Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's select,
Speaker 1: I've chosen our twenty twenty one episode on night Trap
Speaker 1: the video game one of those overlook pieces of pop
Speaker 1: culture history about one of those unfortunate pieces of technology
Speaker 1: that emerged during a sea change, which made it utterly
Speaker 1: out of date the moment it was born. It's a
Speaker 1: great story about a not at all great video game,
Speaker 1: and I hope you enjoy it. Welcome to Stuff You
Speaker 1: Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck
Speaker 1: Bryan over there, there's Jerry over there being Sally, and
Speaker 1: this is Stuff you should Know. Ye video Obscure Lost
Speaker 1: video game episode. How did you hear about this? This
Speaker 1: is a your request.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Trap is the game that we're talking about. And
Speaker 2: I heard about this from watching the Netflix documentary series
Speaker 2: High Score.
Speaker 1: Did you netflix and chill while you were watching that? Jerk?
Speaker 2: No, I Netflix by myself and chilled because Emily.
Speaker 3: Wasn't watching this.
Speaker 1: That's a different thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a different thing.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: This was a documentary series on Netflix, I think six
Speaker 2: parts that covered the history of video games, I can
Speaker 2: recommend it in one way in that it was a
Speaker 2: very light kind of fun watch, but it is by
Speaker 2: no means comprehensive and a little goofy at times, and
Speaker 2: how they handled some.
Speaker 1: Stuff on Night Trips specifically or.
Speaker 3: Like the whole series.
Speaker 2: But it was fine, and it's you know, if you're
Speaker 2: in the from a certain generation and in the mood
Speaker 2: for like five plus hours of a bit of a
Speaker 2: nostalgia kick, you could do worse things.
Speaker 3: But it's not great.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen that documentary? I think it's King
Speaker 1: of Kong? Oh, sure, man, that is one of the
Speaker 1: best time I've ever made. I haven't seen a year.
Speaker 1: They go to see it again.
Speaker 3: It's great.
Speaker 2: I think our old buddy Josh Bearman might have written
Speaker 2: the original story that that was.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm not surprised you had something.
Speaker 3: To do with that.
Speaker 2: But Night Trap I learned about because in episode five
Speaker 2: they covered when video games started becoming violent, so Mortal
Speaker 2: Kombat obviously factored in heavily in that episode. And then
Speaker 2: this game called Night Trap. There's another game I do
Speaker 2: want to cover on a shorty by the way, one
Speaker 2: of the first LGTBQ games ever that was really interesting.
Speaker 1: And had a cool story. What the heck is it called?
Speaker 2: I can't remember now. I saw this a couple of
Speaker 2: months ago, so it's been a while.
Speaker 1: Oh what was it?
Speaker 3: I can't remember, but it was.
Speaker 2: It's great and that'll make it for a good shorty okay,
Speaker 2: but a really cool story behind it. But this is
Speaker 2: night Trap, which figured in as the game that kind
Speaker 2: of brought about along with Mortal Kombat, but was really
Speaker 2: central informing what ended up being the ratings board for
Speaker 2: video games.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's like understating it. Like this one game, yeah,
Speaker 1: paired with Mortal Kombat, basically led directly to the creation
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's really why it's notable. The other thing
Speaker 2: that made it notable, and we'll get into all this,
Speaker 2: was that it was a a live action as in
Speaker 2: they shot you know, a little movie, right, and that
Speaker 2: you controlled, Yeah, that you sort of control, you.
Speaker 1: Could conceivably theoretically pathetically control.
Speaker 2: Because it wasn't a great game, but it lives in
Speaker 2: infamy because of every because it's a really cool story.
Speaker 1: I think in the end, it is a pretty cool story.
Speaker 1: And the whole thing starts actually with a play from
Speaker 1: the I think it was written in nineteen eighty one
Speaker 1: by a playwright named John Oh. What's his last name?
Speaker 1: Krasank Okay, I want to say, son, I want to
Speaker 1: krisanch Shit, you don't think so? I don't know. Maybe well, regardless,
Speaker 1: he wrote a few episodes of Due South. What was that?
Speaker 1: It was like a show about a Canadian mountee.
Speaker 2: I think, oh, all right, yeah he wrote this and
Speaker 2: it was if you've been to Sleep No More in
Speaker 2: New York, you may have the play Tamara to think
Speaker 2: because it is a lot like the concept of Sleep
Speaker 2: No More.
Speaker 1: As far as I know, this was the one that
Speaker 1: broke that ground.
Speaker 3: I think so in the ground they broke it.
Speaker 2: It's about the painter Tamara de Olympica, who have never
Speaker 2: heard of.
Speaker 1: She was a Polish painter who lived in Italy in
Speaker 1: the roaring twenties, okay, when the fascists were starting to
Speaker 1: take power, and she took no guff from them, no guff, hedonistic,
Speaker 1: amazing art deco painter, art deco portraitist, basically interesting. So
Speaker 1: her work's really interesting. I didn't know anything about it.
Speaker 1: I'd never heard of her until this too, but I
Speaker 1: looked her up. She seemed pretty cool.
Speaker 2: But This is a play about her where it is
Speaker 2: set on a multi floor building. There are scenes taking
Speaker 2: place at the same time in multiple rooms, and as
Speaker 2: an audience member, you can move from one room to
Speaker 2: the other, missing out on some stuff, seeing some stuff, interacting.
Speaker 2: I mean it's Sleep No More. Yeah, they I don't
Speaker 2: know if they just totally ripped it off or if
Speaker 2: they said, hey, it's been you know, thirty years. Who's
Speaker 2: going to remember Tamera, right?
Speaker 1: I think it was like they broke that ground, and
Speaker 1: once you break that ground, you're going to have people
Speaker 1: following your wake.
Speaker 2: There's probably been other stuff that did this, but Sleep
Speaker 2: No More I think just got so much attention in
Speaker 2: New York for its run. It might still be going
Speaker 2: or maybe coming back after the pandemic.
Speaker 1: I would like to see that. I would love to
Speaker 1: see Tamra too, But this it was. It ran in
Speaker 1: New York, but it started a Toronto Art festival I think,
Speaker 1: oh interesting, and then some producers set it up in
Speaker 1: la and that's where it had its longest run. From
Speaker 1: about the mid eighties to the nineties. They had this
Speaker 1: just kept going and going and going. I was reading
Speaker 1: an La Times article on it. But the reason that
Speaker 1: it factors into this is because it's basically the basis
Speaker 1: for this game Night Trap, where there are different things
Speaker 1: going on in different rooms and you kind of cycle
Speaker 1: toggle between the different rooms through security cameras in these
Speaker 1: rooms right to see what's going on. And while you're
Speaker 1: doing that, you're missing stuff that's happening in other rooms
Speaker 1: in this game, and if you miss too much stuff,
Speaker 1: you lose. If you catch enough stuff and you do
Speaker 1: everything right and press all the correct buttons, you win.
Speaker 1: But that's that's basically how it applies. It's like this
Speaker 1: almost an homage to this play in video game form,
Speaker 1: but it's full motion video, meaning it's like a film
Speaker 1: or TV show that you vaguely control or put better
Speaker 1: you interact.
Speaker 2: With, Yeah, and the idea of the game, and we'll
Speaker 2: get a little bit more into the development of it
Speaker 2: in a minute, but it is basically like a party
Speaker 2: happening at this house, young like co ed types like
Speaker 2: sorority girls.
Speaker 3: Maybe ye.
Speaker 2: It's very sort of titillating, and that was one of
Speaker 2: the big deals.
Speaker 1: A little bit. I think this for the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for the time, I wouldn't say, I mean you got
Speaker 1: married with children was like ten times more titillating those
Speaker 1: This is very tame. I think.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, obviously part of the controversy comes from
Speaker 2: assaults on women in the game, understandably, but again we'll
Speaker 2: get to that. It is even tame compared to a
Speaker 2: lot of the stuff that was out at the time.
Speaker 2: But what's going on in the game is they are
Speaker 2: these pseudo vampires called augurs that are the bad people
Speaker 2: in this game. And Jim Riley, who conceived of this game,
Speaker 2: when he had the idea of I think he was
Speaker 2: watching security camera a security camera screen with all these
Speaker 2: different rooms and it hit him like what a great idea,
Speaker 2: And then he saw this play and he said, we
Speaker 2: can actually do something like this, Like what if a
Speaker 2: user and a game player could go into any of
Speaker 2: these views that they want and if they're missing something,
Speaker 2: they're missing something it might be important, but they're in
Speaker 2: control of the.
Speaker 1: Game, right, And I mean that's the story rather right.
Speaker 1: But again, I think you really pointed out something important
Speaker 1: that that was the concept in the actuality. They kind
Speaker 1: of missed the mark a little bit. Yes, So with
Speaker 1: the game the it was originally designed as part of
Speaker 1: a platform called Control Vision. I think internally it was
Speaker 1: called Nemo an Emo and it was being created by
Speaker 1: a company called Axelon, And Axelon was actually a Nolan
Speaker 1: like video game company name, but it was a Nolan
Speaker 1: Bushne old company. After Atari, he founded Axelon, among others,
Speaker 1: I think he created five companies at the same time
Speaker 1: in parallel. Using this incubator that he had created, and
Speaker 1: the developers at axeln started creating a full motion video
Speaker 1: VHS based we should point out, yes, I'm VHS and
Speaker 1: to get from one place to another, rather than this
Speaker 1: was the breakthrough thing. This is the thing that made
Speaker 1: this work, and they did get it to work. But
Speaker 1: using VHS tapes, you could toggle between stuff in virtually
Speaker 1: real time without the VHS player having to rewind or
Speaker 1: fast forward, which would have really just kind of put
Speaker 1: the kibosh on the whole thing. But instead, because of
Speaker 1: the interlacing that video uses, they could actually choose what
Speaker 1: field to show at what time and basically switch between them.
Speaker 2: Which was I mean, it looks archaic, but it's a
Speaker 2: remarkable technology at the time to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it's still mind blowing. Like I'm like, I've
Speaker 1: they vaguely understand how this actually works, but the fact
Speaker 1: that they actually got this to work and had a
Speaker 1: proof of concept going enough that Asro was like sold,
Speaker 1: that was a big deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this was eighty five.
Speaker 2: One of their designers was the legendary Tom Crane who
Speaker 2: designed Pitfall, one of my favorite all time games on
Speaker 2: the Atari.
Speaker 1: That's a good one.
Speaker 2: But it was a good team and they went apparently
Speaker 2: to these Tamera performances. They were also inspired by Dragon's Layer.
Speaker 2: Do you remember that game?
Speaker 1: I do. I was never into it, but I remember
Speaker 1: watching it and just it looked cool.
Speaker 2: I mean it was an animation game where it was
Speaker 2: fully animated and used LaserDisc to project this animated footage.
Speaker 2: So it looked awesome, but it was just it wasn't
Speaker 2: that great. The gameplay wasn't great.
Speaker 1: No, but it followed a story. There was a story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was happening, and then every once in a while
Speaker 1: there's something you had to do to move the story
Speaker 1: along right as part of the game, and if you
Speaker 1: didn't do it right, the dragon like turned you into
Speaker 1: to Ash or something like that.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, but you're not actually controlling the player, which
Speaker 2: was the big difference in these games.
Speaker 3: For the regular game.
Speaker 1: You're you're creating a sequence like you're doing this and
Speaker 1: then sitting back and then hopefully the thing you're hoping
Speaker 1: to happen happens. Now, the thing that differentiates that from
Speaker 1: Night Trap is that there was no coherent story while
Speaker 1: you were off doing something that you were supposed to
Speaker 1: be doing to win the game. Yeah, the story kept
Speaker 1: going on over here.
Speaker 3: So you can't follow a storyline that way, no, which.
Speaker 1: Is a big deal, and that was a big differentiator
Speaker 1: between it and Dragons Later.
Speaker 3: All right, well, let's take a little break here.
Speaker 2: That's a good setup, I think, and we'll come back
Speaker 2: and get more into Night Trap right after this. All right,
Speaker 2: so I mentioned the augurs, We need to explain a
Speaker 2: little bit about this game and what it was supposed
Speaker 2: to be and what it ended up being, because Netflix
Speaker 2: Dementary Jim Riley basically is like, well, the first thing
Speaker 2: they created a demo called Scene of the Crime.
Speaker 3: Yes, and it was a.
Speaker 2: Detective game and Hasbro liked it, like I said, but
Speaker 2: they had a big problem because the original idea that
Speaker 2: Jim had was to have ninjas, and he's like, it'd
Speaker 2: be great.
Speaker 3: These ninjas come in.
Speaker 2: They got throwing stars, they got weapons and they're doing
Speaker 2: all this stuff and you can control it and it's
Speaker 2: super cool. And Hasbro is like, wait a minute, we
Speaker 2: can't have what we call reproducible violence. So anything that
Speaker 2: a kid like kids love throwing stars, and we can't
Speaker 2: show ninjas throwing throwing stars into people because a kid
Speaker 2: will go and do that. You can't have a knife
Speaker 2: because the kid can go get a knife out of
Speaker 2: a drawer. It's got to be something that a kid
Speaker 2: cannot reproduce.
Speaker 1: So they said, okay, well, how about what if the
Speaker 1: ninjas turn out to be and I'm sorry, I know
Speaker 1: ninja is the plural of ninja, Sorry for sure. What
Speaker 1: if they turn out to be vampires?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: And Hasbro said, I kind of like where you're going
Speaker 1: with this, But kids can still like bite people on
Speaker 1: the neck.
Speaker 2: I think it came the other way though. I think
Speaker 2: that was a note from Hasbro.
Speaker 1: Oh was it?
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure they were like, what if they were vampires?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: And Jim Riley was like, Okay, I guess I can
Speaker 2: do that, okay, biting people's necks, And then Hasbro was like,
Speaker 2: can't do that because the kids can bite next to.
Speaker 1: So what they found, and this is a great metaphor
Speaker 1: for the night Trap overall. Yeah, what the ninja Originally,
Speaker 1: what they turned out to be in the end were
Speaker 1: loping vampires who used what looked like a Ghostbuster's pro
Speaker 1: tom pack with a collar of the kind that Arnold
Speaker 1: Schwarzeninger was wearing at the beginning of Running Man, like
Speaker 1: a clamp sort of yes, yeah, on the end, and
Speaker 1: that that is what they used to draw the blood
Speaker 1: from the hapless teens who you were in charge of
Speaker 1: protecting Night Trap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what Hasbro did was they noted it to
Speaker 2: death and neutered it to death because they said. He
Speaker 2: even was like, all right, I can do vampires. They
Speaker 2: can run around and hurt people. And they said, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: they can't even run around. It's too scary if they're fast. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So they came up with augurs who in the game
Speaker 2: they are described as vampires who had been half bled
Speaker 2: and left to die. So they are not quite vampires,
Speaker 2: but they aren't human either, and that makes them lopy
Speaker 2: and lumbery instead of being able to move fast. And
Speaker 2: if you see them, they look like they're wearing garbage bags.
Speaker 2: They're lumbering around they're drawing the blood using a trocar.
Speaker 2: Is what the name of that thing was.
Speaker 1: Oh, it was okay because it was definitely its own thing.
Speaker 3: It was its own thing, and it's funny.
Speaker 2: In the documentary, Jim Riley was like, in the end,
Speaker 2: he said, this trow car, which you know, it didn't
Speaker 2: show it explicitly. It showed the clamp going around the
Speaker 2: neck and this little drill and so out of a
Speaker 2: shaft start and then sort of moving and then blood
Speaker 2: being drawn. But it doesn't like going in the neck
Speaker 2: or anything. No, but he said what they ended up with,
Speaker 2: he said to me, was something far creepier than a
Speaker 2: vampire biting someone's neck. Sure, but they were like, it's
Speaker 2: not reproducible though, so it's fine.
Speaker 1: And it's also it's weird that Hasbro was so fixated
Speaker 1: on not including reproducible violence because apparently they saw night
Speaker 1: Trap as a way to interest adults, right, because they
Speaker 1: had apparently found out during focus group testing of Seen
Speaker 1: in the Crime. I believe that the parents who were
Speaker 1: in the room or were part of the focus group
Speaker 1: were saying, like, I really kind of liked this. It's
Speaker 1: like a TV show, but I get.
Speaker 2: To contry it because it looked like something that they understood.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, and so Hasbro was like, oh, okay, this
Speaker 1: has been like a kid's thing up to this point.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can finally crack into the adult market with
Speaker 1: this stuff. So it's weird that they that they kidified
Speaker 1: it to death if they were trying to use it
Speaker 1: to capture adults, but maybe they were like, it has
Speaker 1: to go both ways in case adults don't like it.
Speaker 2: Well, I think in the documentary they make the point
Speaker 2: that Hasbro was I think the adults were looming out
Speaker 2: there as a possibility, but they were like.
Speaker 1: Adults will never play video games.
Speaker 2: So what they really wanted until they grow up and
Speaker 2: then continue to.
Speaker 1: Play video games.
Speaker 2: Well, they really were after was a teenage market, which
Speaker 2: didn't fully exist at this point. Gotcha like an old
Speaker 2: like sixteen and seventeen year old boys, which is why
Speaker 2: they put sorority girls in. Like a nighty at a
Speaker 2: slumber party was an all in an effort to sort
Speaker 2: of titillate, you know, people.
Speaker 1: Like me, right, and it worked like a charm.
Speaker 3: I had never heard of it back then, because you just.
Speaker 1: You would play night trap in Netflix and chill by yourself.
Speaker 2: So they actually had to shoot this like a movie,
Speaker 2: you know. They shot it in Culver City on a
Speaker 2: sound stage. And what they would do back then for
Speaker 2: and there were more full motion games of the time,
Speaker 2: and you would try and cast one recognizable face among
Speaker 2: this cast just sort of they called it the anchor
Speaker 2: to like, all right, well this has got so and
Speaker 2: so in it.
Speaker 3: And who did they cast for Night Trap?
Speaker 1: Dana Plato from from Different Strokes. Kimberly. Yeah, Kimberly who
Speaker 1: passed away very tragically. Man, I was reading about her life.
Speaker 1: She had a hard, sad life.
Speaker 3: Man, very tragic story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. It's very sad. And they actually went
Speaker 1: back and ruled their death of suicide later. Did you
Speaker 1: know that. I don't know if I knew that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she died by suicide ultimately because she overdosed the like
Speaker 1: drugs or yeah, soma, I believe, which is like a
Speaker 1: generic lore tab interesting, which I think you really have
Speaker 1: to try. Like, I don't think that's an accidental thing,
Speaker 1: which is probably why they did that. But it was
Speaker 1: at a family reunion in Oklahoma, Wow, which I'm like, God, man,
Speaker 1: that's that's just a sad ending. And her son actually
Speaker 1: died by suicide.
Speaker 3: Later, No, I think I knew that, like not super
Speaker 3: long ago, right.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, in the twenty tens, yeah, oh.
Speaker 2: Man, very sad, but yeah. Dana Plato was cast as
Speaker 2: that anchor. She played Kelly, who was a secret agent
Speaker 2: who had infiltrated the house.
Speaker 1: She was undercover.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's undercover.
Speaker 2: And she would talk right to camera and say things
Speaker 2: like you've got to get to the other room because
Speaker 2: the augurs are after whoever mayor helper, Yeah, go help her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we should say also, so the group of
Speaker 1: crime fighters that she was a part of was called SCAT. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Special Control Attack Team SCAT. And then I don't
Speaker 1: know if we also said so the people who own
Speaker 1: the house had invited this group of teens that included
Speaker 1: undercover Dana Plato Kelly, who which I saw admittedly on Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: This is a great example of night trap being night
Speaker 1: trap in the In the credits at the end, Kelly's
Speaker 1: name is spelled with a y on the end. In
Speaker 1: the players the user's hand guide and deny tonight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's night trap for you right there. But the family
Speaker 1: that invited the kids, these teenage girls out for a
Speaker 1: weekend at their house are actually themselves vampires with teeth everything,
Speaker 1: not augurs.
Speaker 3: They're actually they don't attack people.
Speaker 1: No, they brought them there for the augurs.
Speaker 2: Right right right to source their blood. I guess there
Speaker 2: is a pretty funny scene in it. When did you
Speaker 2: watch any of it?
Speaker 1: I watched the whole thing. I watched. I think Crumpy
Speaker 1: Gamers did like a playthrough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they have a full I watched.
Speaker 1: There's stuff too, and yeah, I've watched a lot of
Speaker 1: night Trap stuff.
Speaker 2: The best part is when they're explaining in the game
Speaker 2: what the augurs are and the woman says, you know,
Speaker 2: it's a vampire who's been blah blah blah, and one
Speaker 2: of the scat guys is in the background and he goes.
Speaker 3: You've got to be jiving me.
Speaker 1: I'd like see that.
Speaker 3: Oh it was great.
Speaker 2: It was like, was this game made in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: nine or nineteen seventy three?
Speaker 3: It was really confusing. Yeah, like what era it was?
Speaker 1: So you said it was shot on a sound stage
Speaker 1: in Culver City and it took like thirty days almost.
Speaker 3: But he is shooed a ton of stuff.
Speaker 1: Yes, because it was like a two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: page script which is incredibly long. Wow ed who helped
Speaker 1: us out with this one. He points out that a
Speaker 1: two hour movie might have one hundred and twenties page script.
Speaker 3: It's about a minute per page. As the rule of thumb, this.
Speaker 1: Is two hundred and fifty pages for a video game
Speaker 1: that was not very good. Yeah, they didn't have a
Speaker 1: lot of dialogue, but there were a lot of different
Speaker 1: outcomes that happened in one just one particular saint short.
Speaker 1: So if you shot a scene, you had to shoot
Speaker 1: it multiple times to get what you wanted, and then
Speaker 1: you had to shoot those multiple times multiple times for
Speaker 1: each outcome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we should say that the violence in the game,
Speaker 2: like we said, is suggestive for the Augers.
Speaker 3: You don't know, we see anything.
Speaker 2: The only real violence is when the Augers are dispatched of.
Speaker 2: But it is very much a wiley Odie bugs bunny
Speaker 2: sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the definition of cartoonish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like they will be a murphy bed will flip
Speaker 2: them out of a window, or they'll just whow, like
Speaker 2: fall through a trap door.
Speaker 1: The stairs, very like one of the things. If they're
Speaker 1: coming down the stairs, you can trap them by collapsing.
Speaker 1: This cartoon when they fall into the trap like a
Speaker 1: smoke machine pours smoke out of it. It's impossible that
Speaker 1: they weren't going for cartoonish violence. There's no right, of course,
Speaker 1: the producers and directors. Yeah, we're trying to be like
Speaker 1: scary in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 2: But it was shot by Don Burgess, who was nominated
Speaker 2: for an Oscar less than a decade after Night Trap
Speaker 2: for Forrest Gump.
Speaker 3: So they had a real team.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just you know, they didn't, you know, say
Speaker 2: all right, let's go out in the valley and use
Speaker 2: some like a porn crew.
Speaker 3: Sure, just do this thing like.
Speaker 1: They had a real crew, know, and apparently has Bro
Speaker 1: spent depending on who you ask, least a million dollars
Speaker 1: on this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they said one to five in the documentary, so
Speaker 2: they put some money into it, and it is not
Speaker 2: apparent on the screen. The sets look terrible. The the doorways,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you noticed, but any doorway, they
Speaker 2: didn't build the door down to the floor. They built
Speaker 2: the door down to like a one foot tall step over,
Speaker 2: So anytime someone opens the.
Speaker 3: Door, they step over this like one foot tall like
Speaker 3: wooden set.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. I mean the set is. It's basically like
Speaker 1: they could have repurposed it for growing pains or family
Speaker 1: ties or something.
Speaker 3: Mate or no, they probably would have said, like, this
Speaker 3: doesn't look good.
Speaker 1: Right, maybe small wonders. I think they used it for
Speaker 1: small wonder How about that.
Speaker 2: There is no nudity we should point out. But it
Speaker 2: again was never going to be kid friendly. But also
Speaker 2: when you when you will get to the court stuff,
Speaker 2: when you hear how it's described by these senators.
Speaker 1: It's so over the top, it's so over the top.
Speaker 3: Yeah, should we take a break? You don't want to
Speaker 3: take a break.
Speaker 1: No, I'm excited and I'm ready to keep going.
Speaker 2: Let's take a break, all right? Well, I guess we
Speaker 2: should take a break. By saying that Hasbro dumped the game?
Speaker 2: This is a nice cliffhanger. Hasbro dumped the game?
Speaker 1: Well, Hasbro dumped the game or not?
Speaker 3: Chuck, Okay, we'll find out right after this.
Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck, cliffhanger ants er time.
Speaker 2: Hasbro dumped the game because a it wasn't that great,
Speaker 2: But the big reason was because CD Rahm Technology started
Speaker 2: up and they were like, we've got VHS technology and
Speaker 2: we suck a million five into this Turkey, like, let's
Speaker 2: just dump it.
Speaker 3: And that should have been the end of.
Speaker 1: It, not just Night Trap, but the whole Control Vision thing,
Speaker 1: that the whole platform that Night Trap was just going
Speaker 1: to be a game on totally gone. Hasbro said forget it.
Speaker 1: The thing is, the people who worked on designing this
Speaker 1: game said no, no, no, no, Hasbro's being short sighted.
Speaker 1: It's too good this game in particular. Maybe control Vision
Speaker 1: is good. Granted the VHS thing, we're going to just
Speaker 1: forget about that, but this game is too groundbreaking to
Speaker 1: just let die. So they actually went to Hasbro and said,
Speaker 1: how much will you sell us the footage, the code,
Speaker 1: the whole shebang for Night Trap for and the designers
Speaker 1: actually bought the game from Hasbro and took it and
Speaker 1: founded their own company, Digital Pictures.
Speaker 3: Do you know how much they sold it for?
Speaker 1: But now I couldn't find didn't find it either. I
Speaker 1: would guess peanuts. Basically, they probably were like, I don't
Speaker 1: ever want to hear the words night or Trap together again.
Speaker 1: Get it out of here. But these these designers, developers, directors, writers,
Speaker 1: everybody got together formed Digital Pick and bought it and
Speaker 1: started developing Night Track, ironically for CD ROM which is
Speaker 1: the very type of media. Yeah, that killed it in
Speaker 1: the first place.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: By Jim's telling on the documentary, I don't know if
Speaker 2: they were already going CD ROM or if it was
Speaker 2: initiated by Sega. But he got a call, he said,
Speaker 2: out of the blue from Sega, who had their gaming
Speaker 2: system at the time, Sega Genesis and then Sega CD
Speaker 2: was an add on system featuring this new cd RHALM technology.
Speaker 2: And he said, they got a call, They said, hey,
Speaker 2: you want to develop this for CD RAM And he
Speaker 2: probably got a good laugh out about that and the irony,
Speaker 2: and then said sure, because night Trap must live.
Speaker 1: Yes, this guy is dedicated to night Trap living. If
Speaker 1: there's one thing that he wants to keep alive in
Speaker 1: the world, it is night Trap, that's right. So they
Speaker 1: started developing it for CD ROM. It was a step
Speaker 1: up for sure, from what I can tell, like the
Speaker 1: graphics worked a lot better. The problem is is this
Speaker 1: is nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 2: Nineteen ninety two was when it was finally released as
Speaker 2: a CD ROM game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had shot all this footage in the late eighties,
Speaker 1: but it looked like the late seventies. There was a
Speaker 1: big difference between say nineteen eighty eight and nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: Style Wise, it was apparent, visually apparent, and immediately apparent
Speaker 1: to anybody, say, a video game playing age. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: agree that was a big strike against night Trap to
Speaker 1: begin with, But probably the biggest stripe of all was
Speaker 1: that it wasn't a highly playable game. It was not
Speaker 1: a good game, and it probably would have just kind
Speaker 1: of faded away like it sold. I guess enough that
Speaker 1: it qualified as like a not a disaster. They at
Speaker 1: least did more than break even, but it probably would
Speaker 1: have just fallen into the dustbin of history had it
Speaker 1: not been for Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Senator
Speaker 1: Herb Cole of Wisconsin, a couple of Democrats who created
Speaker 1: this crusade about violent video games in I think nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so this very much mirrored if you listen
Speaker 2: to our Satanic Panic episodes and the PMRC and music
Speaker 2: label MPAA m PAA, Like this was all the time
Speaker 2: when everyone was saying, hey, listen, we need to start
Speaker 2: at least labeling the stuff so parents know what their
Speaker 2: kids are doing and just watch a little bit, you know,
Speaker 2: there's all kinds of it was in the Netflix documentary.
Speaker 2: But there's all sorts of stuff on YouTube about these
Speaker 2: hearings where they're talking about the disgusting trash and the
Speaker 2: filth and the hyper violence, and it's like, it's really
Speaker 2: not that violent.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing. They went after Moral Kombat, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which was super violent, it really was. Yeah, And they
Speaker 1: went after night Trap, which was again cartoonish. Not a
Speaker 1: drop of blood spills from a person's body, right, had
Speaker 1: ladies in lingerie one? Yes, Okay, I'm not defending any
Speaker 1: kind of violence against women, of course, not defending objectifying women.
Speaker 1: But Night Trap was unfairly railroaded. Oh yeah, because for
Speaker 1: some reason, I think probably because it was it was film,
Speaker 1: it was people. Like the people were controlling people.
Speaker 2: That was the difference, because there was there were one
Speaker 2: hundred exploitation movies and horror movies by this point, share
Speaker 2: two hundred, yeah, three hundred. It was a thousand times
Speaker 2: worse than this. Yeah, But the fact that you were
Speaker 2: controlling Yet they never said, and they make a big
Speaker 2: point about this in the documentary, like you weren't doing
Speaker 2: the violence, Like the whole point of the game was
Speaker 2: to stop the augurs. That's like you weren't the person
Speaker 2: doing the augur You're preventing the violence.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I guess that's why they call them augurs because
Speaker 3: it was kind of like an augur.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the tool was Yeah, that's what I get tobar.
Speaker 1: What was it called crow car trocar? Yeah.
Speaker 2: But yeah, and they never I mean he Jim Riley
Speaker 2: was like, they clearly never even played the game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, they were talking about the.
Speaker 2: Cover of the thing was lurid. They didn't like the
Speaker 2: cover of the box.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they definitely hadn't played the game. It was
Speaker 1: just impossible from what they were saying happens in the game.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And the big one was like you were saying that
Speaker 1: it it let players carry out sexual violence against women. No,
Speaker 1: you do the opposite of that, right, there's violence that
Speaker 1: is carried out by the augurs if you don't do
Speaker 1: it right, if you if you're not good at the game,
Speaker 1: if you lose, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: But even then, like even in the most disturbing scene,
Speaker 2: which was the one with the lady and the and
Speaker 2: the night looking in the mirror, the augers come in
Speaker 2: behind her and it's for sure creepy looking at first,
Speaker 2: but you know, then they get out the croke Car.
Speaker 2: I can't even remember tro Car and she's like ah ah,
Speaker 2: and it's like the worst B movie. And then they
Speaker 2: just sort of dragger over the threshold of one of
Speaker 2: those doors.
Speaker 1: I would say, gently escorted, yeah, through.
Speaker 2: The doors, like you don't see any of the violence
Speaker 2: even No, it's all just suggested, right, yes.
Speaker 1: But again, Night Trip got lumped in with Mortal Kombat,
Speaker 1: and because of this, because it was very clear that
Speaker 1: the writing was on the wall. The media has a
Speaker 1: really great track record of saying, oh God, if we
Speaker 1: don't come up with a rating system ourselves, right, Congress
Speaker 1: is going to impose it on us. And so they
Speaker 1: came up with the ESRB, the Entertainment Software Rating Board.
Speaker 1: It was an industry created, self imposed rating system that
Speaker 1: was brought about in large part because.
Speaker 3: Of Night Right. So Sega pulls the game.
Speaker 2: Eventually, it became really popular because of these senatorial hearings, right,
Speaker 2: which is what always happens.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's exactly right. It was starting to fade away.
Speaker 1: It would have been lost to history, and then the
Speaker 1: senators came in and we're like's go buy that game.
Speaker 2: Kids wanted to play it, but Sega did eventually pull it.
Speaker 2: Digital Pictures re released it as their own distributor and
Speaker 2: rated it M for mature, And that should have that
Speaker 2: should have also been the end of it, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I should have just kind of went away, especially
Speaker 1: after Sega pulled it, because it got pulled from KB
Speaker 1: Toys and Toys r US because the kids. But like
Speaker 1: you're saying, it was still around, and then when Sega
Speaker 1: pulled it was like you couldn't find it anyway, right,
Speaker 1: that should have been the end. And then in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: Tom Riley, Jim Riley, Jim Jim Riley started a Kickstarter
Speaker 1: and said we're going to resurrect Night Trap. All we
Speaker 1: need is three hundred and thirty thousand dollars. People are
Speaker 1: going to go crazy for this all following Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's going to be the greatest kickstarter in the history
Speaker 1: of kickstarters. And it was not the greatest kickstarter ever.
Speaker 1: It was a really, really bad kickstarter. They had a
Speaker 1: lot of criticism, skeptics, and ultimately only garnered I think
Speaker 1: about forty thousand dollars when they were after three hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty.
Speaker 3: And that was in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that obviously was the end of night Trap, Right,
Speaker 1: that was not.
Speaker 3: The end of night Trap, the bad game that refused
Speaker 3: to die.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In twenty sixteen, there was a video on YouTube that
Speaker 2: showed someone playing night Trap on their telephone on their smartphone,
Speaker 2: and I don't know if it was Jim Riley or
Speaker 2: one of the original devs saw it and was like,
Speaker 2: what is going on.
Speaker 3: You can't play night Trap on a smartphone?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it was never developed that the technology, and
Speaker 2: let's that smartphone is playing a CD that I don't
Speaker 2: know about in the background.
Speaker 3: And they got in touch with the person.
Speaker 2: His name was Tyler Hogle and he was a mobile
Speaker 2: game programmer who followed was a fan of the original
Speaker 2: as like in a cult fan way.
Speaker 1: That's a deep cut at that time, a.
Speaker 2: Super deep cut, and then basically said I'm going to
Speaker 2: get a playable version hacked together for smartphones and did
Speaker 2: it like semi successfully.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So he basically created this just on his own.
Speaker 1: And then once the video surfaced, Yeah, and the original developers,
Speaker 1: Jim Riley and some of the others got in touch
Speaker 1: with them. They said, here, man, here's here's we lost
Speaker 1: the code years ago. No one has any idea where
Speaker 1: it is but we do have original thirty five millimeter footage,
Speaker 1: which is timestamps, which is really critical because you have
Speaker 1: to wait. As we'll talk about how to play it
Speaker 1: in a second. The timing is everything between the video
Speaker 1: and the player's controls. So with the timestamps, Tyler Hogle
Speaker 1: was able to basically create a new modern, twenty fifth
Speaker 1: anniversary edition that just is actually kind of a as
Speaker 1: far as night Trap goes, it's the best night Trap
Speaker 1: that there could possibly be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the twenty seventeen twenty fifth edsh rated
Speaker 2: tea for teens.
Speaker 1: This time still preposterous, which.
Speaker 2: Is funny, And apparently the you know you said he
Speaker 2: lost the code, but he was, that's really easy, Like
Speaker 2: I've got all this footage that's time stamped. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: like I can code this thing in my sleep.
Speaker 1: Basically he basically did. So there's a twenty fifth edition
Speaker 1: of night Trap, which apparently Nintendo has a version of oh,
Speaker 1: which is kind of funny because at the time of
Speaker 1: those Senate hearings in nineteen ninety three ninety four, Nintendo
Speaker 1: famously said they would never allow night Trap on their platform,
Speaker 1: and they did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Nintendo is still sort of known as the
Speaker 2: more family friendly unit.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think they even had a bloodless Mortal Kombat if
Speaker 2: I'm not mistaken, or maybe it was a setting.
Speaker 1: Oh I think yes, it rings a bell. Did you
Speaker 1: see the new Mortal Kombat movie? Did you any I
Speaker 1: have seen zero Mortal Kombat movies. The new one just
Speaker 1: came out on hbox. Is it good?
Speaker 3: That's pretty good? I mean, did you play the game.
Speaker 3: Do you have nostalgia for the game?
Speaker 1: Sure? Yeah, you should watch it.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's good enough.
Speaker 2: It looks good and there's great fights and then some
Speaker 2: nice Easter eggs and it's like the Mortal kom that
Speaker 2: movie that should have been because they made one previously.
Speaker 1: That wasn't that great. Yeah, from the nineties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but this one looks it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, where you rip.
Speaker 2: Out spines and hearts and.
Speaker 3: And the way they do the blood, it looks just
Speaker 3: like the game.
Speaker 1: Is it rated T for teen? It's rated R okay
Speaker 1: because it's a movie.
Speaker 2: But we mentioned that it wasn't that great of a
Speaker 2: game because of the gameplay. One of the biggest problems
Speaker 2: was that you've got all these stories going on in
Speaker 2: these different windows, but you can only kind of control
Speaker 2: one at a time, So when you're controlling one scene,
Speaker 2: other stuff is going on, and we mentioned that makes
Speaker 2: it impossible to follow the actual story.
Speaker 3: That's a problem, so it suffers there.
Speaker 2: But there's also this thing where you have a red light,
Speaker 2: a green light, and a yellow light. And when these
Speaker 2: lights turn on, if it's the right color light, is
Speaker 2: when you engage the trap button, and that's when the
Speaker 2: auger will flip out the window.
Speaker 3: But it has to be timed right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And apparently while you're in these other rooms, if
Speaker 2: you want to follow the story for a couple of minutes,
Speaker 2: they will change the codes, the color codes, right, So
Speaker 2: if you're in another room, they'll be like, the code
Speaker 2: is now green, yes, and you don't know that because
Speaker 2: you're not watching it. So you go back and you
Speaker 2: think the code is red, and so you're losing the game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you have to have the right security code
Speaker 1: activated to activate the traps. Because this is the Martin's
Speaker 1: family's security cameras. The Martin family, the vampires are the
Speaker 1: ones who created the traps. You're just hacked into it
Speaker 1: thanks to your pals at SCAT, right. You're basically freelancing
Speaker 1: for it. But when they change those codes, it doesn't
Speaker 1: show on screen.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The character tells another character to go down to the
Speaker 1: basement and change the code.
Speaker 3: A different screen that you may not be watching, Yeah, in.
Speaker 1: A different room that you can't hear or see or
Speaker 1: anything like that, because you're in the living room and
Speaker 1: this conversation is happening in the kitchen.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: That is not a thing where it's like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: a cool little little little feature, you know, gay part
Speaker 1: of the gameplay that is a maddening ho yes, a bug, right,
Speaker 1: So that's a big part. That's a big problem with
Speaker 1: it as well. And then also you don't have to
Speaker 1: get a perfect you don't have to play a perfect
Speaker 1: game to win. But if any of the augers get
Speaker 1: any of the characters, you lose. If too many augers
Speaker 1: start to accumulate, you lose, and you get yelled at
Speaker 1: by the leader of scat it's kind of funny, he
Speaker 1: gets really mad at you for screwing up. But to win,
Speaker 1: it's you're basically memorizing where to go win, and it happens,
Speaker 1: especially toward the end, really quick, so like you'll you know,
Speaker 1: set off a trap in one room and you have
Speaker 1: to go remember what room you're supposed to go to
Speaker 1: to get the trap set for the next auger, And
Speaker 1: it's not really fun. It gets really intense towards the end,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, hats off to the grabster because he
Speaker 2: actually played this thing and tried to play it, which
Speaker 2: was more than I was willing to do.
Speaker 3: But I did watch the walkthroughs.
Speaker 1: Did you see the night Trap video or the lip
Speaker 1: sync video?
Speaker 3: I did not.
Speaker 1: There's actually a theme song night Trap, look Out behind
Speaker 1: You or something like that that one of the characters
Speaker 1: does an air guitar tennis recket lip sync too wow
Speaker 1: dancing while the other characters have to watch and pretend
Speaker 1: like they're not mortified with embarrassment at seeing this. It's
Speaker 1: really something.
Speaker 3: Oh man.
Speaker 2: I kept waiting in the documentary for a big reveal
Speaker 2: that like George Cline was one of the augurs or something,
Speaker 2: but Dana Plato was about as you know, yeah, a
Speaker 2: list as it got at the time, which was probably
Speaker 2: C list at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you got anything else?
Speaker 3: I got nothing else? Night Trap, go seek it.
Speaker 1: Out, night Trap, look Out behind You.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about Night Trip. You
Speaker 1: don't even have to play. You can just go on
Speaker 1: YouTube and watch basically the movie, and even then it's
Speaker 1: still generally incoherent. But since I said it's still generally incoherent,
Speaker 1: it's time for listener man.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this speed reading trauma. Hey, guys, I
Speaker 2: should start with the obligatory long time, first time, finally
Speaker 2: reason to email, and here I am so hello. I
Speaker 2: didn't think that a short stuff on speed reading, of
Speaker 2: all things, would trigger my first email, but here we go.
Speaker 2: Halfway through the show, I was flooded with a vivid
Speaker 2: memory of speed reading in my elementary school gifted class.
Speaker 2: Speaking of other scams, this was in the early nineties.
Speaker 2: My teacher would drag a transparency with a printed passage, Oh,
Speaker 2: I kind of remember this across an overhead projector at
Speaker 2: increasing speeds, and after each pass we would take a
Speaker 2: comprehension test.
Speaker 3: I had no idea that this was a scam.
Speaker 2: I just thought it was a standard part of the
Speaker 2: curriculum that I wasn't very good at, and I felt
Speaker 2: terrible about it. Then again, in my Louisiana public school curriculum,
Speaker 2: we also had to get a hunting license and shoot
Speaker 2: clay pigeons as part of Louisiana history in middle school.
Speaker 1: I grew up shooting clay pigeons.
Speaker 3: Really for school. No, okay, I would like to try.
Speaker 1: That is cool.
Speaker 3: Skeet shooting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's another way to put it.
Speaker 3: Looks like fun. Just stand behind.
Speaker 2: That's the rule, right basically anyway, Thanks so much for
Speaker 2: the entertainment and education edutainment, especially this past year. I've
Speaker 2: often had you in my ear while I work from
Speaker 2: home to feel a little less solitary. That is from
Speaker 2: Kate Ellis Jensen in Boulder, Colorado.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Kate, that was a good email. Very
Speaker 1: sorry to set off the trauma, but I'm glad that
Speaker 1: it's passed. I'm presuming it passed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I kind of remember that happening, but I certainly
Speaker 2: was not in a gifted class.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like a very fun procedure. It kind
Speaker 1: of sounds like Ray Finds revealing himself to Philip Seymour
Speaker 1: Hoffman and Red Dragon. Oh spoiler, so you see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know I'm.
Speaker 1: Talking about Sure, we've talked about that recently.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the wheelchair and fire scene.
Speaker 1: This rule hilarious but also really funny. If you stop
Speaker 1: and think about it. Sure, that movie just danced on
Speaker 1: the line and sometimes it went over. Agreed. Well, if
Speaker 1: you want to know more about Red Dragon, Oh wait,
Speaker 1: I already said that stuff. If you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with the like Kate did, then you can
Speaker 1: email us like Kate did at Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.