WEBVTT - Night Trap: The Video Game Failure that Changed the Industry 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.520 Heart Radio. Hey, you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:16.520 and there's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, there's Jerry 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:22.600 over there being Saley and this is stuff you should know. 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:29.840 Video Obscure lost a video game episode. How did you 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:32.879 hear about this? This is your request? Yeah, so Night 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:35.360 Trap is the game that we're talking about. And I 0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:39.720 heard about this from watching the Netflix documentary series High Score. 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:45.159 Did you netflix and chill while you were watching Jerk? Uh? No? 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:49.479 I Netflix by myself and chilled because Emily wasn't watching this. 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:53.560 That's a different thing. Yeah, this is a different thing. Okay, Um, 0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:57.120 this was a documentary series on Netflix, I think six 0:00:57.200 --> 0:01:01.760 parts that covered the history you have video games. I 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:03.600 can recommend it in one way and that it was 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:06.399 a very light, kind of fun watch, but it is 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:09.680 by no means comprehensive and a little goofy at times 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:13.360 and how they handled some stuff on Night Trap specifically 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:16.200 or like the whole series. But but it was fine, 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:18.760 and it's it's you know, if you're in the from 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:21.840 a certain generation and in the mood for like five 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:25.200 plus hours of a bit of a nostalgia kick. You 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:27.520 could do worse things, but it's not great. Have you 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:30.160 ever seen that documentary I think is King of Kong. 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:35.280 That's one of the best times ever made. I haven't 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:37.320 seen in years. I got to see it again. It's great. 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:39.440 I think our old buddy Josh Berman might have written 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:43.399 the original story that that was osed had something to 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:46.520 do with that. But Night Trap um I learned about 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:50.760 because an episode five they covered when video games started 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:54.560 becoming violent, so Mortal Kombat obviously factored in heavily in 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:58.320 that episode. And then this game called Night Trap. There's 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:00.000 another game I do want to cover on a shorty, 0:01:59.880 --> 0:02:01.920 but the way one of the first l g tv 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:06.040 Q games ever that was really interesting and had a 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:08.640 cool story. What the heck is it called? I can't 0:02:08.680 --> 0:02:11.720 remember now. Um I saw this a couple of months ago, 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:14.120 so it's been a while. Oh what was it? I 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:15.720 can't remember, but it was. It's great and that will 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:17.880 make it for a good shorty. But a really cool 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:21.000 story behind it. But this is Night Trap, which figured 0:02:21.040 --> 0:02:23.760 in as the game that kind of brought about along 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:27.480 with Mortal Kombat, but was really central in forming what 0:02:27.680 --> 0:02:31.840 ended up being the ratings Board for Video Games. I mean, 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:36.400 that's that's almost like understating it. Like this one game 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:41.040 YE paired with Mortal Kombat basically led directly to the 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:44.120 creation of that. Yeah, so that's really why it's notable. 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:46.080 The other thing that made it notable, and we'll get 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:48.920 into all this, was that it was a a live 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:53.680 action as in they shot you know, a little movie, 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:58.400 and that you controlled. Yeah, that sort of control you 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:02.560 could conceivably theory radically hypathetically controlled. Because it wasn't a 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:05.560 great game, but it lives in infamy because of every 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:07.799 because it's a really cool story. I think in the end, 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:10.040 it is a pretty cool story. Um. And the whole 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:14.560 thing starts actually with a play um from the I 0:03:14.600 --> 0:03:17.760 think it was written in one by a playwright named 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:22.639 m John. Oh what's his last name? Okay, I want 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:28.280 to I wanted Chris. Yeah, you don't think so, I 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:31.000 don't know. Maybe, well regardless, he U. He wrote a 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:34.480 few episodes of Due South. What's that? It was like 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:37.000 a show about a Canadian mount he I think, oh, 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:40.120 all right, yeah he wrote this and it was if 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:42.800 you've been to Sleep no More in New York, you 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:47.480 may have the play Tamara to thank because it is 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:50.160 a lot like it's the concept of sleep No More. 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:52.200 As far as I know, this was the one that 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:54.920 like broke that ground, I think so. And the ground 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:59.240 they broke it it's about the painter Tamara day Limplympica, 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:01.960 who have never heard of. She was a Polish painter 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:05.680 who lived in Italy and the Roaring twenties when um 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:08.560 the fascists were starting to take power and she took 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:14.120 no guff from him. Hedonistic, amazing art Deco painter, art 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:18.520 Deco portraitist basically, so her works really interesting. I didn't 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:20.279 know anything about her. I've never heard of her until 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:23.160 this too, but I looked her up. She seemed pretty cool. 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:25.360 But this is a play about her where it is 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:28.479 set on a multi floor building. There are scenes taking 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:31.680 place at the same same time and multiple rooms and 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:34.560 as an audience, remember you can move from one room 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:38.200 to the other, missing out on some stuff, seeing some stuff, interacting. 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:40.919 I mean, it's sleep No More. They I don't know 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:43.880 if they just totally ripped it off or if they said, hey, 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:48.560 it's been you know, thirty years, who's gonna remember Tamara, right? 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:51.000 I think it was like they broke that ground and 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:52.520 once you break that ground and you're going to have 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:54.919 people following your wake. There's probably been other stuff that 0:04:54.960 --> 0:04:56.599 did this, but Sleep No More I think, just got 0:04:56.640 --> 0:04:59.840 so much attention in New York for its run. At 0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:02.160 the might still be going or maybe coming back after 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:04.000 the pandemic. I would like to see that. I would 0:05:04.040 --> 0:05:07.960 love to see Tamara too. But um, this it was. 0:05:08.120 --> 0:05:12.160 It ran in New York, but it started a Toronto 0:05:13.560 --> 0:05:17.680 art festival I think, and then some some producers set 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:18.960 it up in l A. And that's where it had 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:22.600 its longest run, from about the mid eighties to the nineties. Um, 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:25.119 they had this. This just just kept going and going 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:27.120 and going. I was reading an l A Times article 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:30.880 on it. But the reason that it factors into this 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:35.640 because it's basically the basis for this game night Trap, 0:05:35.800 --> 0:05:39.720 where there are different things going on in different rooms 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:44.400 and you kind of cycle toggle between the different rooms 0:05:44.560 --> 0:05:48.080 through security cameras in these rooms to see what's going on. 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:50.640 And while you're doing that, you're missing stuff that's happening 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:53.760 in other rooms in this game, and if you missed 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:57.719 too much stuff, you lose. If you catch enough stuff 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:01.120 and you do everything right and press all the correct buttons, uh, 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:04.680 you win. But that's that's basically how it applies. It's 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:08.560 like this this almost an homage to this play in 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:12.280 video game form, but it's full motion video, meaning it's 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:15.880 like a film or TV show that you vaguely control 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:19.360 or put better, you interact with. Yeah, and the idea 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:21.280 of the game, and we'll get a little bit more 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:23.440 into the development of it in a minute, but it 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:28.560 is basically like a party happening at this house. Um, 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:32.960 young like co ed types, like sorority girls. Maybe. Uh. 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:35.800 It's it's very sort of titillating, and that was one 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:38.360 of the big deals a little bit. I think that 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:41.680 for the time they did for the time I wouldn't say, 0:06:41.800 --> 0:06:44.280 I mean, you got married with children is like ten 0:06:44.400 --> 0:06:48.560 times more titilating. This is very tame, I think. Well, 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:52.880 you know, obviously part of the controversy comes from assaults 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:56.880 on women in the game, understandably, but again we'll get 0:06:56.920 --> 0:06:58.640 to that. It is even tame compared to a lot 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:01.599 of the stuff that was out at the time. Um. 0:07:01.640 --> 0:07:03.719 But what's going on in the game is they are 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:09.200 these um pseudo vampires called Augur's that are the bad 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:13.320 people in this game. And Jim Riley who who conceived 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:16.480 of this game When he had the idea of I 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:19.680 think he was watching security camera a security camera screen 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:22.640 with all these different rooms and it hit him like 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:25.760 what a great idea, And then he saw this play 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:28.160 and he said, we can actually do something like this, 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:31.480 Like what if a user and a game player could 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:34.480 go into any of these views that they want and 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:37.160 if they're missing something, they're missing something it might be important, 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:41.480 but they're in control of the game. Um. And I 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:45.760 mean that's or the story rather right. But again I 0:07:45.800 --> 0:07:49.000 think you really pointed out something important that that was 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:52.640 the concept. In the actuality, they kind of missed the 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:56.200 mark a little bit, yes, Um. So with the game 0:07:56.320 --> 0:07:59.720 the the um It was originally designed as part of 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:04.280 a platform called Control Vision and I think internally it 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:06.680 was called Nemo an e m oh and it was 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:10.600 being created by a company called Axelon, And Axelon was 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:14.560 actually a Nolan video game company name, but it was 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:19.600 a Nolan Bushnell company. After Atari, he founded Axelon, among others. 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:22.119 I think he created five companies at the same time 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:26.200 in parallel using this this incubator um that he had 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:32.120 created and UM, the developers that Exelon started creating a 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:35.480 full motion video HS based we should point out, yes, 0:08:35.600 --> 0:08:39.640 I VHS and to get from one place to another, 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:43.160 rather than this was the breakthrough thing. This is the 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:45.400 thing that made this work, and they did get it 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:50.000 to work. But using VHS tapes you could toggle between 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:56.120 stuff in virtually real time without the VHS player having 0:08:56.160 --> 0:08:59.160 to rewind or fast forward, which would have really just 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:02.560 kind of put the high bosch your whole thing. But instead, 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:08.959 because of the interlacing that that video um uses, they 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:12.800 could actually choose what field to show at what time 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:16.040 and basically switched between them, which was I mean, it 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:18.920 looks archaic, but it's a remarkable technology at the time 0:09:18.960 --> 0:09:22.199 to be able to do that. Yeah, it's still mind blowing. 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:26.760 Like I'm I'm like, I've the vaguely understand how this 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:29.600 actually works. But the fact that they actually got this 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:32.560 to work and had a proof of concept going enough 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:36.959 that Hasbro was like sold, that was a big deal. Yeah, 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:39.560 and this was five. One of their designers was the 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:42.720 legendary Tom Crane who designed Pitfall, one of my favorite 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:45.280 all time games on the Atari. But it was a 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:48.280 good team and they went apparently to these Hamera performances. 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:51.280 They were also inspired by Dragon's Lair. Do you remember 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:53.680 that game? I do. I was never into it, but 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:56.760 I remember watching it just it looked cool. I mean 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:59.719 it was an animation game where it was fully and 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:04.520 made it and use laser disc to project this animated footage. 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:07.240 So it looked awesome. But it was just it wasn't 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:10.480 that great. The gameplay wasn't great. No, but it followed 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:12.880 a story. There was a story that was happening, and 0:10:12.880 --> 0:10:14.800 then every once in a while there's something you had 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:17.840 to do to move the story along as part of 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:19.400 the game, and if you didn't do it right, the 0:10:19.480 --> 0:10:22.480 dragon like turned you into to Ash or something like that. Right. Yeah, 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:25.120 but you're not actually controlling the player, which was the 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:27.880 big difference in these games. The regular game, you're you're 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:30.640 creating a sequence like you're you're doing this and then 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:34.040 sitting back and then hopefully the thing you're hoping to 0:10:34.080 --> 0:10:38.360 happen happens. Now, the thing that differentiates that from Night 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:44.120 Trap is that there was no coherent story. While you 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:46.320 were off doing something that you were supposed to be 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:48.720 doing to win the game, the story kept going on 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:51.319 over here. So you can't follow a storyline that way, no, 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:53.280 which is a big deal and that was a big 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:56.560 differentiator between it and dragons Layer. All right, well let's 0:10:56.559 --> 0:10:58.560 take a little break here. That's a good setup, I think, 0:10:58.600 --> 0:11:00.600 and we'll come back and get more to Night Trap 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:26.479 right after this. All right, so I mentioned the augurs. 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:28.720 We need to explain a little bit about this game 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:30.640 and what it was supposed to be and what it 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:33.920 ended up being, because in the Netflix documentary Jim Riley 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:37.760 basically it's like, well, the first thing they created a 0:11:37.800 --> 0:11:40.560 demo called Scene of the Crime and it was a 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:46.520 detective game, and uh, Hasbro liked it, like I said, 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:49.640 and but they had a big problem because he the 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:53.520 original idea that Jim had was to have ninjas, and 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:55.240 he's like, it'd be great. These ninjas come in, they 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:57.720 got throwing stars, they've got weapons, and they're doing all 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:00.960 this stuff and you can control it and it's it's 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:04.360 super cool. And Hasbro was like, wait a minute, we 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:08.240 can't have what we call reproducible violence. So anything that 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:10.640 a kid like, kids love throwing stars, and we can't 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:13.440 show ninjas throwing throwing stars into people because the kid 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:15.680 will go and do that. You can't have a knife 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:17.439 because the kid can go get a knife out of 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:19.520 a drawer. It's got to be something that a kid 0:12:19.559 --> 0:12:22.640 cannot reproduce. So so they said, okay, well, how about 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:26.000 what if the ninja's turn out to be and I'm sorry, 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:29.920 I know ninja is the plural of ninja. Sorry, what 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:33.840 if they turned out to be vampires? And Hasbro said, 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:37.480 I kind of like where you're going with this, but 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:40.600 kids can still like bite people on the neck. What 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:42.360 I think it came the other way though, I think 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:45.680 that was a note from Hasbro, wasn't I'm pretty sure 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:48.280 they were like, what if they were vampires? And Jim 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:50.800 Riley was like, Okay, I guess I can do that 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:54.120 biting people's necks, and then Hasbro was like, I can't 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:56.480 do that because the kids can bite next to So 0:12:56.760 --> 0:12:59.720 what they found and this is a great metaphor for 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:05.480 the Night Trap overall, what the ninja originally or what 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:08.720 they turned out to be in the end, we're loping 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:13.280 vampires who used what looked like a Ghostbusters pro tom 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:17.960 pack with a caller of the kind that that Arnold 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:20.960 Schwarzeneger was wearing at the beginning of Running Man, like 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:23.640 a clamp sort of yes on the end and that 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:27.559 that is what they used to draw the blood from 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:32.240 the hapless teens who you were in charge of protecting 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:36.319 as night trap. Yeah, so what Hasbro did was they 0:13:36.360 --> 0:13:40.720 noted it to death and neutered it to death because 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:43.360 they said He even was like, all right, I can 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:45.480 do vampires. They can run around and hurt people, and 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:47.679 they said, no, no no, they can't even run around to 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:51.320 scare if they're fast. So they came up with Augur's 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:55.240 who In the game, they're described as vampires who had 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:58.400 been half bled and left to die, so they are 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:03.000 not quite vampires, but they aren't human either, and that 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:06.600 makes them lopy and lumbery instead of being able to 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:09.440 move fast. And if you see them, they look like 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:13.719 they're wearing garbage bags. They're lumbering around. They're drawing the 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:16.920 blood using a troll car. Is what the name of 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:19.720 that thing was. Because it was definitely its own thing. 0:14:19.920 --> 0:14:22.440 It was its own thing, and it's funny. In the documentary, 0:14:22.520 --> 0:14:26.120 Jim Riley was like, in the end, he said this 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:29.440 tro car, which you know, it didn't show it explicitly. 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:31.840 It showed the clamp going around the neck and this 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:35.080 little drill inside of a shaft start and then sort 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:37.920 of moving and then blood being drawn, but it didn't 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:40.280 like going in the neck or anything. But he said 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:41.800 what they ended up with, he said to me, was 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:45.920 something far creepier than a vampire biting someone's net. But 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:48.320 they were like, it's not reproducible though, so it's fine. 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:51.440 And it's also it's weird that Hasbro is so fixated 0:14:51.480 --> 0:14:57.000 on not including reproducible violence because apparently they saw um 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:02.320 Night Trap as a way too interest adults, because they 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:05.880 had apparently found out during focus group testing of seeing 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:09.520 the crime. I believe that the parents who were in 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:12.640 the room or were part of the focus group, we're saying, 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:14.840 like I really kind of like this like a TV show, 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:16.720 but I get to control it because it looked like 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:21.280 something that they understood, and so Hasbro was like, Okay, 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:23.320 this has been like a kid's thing up to this point. 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:26.120 Maybe we can finally crack into the adult market with 0:15:26.160 --> 0:15:30.239 this stuff. So it's weird that they that they kidified 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:33.280 it to death if they were trying to use it 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:36.760 to capture adults, but maybe they were like, it has 0:15:36.800 --> 0:15:40.520 to go both ways in case adults don't like it. Well, 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:42.560 I think in the documentary they make the point that 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:46.080 hasbro was. I think the adults were looming out there 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:48.400 as a possibility, but they were like, adults will never 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:51.720 play video games. So what they really wanted until they 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:54.960 grow up and then continue to play video games. Well, 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:57.400 they really were after was a teenage market which didn't 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:01.040 fully exist at this point, like an old like sixteen 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:04.680 and seventeen year old boys, which is why they put 0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:08.400 sorority girls in like a nighty at a slumber party. 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:10.880 Wasn't all in an effort to sort of TOI late, 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:14.960 you know, people like me right, and it worked like 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:16.600 a charm. I had never heard of it back then 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:19.400 because you just you would play night Trap in Netflix 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:24.400 and chill by yourself. So uh, they actually had to 0:16:24.400 --> 0:16:26.160 shoot this like a movie. You know, they shot it 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:29.720 in Culver City on a sound stage. And what they 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:31.520 would do back then for and you know that there 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:34.040 were more full motion games of the time, and you 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:38.600 would try and cast one recognizable face among this cast 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:41.440 to sort of they called it the anchor, to like 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:43.160 all right, well this has got so and so in it. 0:16:43.600 --> 0:16:45.880 And who did they cast for night Trap? Dane and 0:16:45.960 --> 0:16:50.800 Plato from from Different Strokes. Yeh, Kimberly, who passed away 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:53.800 very tragically. Man, I was reading about her life. She yeah, 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:58.360 hard sad life, very tragic story. Yeah it is. It's 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:00.160 very sad. And they actually went back and rule her 0:17:00.200 --> 0:17:02.440 death is suicide later did you know that. I don't 0:17:02.480 --> 0:17:04.640 know if I knew that. Yeah, she died by suicide 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:09.400 ultimately because she overdoes dug. Yeah, soma, I believe, which 0:17:09.440 --> 0:17:15.320 is like a generic lore tab interesting, which I'm think 0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:17.920 you really have to try, Like, I don't think that's 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:20.760 an accidental thing, which is probably why they did that. 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:24.960 But it was at a family reunion in Oklahoma, which 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:28.360 I'm like, god, man, that's that's just a sad ending. 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:30.840 And her son actually died by suicide as well later on. 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:33.520 I think I knew that, like not super long ago, right, 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:37.760 like yeah. In the two thousand tens, yeah, man, very sad, 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:42.119 but yeah. Dana Plato was cast as that anchor. She 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:46.400 played Kelly, who was a secret agent who was had 0:17:46.480 --> 0:17:49.679 infiltrated the house. She was undercover. Yeah, she's undercover, and 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:51.520 she would talk right to camera and say things like 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:53.240 you've got to get to the other room because the 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:57.560 augers are after whoever married, Yeah, go help her? Um. Yeah, 0:17:57.600 --> 0:18:00.560 and we should say also so that the group of 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:03.240 crime fighters that she was a part of was called SCAT, 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:09.240 the Special Control Attack Team Uh SCAT uh. And then 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:12.040 I don't know if we also said so the people 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:16.120 who own the house had invited this group of teens 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:21.399 that included undercover Dana Plato Kelly, who I which I 0:18:21.440 --> 0:18:25.160 saw admittedly on Wikipedia. This is this is a great 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:28.639 example of night trap being night trap in the in 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:31.359 the credits at the end, Kelly's name is spelled with 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:35.120 a y on the end. In the players the users 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:40.320 hand guide and I that's that's night trap for you 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:44.359 right there. But the family that invited the kids, these 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:47.520 teenage girls out to for a weekend at their house 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:51.960 are actually themselves vampires with teeth everything. They not augurs, 0:18:52.000 --> 0:18:55.439 They're actually people. Know they brought them there for the 0:18:55.440 --> 0:18:58.480 augur right right to source their blood. I guess there 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:00.439 is a pretty funny scene in it. When did you 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:02.959 watch any of it? I watched the whole thing. I watched. 0:19:04.160 --> 0:19:07.720 I think grumpy Gamers did like a play through. Yeah, 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:10.640 they have a full watch their their stuff too, and yeah, 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:13.120 I've watched a lot of night trap stuff. The best 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:15.520 part is when they're explaining in the game what the 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:17.359 augers are and the woman says, you know, it's a 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:19.560 vampire who's been blah blah blah, and one of the 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:22.400 scat guys is in the background and he goes, you've 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:26.199 got to be driving me. Like it was great. It 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:29.200 was like, was this game made in nineteen eighty nine 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:33.119 or nineteen seventy three? It was really confusing, like what 0:19:33.200 --> 0:19:35.399 era it was? So you said it was shot on 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:38.880 a sound stage in in Culver City and it took 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:42.680 like through thirty days almost um, but shoot a ton 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:45.800 of stuff. Yes, because it was like a two fifty 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:49.960 page script, which is incredibly long. Wow ed who helped 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:52.000 us out with this woman? He points out that two 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:55.000 hour movie might have a hundred and twenties page script. 0:19:55.040 --> 0:19:57.480 It's about a minute per page. Is as a rule 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:01.240 of thumb, this is two fifty pages for a video 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:03.679 game that was not very good. They didn't have a 0:20:03.680 --> 0:20:06.639 lot of dialogue, but there were a lot of different 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:10.480 outcomes that could happen in one just one particular scene short. 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:12.359 So if you shot a scene, you had to shoot 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:14.760 it multiple times to get what you wanted, and then 0:20:14.800 --> 0:20:17.280 you had to shoot those multiple times multiple times for 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:21.560 each outcome. Yeah, and we should say that the violence 0:20:21.600 --> 0:20:24.840 in the game, uh, like we said, is suggestive for 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:27.320 the augers. You don't know, we see anything. The only 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:30.480 real violence is when the augers are dispatched of But 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:34.520 it is very much wildly coyote bugs, bunny sort of thing. Yeah, 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:37.320 it's the definition of cartoonish. Yeah, Like there will be 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:40.080 a murphy bed will flip them out of a window, 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:43.200 or they'll just whoa like fall through a trap door 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:45.840 the stairs, very like one of the things. If they're 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:48.600 coming down the stairs, you can trap them by collapsing 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:53.480 the stairs when they fall into the trap like smoke machine, 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:57.960 pour smoke out of it. It's impossible that they weren't 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:02.040 going for cartoonish violence. There's no right. Of course, the 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:06.080 producers and directors we were trying to be like scary 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:08.600 in any way, shape or form. But it was shot 0:21:08.640 --> 0:21:12.280 by Don Burgess, who was nominated for an Oscar less 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:16.119 than a decade after uh Night Trap for Forrest Gump. 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:18.879 So they had a real team. It wasn't just you know, 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:21.640 they didn't you know, say all right, let's go out 0:21:21.640 --> 0:21:26.560 in the valley and use some uh like a porn crew, sure, 0:21:26.840 --> 0:21:29.520 and just do this thing like they had a real crew. No, 0:21:29.640 --> 0:21:32.520 and apparently has pro spent depending on who you ask, 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:35.399 at least a million dollars on this. They said one 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:38.480 five in the documentary, so they put some money into it, 0:21:38.560 --> 0:21:42.000 and it is not apparent on the screen. The sets 0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:45.760 look terrible. The doorways, I don't know if you notice, 0:21:45.840 --> 0:21:49.000 but any doorway, they didn't build the door down to 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:52.800 the floor. They built the door down to like a 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:57.080 one ft tall step over, so anytime someone opens the door, 0:21:57.200 --> 0:22:00.880 they step over this like one ft tall like wooden set. 0:22:01.000 --> 0:22:03.360 That's also I mean the said is it's basically like 0:22:03.600 --> 0:22:06.280 they could have repurposed it for growing pains or family 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:08.560 ties or made or no, they probably would have said, like, 0:22:08.920 --> 0:22:12.359 this doesn't look good. I think they used it for 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:15.760 small wonder how about that? Uh, there is no nudity, 0:22:16.400 --> 0:22:20.000 we should point out. But again it was never going 0:22:20.040 --> 0:22:22.840 to be kid friendly. But also when you when you 0:22:22.920 --> 0:22:24.959 will get to the court stuff, when you hear how 0:22:25.000 --> 0:22:27.639 it's described by these senators, it's so over the time, 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:30.040 it's so over the top. Should we take a break? 0:22:32.000 --> 0:22:33.240