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