User:The Dunkman/sandbox/Night Trap

"Let me say for the record, I want to state that Night Trap will never appear on a Nintendo System."

- Howard Lincoln, former chairman of Nintendo of America.

Night Trap is a 1992 interactive movie game developed by Digital Pictures and originally published by Sega exclusively for the Sega CD and 32X, Virgin Interactive for the 3DO and Digital Pictures themselves for the MS-DOS and the Mac OS, the game is presented with the use of full-motion video, which was the Sega CD's tactic. Players guide through a camera to watch over the teenage girls who arrived at a house for a sleepover which is haunted by a group of augers and vampires. The main tactic for the game is switch over cameras to check any event happening.

Plot
Lt Simms, the leader of the Sega Control Attack Team (S.C.A.T) (Special Control Attack Team for other versions and remaster) explains to the player that the S.C.A.T was alerted to a mysterious disappearance of five teenage girls who were only seen at the Minery wartin state, whose family consisted of Victor and his wife Sheila, their children Jeff and Sara and nephew Tony, invited the girls for a sleepover reportedly. When questioned by the police, the family denied that they were disappeared, stating that they arrived home safely and refused to let the police research their property.

Eventually, the police then decided to let the S.C.A.T team handle the mystery, where during investigation of the house, they found everything they could find, such as traps, security cameras and an operational unit located from the basement that was made specifically to control the apparatus, the team afterwards then splice an override cable to the control system and connected it to a control panel that is located in the house's back hallway.

Later, five other teenage girls, named Kelli, Ashley, Lisa, Cindy, and Megan, arrived at the house whereas Kelli was disguise by the S.C.A.T team as a teen to keep them a secret from the other girls, who were not aware about her true identity, Lisa's brother Danny is also joined with the girls too, unfortunately, the house was infested by vampire-like beings named Augers who need the urge to survive with the use of blood, it is when during these strange occurrences that the Martin family are in the process of becoming vampires and depending on the players choices, the events and ending would be shown differently.

Gameplay
Night Trap is an interactive movie horror game played from the player's perspective through the use of a monster to track down the augers and see what else is happening to the girls thanks to the instructions given by the police squad in order to find footage occurring in the strange Martin family household, the cameras are located in eight places around the house, such as the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom, the living room, the entryway, the drive way and two other hallways.

Very frequently, when the augers appear onscreen, the player must quickly press a button to trap them in various ways, such as launching them out, a secret library, leading them to a secret area and many others, an undercover agent and member of the team Kelli will provide the player clues during the gameplay, the player must also avoids trapping the teenagers, other house guests and Kelli herself or else the game is over, the player would get a game over if any other character is attacked by an auger.

Players can see the sensor bar which detects an auger entering the area not knowing that the area has a trap next to them or below them, if the color of the bar is red, then the player must trap them or else if the bar is green, then the trap won't be available to use for a short period of seconds, the only way for them to work is to use six correct access codes given to the player and if learned, then they must wait until the speaker is out of the room before changing the codes to a correct color in order to maintain control of the traps, the screen also has counters which shows how many individuals are in the room and how many augers have been captured.

Concept
Demon Attack developer Rob Fulop began working with Atari founder Nolan Bushnell at Bushnell's company Axlon after the 1983 North American video game crash was settled. Another person named James Riley was also involved with Bushnell for a series of interactive video game retail advertisements at the time. He got a call with his neighbor, which just happened to be Rob Fulop that an engineer created a device which to Bushnell's other employees, with one being Tom Zito. For the system, VHS technology was used to produce a movie-like gaming experience and also allowed to simultaneously use four separate tracks to be played. The systems was dubbed the team as "NEMO" (Never Ever Mention Outside).

As Tom wanted to put together many demos to showcase their technology to famous toy company Hasbro, James wanted to present an area where the player can move around freely, thus creating the idea of surveillance cameras. The 1981 play Tamara was the major inspiration according to both Riley and Fulop, as the play had parallel stories running in through 13 rooms, and that the audience would decide on what stories they should follow, the co-creators watched the play for over three times in a weekend in 1985 and they both loved it, due to it's design model, thus creating the basis of an interactive media experience. The game Scene of the Crime was produced as to demonstrate the capabilities of the technology and it's surveillance camera gameplay to Hasbro. The game was a short five minute demo where players must follow suspicious characters that are located in a house who have stolen countless amounts of money. The player can switch cameras in order to follow that specific character to observe their conversations, which is to plot to steal the money, and at the end, the player must pick a character for being responsible for the missing cash. The team then went to Hasbro HQ in December 1986 and then pitched it to CEO Stephen Hasselfield, who was satisfied with the technology alongside 22 other executives and thus gave further support to the game.

Starting the development, the NEMO team then went back for the idea of surveillance cameras, but rejected to make it an even more interactive experience, Tom originally wanted the game to be based off Wes Craven's A Nightmare On Elm Street series, when negotiations fell, Terry McDonell was hired by Zito to write an original script. A team of writers, directors, game designers, and programmers then discussed on how to blend the film's art with interaction from video games. The initial idea was to have Scene of the Crime’s basis to be taken to an extreme by having the million accidentally leaving an extremely large sum of money alone in a large house, which is guarded by a rather state-of-the-art security system. For this concept, the billionaire's daughter would stay in his house with her four teenage friends, but the house later gets attacked by Ninja burglars who wanted to steal the money. However, the game evolved into a more famous vampiric concept (which would later be used in this game), but Hasbro was more concerned that the game would feature "reproducible violence" and would have kids imitating them, so as a result, Hasbro disagreed on having vampires for the game, thus causing the birth of the Augers, a group of creatures that bite or move too quickly, the device that the Augers use to drain human blood was made on purpose to get around Hasbro's censorship.

Production and release
The game was developed for six months and was part of movie shooting and also part of programming. The film was shot in 1987 using 35 mm film in Culver City, California in 16 days, with the editing being done a few months later. Riley was the film's director whereas the director of Photography was Don Burgass of Forrest Gump fame. The set was originally going to be more darker, but due to fears of the game looking more pixelated, the set was then brightened up. The script was rather unusual due to being built around it's multi-linear gameplay. So Riley was focused on trying to time the shoots correctly in order to sync the movement of the actors. Four scenes were simultaneously occurred at any given time albeit having eight rooms (with the other four being still images). Dana Pluto of Diff'rent Strokes fame was involved for being the most well known actor at the time, but her career was spiraling downwards due to her problems with drugs and alcohol. She was initially eager to work on the game, but then become a little bit more problematic, despite Fulop stating that she had no problem and enjoyed working with him. Pluto did a little effort to hide that the game would be a major step down from her previous popularity. The Augers were played by the game's stuntmen and developed a hobbling walk so that they can be prepared to fall down when the traps are dropped on their feet. Alongside filming and editing, the software was also being developed and through developing, the team later realized that their old-fashioned development was hard to do with interactive movies and could not go back to tweak some on-screen elements like inserting newer scenes and had to unfortunately work the video footage that were handed over.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) The main gameplay is fairly uninteresting and sometimes boring to get through, to the point where the gameplay doesn't feel immersive at all and can ever be a bit of a chore at times.
 * 2) * Most of the time, all the player does is watch the eight different security cameras while occasionally pressing a button every so often to switch between cameras or to time the button prompt at the right time to capture the augers, while also trying to keep close attention to make sure not to capture any friendly characters. This doesn't really work that well, as the gameplay never really evolves from the concept later on or tries to do anything different as the game progresses. It mostly sticks to the same area of watching and occasional button pressing.
 * 3) * There is also a bit of waiting involved which not only slows down the overall gameplay but also breaks immersion, in the form of paying close attention for any clues that may help the player out such as a code changing or a warning sign that augers are, as well as waiting for the right moment for the sensor bar to turn red to trap people. The issue here is that many players will easily get bored of this way of playing, as it feels more of an endurance test to see how long you can pay attention rather than a test of the player's overall skill or proficiency with the game mechanics.
 * 4) ** On a similar note, like many other FMV games of the era, it feels more like you are watching a movie rather than playing a video game, since the game is both extremely video heavy while also having the shallow gameplay mentioned above.
 * 5) Despite the somewhat simplistic mechanics, the game can get very difficult throughout, although it is not in a good way or fun way.
 * 6) * The main reason is that a lot of trial and error is required for the player to get even progress a bit through the story. While the player has 8 different cameras to look at the 8 different rooms to see what the augers and other characters are doing, they can only view one screen at a time and doesn't really have much of a clue for what is going on anywhere else, meaning they have to swap between the different camera back and fourth very frequently to see what they are supposed to be doing to catch the augers and eavesdrop.
 * 7) * This is made even more annoying with the color code system, where the color that is needed to be on for the player to activate the traps will be frequently changed, and the player must eavesdrop on characters to hear the new code. This is not only incredibly frustrating but also makes the game more difficult than it should be, as missing the conversation will either lead to the player not realizing what's going on or having to resort to trial and error to find out what the color is, which slows them down a lot and can lead to it probably already being to late in some cases.
 * 8) Very little replay value in the original versions of the game. The game will play out the exact same every time, with no real alternate paths to experience, other than swapping the cameras at some certain parts to hear a conversation that you may not have heard in your other playthroughs. The only other reason to play again would be to try and obtain a perfect score by capturing all of the augers, but even that isn't rewarding in itself other than bragging rights, as there is no reward for doing this, at least not in the original versions of the game (See below).
 * 9) Some of the moments don't even make any sense at all, like the infamous scene where the girls sing the theme song, which feels quite out of place since this is supposed to be a horror-inspired interactive game, despite being a satirical one at that, also, during this part, some augers would enter a room, so if you're watching this bizarre sequence, then you'll most likely miss a few augers, so what's the point of adding a scene that has the girls singing the theme song while also adding a few augers entering a room?!
 * 10) Some scenes which are deemed "too controversial" are still relatively tame by modern standards, for example, the infamous bathroom scene still looks a bit cartoonish and over the top since the augers just sucks her blood by using a machine, when compared to a standard horror movie jumpscare sequence.
 * 11) While they are done on purpose for the sake of trying to give the game a b-movie feel and look to it, the acting is rather mediocre, as some of the actors act rather goofy even when they're acting seriously in a moment that is meant to be rather creepy, like the already infamous scene where one of the girls gets sucked by the augers, which is ruined by the annoying screaming and the acting from the augers themselves, which act like a goofy henchmen from a campy spy film.
 * 12) As typical for an interactive movie game, it's pretty short, as it can be played for about 32 minutes (28 minutes if you don't count the credits), which is very disappointing for a game with full potential, and while other games like Dragon's Lair lasts 12 minutes, this doesn't excuse the fact that the game is shorter than a standard episode of a television series, even other games like Time Gal, which was released prior to Night Trap, ran longer than this, as it lasted for 36 minutes, and was also animated with a lot of effort than this game.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The 25th Anniversary Edition of Night Trap bring some pretty cool features that make the game much more enjoyable.
 * 2) * The player is able to look at all eight camera feeds (Albeit in a much smaller size, making the game more fair) with a main camera feed being shown to give the clearest image, making the difficulty much more fair but still making it challenging, but in more of a good way.
 * 3) * Deleted scenes that were not present in the original are implemented into the original game, giving people who played before a new reason to play again.
 * 4) * Two new game modes are added in. The first is a theater mode where the player can watch the cutscenes they have reached without having to play the game to see them, and the other is a survival mode where the payer has to capture as many augers as possible for a high score.
 * 5) * Many of the game's I nterviews are included to tell of the game's development and impact on the video game industry.
 * 6) The soundtrack composed by Sunny BlueSkyes and Martin Land are admittedly pretty much awesome, as they have a pretty decent use of punk rock like whenever an auger is in the room, and in the part where a random character encounters one of the augers, not to mention, the in-game song "Night Trap" is pretty decent to the point it became an internet meme for it's out of place appearance.
 * 7) The concept of an FMV styled video game parodying B-movie styled films by being purposely campy and using intentionally cheap visual effects while also having purposely done mediocre acting from the actors is a pretty good idea, although it's poorly executed due to the terrible gameplay and feeling more like a movie than a video game in general, in fact, these are the reasons why the game has earned a significant cult following from many people due to being extremely terrible on purpose.
 * 8) As lame as the acting can be, you gotta admit the actors were indeed quite having some fun while playing as their characters, especially the stuntmen, who played the augers, not to mention, some of the actors do give off some good performances, such as Dana Pluto as Kelly, who does a fine job at being a teenage-disguised cop with Jon Rashad Kamal and Marion Starr's characters as the Martins.
 * 9) Surprisingly for a b-movie styled game, a lot of the characters are quite likeable, such as the S.C.A.T team that tasks the player to defend the girls and Kelly, who is an intelligent cop that was disguised as a teenager in order to gather evidence, in fact, not to mention, the Martin family do often steal the show and are pretty funny when you think about it.

Contemporary reception
Upon its original release, Night Trap generally received mixed reviews from critics. One common point of praise was the B-movie style tone and the game's sense of humor, which made the game feel more charming and helped make an effective atmosphere. The quality of the FMV and the game's sound at the time was also praised, although it is seen nowadays as low-quality. Electronic Games magazine appreciated the humor in the game, and felt that it increased the game's overall appeal

Many critics at the time found that the gameplay was Night Trap's biggest flaw for feeling generally boring and not feeling that good to play. Computer and Video Games magazine noted that it was similar to the earlier FMV games like Dragon's Lair for having the same issue of gameplay consisting of timing button taps correctly. Sega Force magazine, who had given the game a positive review for the FMV and tone, also noted that the gameplay was very shallow.

Retrospective reception
In retrospect, Night Trap has gained negative views from both critics and audiences, with most remembering the game for the controversy it caused, and is nowadays considered to be one of the worst horror games, as well as one of the worst video games of all time in general. Even in a few years after release the game was seen as dated and an overall bad game, and is still a controversial subject among gamers. Computer Gaming World in 1996 listed Night Trap as the 6th worst game of all time, calling it the greatest example of a bad FMV game. It was ranked as the 12th worst game ever made by Electronic Gaming Monthly editor Seanbaby in 2001. ''Yahoo! Games'' called it the most controversial game of all time in 2007.

Despite the rather negative reception, the game had earned a significant cult following from many gamers who find the game to be a typical "so bad it's good" game, thus being the reasons why many like the game regardless of it being controversial, the cult following would result the game being re-released in time for the 25th anniversary, the re-release was met with better reviews from both critics and gamers.

Trailers
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Gameplay
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Reviews
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Trivia

 * Dana Pluto, one of the contributors of Night Trap, died in May 8, 1999 of drug overdose.
 * In December 9, 1993, the game was the subject of heavy controversy where the game was criticized for promoting "violence against women" due to the infamous bathroom scene, which caused the then Vice President of Nintendo of America Howard Lincoln to confirm that Night Trap would never be on any Nintendo console as soon as possible, despite this, Night Trap's 25th Anniversary Edition was released digitally onto the Nintendo Switch in August 22, 2018.
 * Alongside Mortal Kombat (1993), the game was often remembered for being responsible for the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board that began in 1994 and is still running to this day.
 * Believe it or not, this game was actually the first game to utilize the security camera system year before another popular horror game popularized it.