far back it went and looked at the first few posts in rec.games.video.misc. They were from late 1993, just as the Atari Jaguar and the 3DO were poised to take over the world (they didn't - that role would be played by Sony's PlayStation) and Doom was about to be unleashed on PC users everywhere. Also happening at this time and being discussed were the Senate hearings on video game violence that eventually resulted in the creation of the ESRB.
A lot of people remember that games like the Mortal Kombat series and Doom had a lot to do with this debate (Fatality!), but few remember the impact that the advent of full motion video games had on the discussion. The thought was that when violence and horror was depicted by real living, breathing actors (albeit not very good ones) it would leave an even greater impression on the minds of helpless little children. We'll ignore the fact that most of these FMV games were so cheesy and bad that no one took them very seriously. (Note: If you happen to be looking for good FMV games, I highly recommend Gabriel Knight 2, the 7th Guest, and Wing Commander 3 & 4)
Enter Night Trap... the #1 scapegoat at the Senate hearings of 1992/1993. Released for the Sega CD in 1992, the game's footage was actually shot back in 1987 for use with Hasbro's Control-Vision. Never heard of the Control-Vision? Well, that's because it never came out. Apparently the world just wasn't ready for a multi-track VHS-based video game system.
Starring Dana Plato of Diff'rent Strokes fame, in Night Trap you had to help five coeds on a weekend getaway escape the clutches of an army of augers (comical half-vampires armed with a long-handled drill/hook thingy) and an evil vampire family. To perform this task, you were supposed to rapidly switch between eight different security cameras in the beach house and trigger various trap doors throughout the house. If you failed to save any of the girls, you were treated to a grisly scene of horror in which the girl was hooked, drilled, and yanked offscreen before losing your game. The most graphic and obscene of these being the infamous nightgown scene:
If you're still with me after all that horror, hopefully you're laughing right about now. I know that our standards of decency have lapsed a bit since the early 90s, but seriously? This is what the Senate got all up in arms about? My sense of decency is more offended by cheesy scenes like this one:
The hullabaloo was bad enough that the game was ultimately pulled from shelves in major stores like Toys R Us and recalled by Sega. It didn't help matters that apparently our well-informed congressmen thought the goal of the game was to help capture and rape the girls in the game, the exact opposite of the real goal. In fact, if you're playing the game the way it was meant to be played you'll hardly have time to watch any of the fantastic B-movie footage.
In the end, it's a good thing that the ESRB was founded to provide game ratings. Without it, a lot of the neat ideas that have flourished under the protection of a Mature rating might not have seen the light of day. Now all we need is for all you parents out there to actually pay attention to them.
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If you want to see more Night Trap, I can help.
Watch a short documentary about the Senate hearings and scandal, complete with hilarious Senate floor footage.
Watch all of the footage from the game, cut into movie form. I guarantee it won't be the worst 45 minutes you ever spend. If you can't handle YouTube quality, you can watch a slightly better version at FMV World.
2 comments:
There will never ever be a more exciting computer game, regardless of graphics, than DROL. I think it should have been made into a live action Play Station type thing.
If anyone's wondering what the heck my mom is talking about, she's making a reference to the first computer game we ever had for our Apple IIc way back in the day. Drol is an awesome game, and is what taught me (and rightly so) that scorpions, sea snakes, venus flytraps, flying hatchets, and witch doctors and their monsters are not things to be messed with.
For the record, Ma, I put the research department hard to work and they've decided that Drol being Lord backwards is just a coincidence. Allegedly, the game was originally going to be called Trol, but the folks at Broderbund changed it for whatever reason.
-Brian
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