May 17, 2025 • 41 mins
In the early 90s a video game was released that changed the industry, despite poor sales and bad game play. That game was Night Trap. In this classic episode Chuck and Josh present that story.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's select,
I've chosen our twenty twenty one episode on night Trap
the video game one of those overlook pieces of pop
culture history about one of those unfortunate pieces of technology
that emerged during a sea change, which made it utterly
out of date the moment it was born. It's a
great story about a not at all great video game,
(00:22):
and I hope you enjoy it. Welcome to Stuff You
Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck
Bryan over there, there's Jerry over there being Sally, and
(00:45):
this is Stuff you should Know. Ye video Obscure Lost
video game episode. How did you hear about this? This
is a your request.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, Trap is the game that we're talking about. And
I heard about this from watching the Netflix documentary series
High Score.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Did you netflix and chill while you were watching that? Jerk?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
No, I Netflix by myself and chilled because Emily.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Wasn't watching this.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
That's a different thing.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yeah, this is a different thing.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
This was a documentary series on Netflix, I think six
parts that covered the history of video games, I can
recommend it in one way in that it was a
very light kind of fun watch, but it is by
no means comprehensive and a little goofy at times, and
how they handled some.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Stuff on Night Trips specifically or.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Like the whole series.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
But it was fine, and it's you know, if you're
in the from a certain generation and in the mood
for like five plus hours of a bit of a
nostalgia kick, you could do worse things.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
But it's not great.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Have you ever seen that documentary? I think it's King
of Kong? Oh, sure, man, that is one of the
best time I've ever made. I haven't seen a year.
They go to see it again.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
It's great.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I think our old buddy Josh Bearman might have written
the original story that that was.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Oh I'm not surprised you had something.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
To do with that.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
But Night Trap I learned about because in episode five
they covered when video games started becoming violent, so Mortal
Kombat obviously factored in heavily in that episode. And then
this game called Night Trap. There's another game I do
want to cover on a shorty by the way, one
of the first LGTBQ games ever that was really interesting.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
And had a cool story. What the heck is it called?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
I can't remember now. I saw this a couple of
months ago, so it's been a while.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Oh what was it?
Speaker 3 (02:41):
I can't remember, but it was.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
It's great and that'll make it for a good shorty okay,
but a really cool story behind it. But this is
night Trap, which figured in as the game that kind
of brought about along with Mortal Kombat, but was really
central informing what ended up being the ratings board for
video games.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
I mean, that's that's like understating it. Like this one game, yeah,
paired with Mortal Kombat, basically led directly to the creation
of that.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, So that's really why it's notable. The other thing
that made it notable, and we'll get into all this,
was that it was a a live action as in
they shot you know, a little movie, right, and that
you controlled, Yeah, that you sort of control, you.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Could conceivably theoretically pathetically control.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Because it wasn't a great game, but it lives in
infamy because of every because it's a really cool story.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
I think in the end, it is a pretty cool story.
And the whole thing starts actually with a play from
the I think it was written in nineteen eighty one
by a playwright named John Oh. What's his last name?
Krasank Okay, I want to say, son, I want to
krisanch Shit, you don't think so? I don't know. Maybe well, regardless,
(03:57):
he wrote a few episodes of Due South. What was that?
It was like a show about a Canadian mountee.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I think, oh, all right, yeah he wrote this and
it was if you've been to Sleep No More in
New York, you may have the play Tamara to think
because it is a lot like the concept of Sleep
No More.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
As far as I know, this was the one that
broke that ground.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
I think so in the ground they broke it.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
It's about the painter Tamara de Olympica, who have never
heard of.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
She was a Polish painter who lived in Italy in
the roaring twenties, okay, when the fascists were starting to
take power, and she took no guff from them, no guff, hedonistic,
amazing art deco painter, art deco portraitist, basically interesting. So
her work's really interesting. I didn't know anything about it.
I'd never heard of her until this too, but I
(04:48):
looked her up. She seemed pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
But This is a play about her where it is
set on a multi floor building. There are scenes taking
place at the same time in multiple rooms, and as
an audience member, you can move from one room to
the other, missing out on some stuff, seeing some stuff, interacting.
I mean it's Sleep No More. Yeah, they I don't
know if they just totally ripped it off or if
they said, hey, it's been you know, thirty years. Who's
(05:13):
going to remember Tamera, right?
Speaker 1 (05:15):
I think it was like they broke that ground, and
once you break that ground, you're going to have people
following your wake.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
There's probably been other stuff that did this, but Sleep
No More I think just got so much attention in
New York for its run. It might still be going
or maybe coming back after the pandemic.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
I would like to see that. I would love to
see Tamra too, But this it was. It ran in
New York, but it started a Toronto Art festival I think,
oh interesting, and then some producers set it up in
la and that's where it had its longest run. From
about the mid eighties to the nineties. They had this
(05:51):
just kept going and going and going. I was reading
an La Times article on it. But the reason that
it factors into this is because it's basically the basis
for this game Night Trap, where there are different things
going on in different rooms and you kind of cycle
toggle between the different rooms through security cameras in these
(06:13):
rooms right to see what's going on. And while you're
doing that, you're missing stuff that's happening in other rooms
in this game, and if you miss too much stuff,
you lose. If you catch enough stuff and you do
everything right and press all the correct buttons, you win.
But that's that's basically how it applies. It's like this
(06:33):
almost an homage to this play in video game form,
but it's full motion video, meaning it's like a film
or TV show that you vaguely control or put better
you interact.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
With, Yeah, and the idea of the game, and we'll
get a little bit more into the development of it
in a minute, but it is basically like a party
happening at this house, young like co ed types like
sorority girls.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Maybe ye.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
It's very sort of titillating, and that was one of
the big deals.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
A little bit. I think this for the time. Yeah,
for the time, I wouldn't say, I mean you got
married with children was like ten times more titillating those
This is very tame. I think.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Well, you know, obviously part of the controversy comes from
assaults on women in the game, understandably, but again we'll
get to that. It is even tame compared to a
lot of the stuff that was out at the time.
But what's going on in the game is they are
these pseudo vampires called augurs that are the bad people
(07:36):
in this game. And Jim Riley, who conceived of this game,
when he had the idea of I think he was
watching security camera a security camera screen with all these
different rooms and it hit him like what a great idea,
And then he saw this play and he said, we
can actually do something like this, Like what if a
user and a game player could go into any of
(07:59):
these views that they want and if they're missing something,
they're missing something it might be important, but they're in
control of the.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Game, right, And I mean that's the story rather right.
But again, I think you really pointed out something important
that that was the concept in the actuality. They kind
of missed the mark a little bit. Yes, So with
the game the it was originally designed as part of
(08:26):
a platform called Control Vision. I think internally it was
called Nemo an Emo and it was being created by
a company called Axelon, And Axelon was actually a Nolan
like video game company name, but it was a Nolan
Bushne old company. After Atari, he founded Axelon, among others,
I think he created five companies at the same time
(08:49):
in parallel. Using this incubator that he had created, and
the developers at axeln started creating a full motion video
VHS based we should point out, yes, I'm VHS and
to get from one place to another, rather than this
was the breakthrough thing. This is the thing that made
(09:11):
this work, and they did get it to work. But
using VHS tapes, you could toggle between stuff in virtually
real time without the VHS player having to rewind or
fast forward, which would have really just kind of put
the kibosh on the whole thing. But instead, because of
the interlacing that video uses, they could actually choose what
(09:38):
field to show at what time and basically switch between them.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Which was I mean, it looks archaic, but it's a
remarkable technology at the time to be able to do that.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Right, Yeah, it's still mind blowing. Like I'm like, I've
they vaguely understand how this actually works, but the fact
that they actually got this to work and had a
proof of concept going enough that Asro was like sold,
that was a big deal.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah, and this was eighty five.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
One of their designers was the legendary Tom Crane who
designed Pitfall, one of my favorite all time games on
the Atari.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
That's a good one.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
But it was a good team and they went apparently
to these Tamera performances. They were also inspired by Dragon's Layer.
Do you remember that game?
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I do. I was never into it, but I remember
watching it and just it looked cool.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
I mean it was an animation game where it was
fully animated and used LaserDisc to project this animated footage.
So it looked awesome, but it was just it wasn't
that great. The gameplay wasn't great.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
No, but it followed a story. There was a story. Yeah,
that was happening, and then every once in a while
there's something you had to do to move the story
along right as part of the game, and if you
didn't do it right, the dragon like turned you into
to Ash or something like that.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Right, Yeah, but you're not actually controlling the player, which
was the big difference in these games.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
For the regular game.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
You're you're creating a sequence like you're doing this and
then sitting back and then hopefully the thing you're hoping
to happen happens. Now, the thing that differentiates that from
Night Trap is that there was no coherent story while
you were off doing something that you were supposed to
be doing to win the game. Yeah, the story kept
(11:15):
going on over here.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
So you can't follow a storyline that way, no, which.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Is a big deal, and that was a big differentiator
between it and Dragons Later.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
All right, well, let's take a little break here.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
That's a good setup, I think, and we'll come back
and get more into Night Trap right after this. All right,
(11:51):
so I mentioned the augurs, We need to explain a
little bit about this game and what it was supposed
to be and what it ended up being, because Netflix
Dementary Jim Riley basically is like, well, the first thing
they created a demo called Scene of the Crime.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yes, and it was a.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Detective game and Hasbro liked it, like I said, but
they had a big problem because the original idea that
Jim had was to have ninjas, and he's like, it'd
be great.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
These ninjas come in.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
They got throwing stars, they got weapons and they're doing
all this stuff and you can control it and it's
super cool. And Hasbro is like, wait a minute, we
can't have what we call reproducible violence. So anything that
a kid like kids love throwing stars, and we can't
show ninjas throwing throwing stars into people because a kid
will go and do that. You can't have a knife
(12:43):
because the kid can go get a knife out of
a drawer. It's got to be something that a kid
cannot reproduce.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
So they said, okay, well, how about what if the
ninjas turn out to be and I'm sorry, I know
ninja is the plural of ninja, Sorry for sure. What
if they turn out to be vampires?
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Right?
Speaker 1 (13:00):
And Hasbro said, I kind of like where you're going
with this, But kids can still like bite people on
the neck.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
I think it came the other way though. I think
that was a note from Hasbro.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Oh was it?
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I'm pretty sure they were like, what if they were vampires?
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (13:15):
And Jim Riley was like, Okay, I guess I can
do that, okay, biting people's necks, And then Hasbro was like,
can't do that because the kids can bite next to.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
So what they found, and this is a great metaphor
for the night Trap overall. Yeah, what the ninja Originally,
what they turned out to be in the end were
loping vampires who used what looked like a Ghostbuster's pro
tom pack with a collar of the kind that Arnold
(13:45):
Schwarzeninger was wearing at the beginning of Running Man, like
a clamp sort of yes, yeah, on the end, and
that that is what they used to draw the blood
from the hapless teens who you were in charge of
protecting Night Trap.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, so what Hasbro did was they noted it to
death and neutered it to death because they said. He
even was like, all right, I can do vampires. They
can run around and hurt people. And they said, no, no, no,
they can't even run around. It's too scary if they're fast. Yeah,
So they came up with augurs who in the game
they are described as vampires who had been half bled
(14:24):
and left to die. So they are not quite vampires,
but they aren't human either, and that makes them lopy
and lumbery instead of being able to move fast. And
if you see them, they look like they're wearing garbage bags.
They're lumbering around they're drawing the blood using a trocar.
Is what the name of that thing was.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Oh, it was okay because it was definitely its own thing.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
It was its own thing, and it's funny.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
In the documentary, Jim Riley was like, in the end,
he said, this trow car, which you know, it didn't
show it explicitly. It showed the clamp going around the
neck and this little drill and so out of a
shaft start and then sort of moving and then blood
being drawn. But it doesn't like going in the neck
or anything. No, but he said what they ended up with,
he said to me, was something far creepier than a
(15:10):
vampire biting someone's neck. Sure, but they were like, it's
not reproducible though, so it's fine.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
And it's also it's weird that Hasbro was so fixated
on not including reproducible violence because apparently they saw night
Trap as a way to interest adults, right, because they
had apparently found out during focus group testing of Seen
in the Crime. I believe that the parents who were
(15:36):
in the room or were part of the focus group
were saying, like, I really kind of liked this. It's
like a TV show, but I get.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
To contry it because it looked like something that they understood.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Right, Yeah, and so Hasbro was like, oh, okay, this
has been like a kid's thing up to this point.
Maybe we can finally crack into the adult market with
this stuff. So it's weird that they that they kidified
it to death if they were trying to use it
to capture adults, but maybe they were like, it has
to go both ways in case adults don't like it.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Well, I think in the documentary they make the point
that Hasbro was I think the adults were looming out
there as a possibility, but they were like.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Adults will never play video games.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
So what they really wanted until they grow up and
then continue to.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Play video games.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Well, they really were after was a teenage market, which
didn't fully exist at this point. Gotcha like an old
like sixteen and seventeen year old boys, which is why
they put sorority girls in. Like a nighty at a
slumber party was an all in an effort to sort
of titillate, you know, people.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Like me, right, and it worked like a charm.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
I had never heard of it back then, because you just.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
You would play night trap in Netflix and chill by yourself.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
So they actually had to shoot this like a movie,
you know. They shot it in Culver City on a
sound stage. And what they would do back then for
and there were more full motion games of the time,
and you would try and cast one recognizable face among
this cast just sort of they called it the anchor
to like, all right, well this has got so and
so in it.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
And who did they cast for Night Trap?
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Dana Plato from from Different Strokes. Kimberly. Yeah, Kimberly who
passed away very tragically. Man, I was reading about her life.
She had a hard, sad life.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Man, very tragic story.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yeah, it is. It's very sad. And they actually went
back and ruled their death of suicide later. Did you
know that. I don't know if I knew that. Yeah,
she died by suicide ultimately because she overdosed the like
drugs or yeah, soma, I believe, which is like a
generic lore tab interesting, which I think you really have
to try. Like, I don't think that's an accidental thing,
(17:46):
which is probably why they did that. But it was
at a family reunion in Oklahoma, Wow, which I'm like, God, man,
that's that's just a sad ending. And her son actually
died by suicide.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Later, No, I think I knew that, like not super
long ago, right.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Like yeah, in the twenty tens, yeah, oh.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Man, very sad, but yeah. Dana Plato was cast as
that anchor. She played Kelly, who was a secret agent
who had infiltrated the house.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
She was undercover.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Yeah, she's undercover.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
And she would talk right to camera and say things
like you've got to get to the other room because
the augurs are after whoever mayor helper, Yeah, go help her.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah, and we should say also, so the group of
crime fighters that she was a part of was called SCAT. Yeah,
the Special Control Attack Team SCAT. And then I don't
know if we also said so the people who own
the house had invited this group of teens that included
undercover Dana Plato Kelly, who which I saw admittedly on Wikipedia.
(18:51):
This is a great example of night trap being night
trap in the In the credits at the end, Kelly's
name is spelled with a y on the end. In
the players the user's hand guide and deny tonight. Yeah,
that's night trap for you right there. But the family
that invited the kids, these teenage girls out for a
(19:13):
weekend at their house are actually themselves vampires with teeth everything,
not augurs.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
They're actually they don't attack people.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
No, they brought them there for the augurs.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Right right right to source their blood. I guess there
is a pretty funny scene in it. When did you
watch any of it?
Speaker 1 (19:28):
I watched the whole thing. I watched. I think Crumpy
Gamers did like a playthrough.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Yeah, they have a full I watched.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
There's stuff too, and yeah, I've watched a lot of
night Trap stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
The best part is when they're explaining in the game
what the augurs are and the woman says, you know,
it's a vampire who's been blah blah blah, and one
of the scat guys is in the background and he goes.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
You've got to be jiving me.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
I'd like see that.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Oh it was great.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
It was like, was this game made in nineteen eighty
nine or nineteen seventy three?
Speaker 3 (19:58):
It was really confusing. Yeah, like what era it was?
Speaker 1 (20:01):
So you said it was shot on a sound stage
in Culver City and it took like thirty days almost.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
But he is shooed a ton of stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yes, because it was like a two hundred and fifty
page script which is incredibly long. Wow ed who helped
us out with this one. He points out that a
two hour movie might have one hundred and twenties page script.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
It's about a minute per page. As the rule of thumb, this.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Is two hundred and fifty pages for a video game
that was not very good. Yeah, they didn't have a
lot of dialogue, but there were a lot of different
outcomes that happened in one just one particular saint short.
So if you shot a scene, you had to shoot
it multiple times to get what you wanted, and then
you had to shoot those multiple times multiple times for
each outcome.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Yeah, and we should say that the violence in the game,
like we said, is suggestive for the Augers.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
You don't know, we see anything.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
The only real violence is when the Augers are dispatched of.
But it is very much a wiley Odie bugs bunny
sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah, it's the definition of cartoonish.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, Like they will be a murphy bed will flip
them out of a window, or they'll just whow, like
fall through a trap door.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
The stairs, very like one of the things. If they're
coming down the stairs, you can trap them by collapsing.
This cartoon when they fall into the trap like a
smoke machine pours smoke out of it. It's impossible that
they weren't going for cartoonish violence. There's no right, of course,
the producers and directors. Yeah, we're trying to be like
(21:32):
scary in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
But it was shot by Don Burgess, who was nominated
for an Oscar less than a decade after Night Trap
for Forrest Gump.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
So they had a real team.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
It wasn't just you know, they didn't, you know, say
all right, let's go out in the valley and use
some like a porn crew.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Sure, just do this thing like.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
They had a real crew, know, and apparently has Bro
spent depending on who you ask, least a million dollars
on this.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yeah, they said one to five in the documentary, so
they put some money into it, and it is not
apparent on the screen. The sets look terrible. The the doorways,
I don't know if you noticed, but any doorway, they
didn't build the door down to the floor. They built
the door down to like a one foot tall step over,
(22:22):
So anytime someone opens the.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Door, they step over this like one foot tall like
wooden set.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
That's awesome. I mean the set is. It's basically like
they could have repurposed it for growing pains or family
ties or something.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Mate or no, they probably would have said, like, this
doesn't look good.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Right, maybe small wonders. I think they used it for
small wonder How about that.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
There is no nudity we should point out. But it
again was never going to be kid friendly. But also
when you when you will get to the court stuff,
when you hear how it's described by these senators.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
It's so over the top, it's so over the top.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Yeah, should we take a break? You don't want to
take a break.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
No, I'm excited and I'm ready to keep going.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Let's take a break, all right? Well, I guess we
should take a break. By saying that Hasbro dumped the game?
This is a nice cliffhanger. Hasbro dumped the game?
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Well, Hasbro dumped the game or not?
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Chuck, Okay, we'll find out right after this.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Okay, Chuck, cliffhanger ants er time.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Hasbro dumped the game because a it wasn't that great,
But the big reason was because CD Rahm Technology started
up and they were like, we've got VHS technology and
we suck a million five into this Turkey, like, let's
just dump it.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
And that should have been the end of.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
It, not just Night Trap, but the whole Control Vision thing,
that the whole platform that Night Trap was just going
to be a game on totally gone. Hasbro said forget it.
The thing is, the people who worked on designing this
game said no, no, no, no, Hasbro's being short sighted.
It's too good this game in particular. Maybe control Vision
(24:20):
is good. Granted the VHS thing, we're going to just
forget about that, but this game is too groundbreaking to
just let die. So they actually went to Hasbro and said,
how much will you sell us the footage, the code,
the whole shebang for Night Trap for and the designers
actually bought the game from Hasbro and took it and
founded their own company, Digital Pictures.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Do you know how much they sold it for?
Speaker 1 (24:43):
But now I couldn't find didn't find it either. I
would guess peanuts. Basically, they probably were like, I don't
ever want to hear the words night or Trap together again.
Get it out of here. But these these designers, developers, directors, writers,
everybody got together formed Digital Pick and bought it and
started developing Night Track, ironically for CD ROM which is
(25:06):
the very type of media. Yeah, that killed it in
the first place.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
By Jim's telling on the documentary, I don't know if
they were already going CD ROM or if it was
initiated by Sega. But he got a call, he said,
out of the blue from Sega, who had their gaming
system at the time, Sega Genesis and then Sega CD
was an add on system featuring this new cd RHALM technology.
(25:35):
And he said, they got a call, They said, hey,
you want to develop this for CD RAM And he
probably got a good laugh out about that and the irony,
and then said sure, because night Trap must live.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Yes, this guy is dedicated to night Trap living. If
there's one thing that he wants to keep alive in
the world, it is night Trap, that's right. So they
started developing it for CD ROM. It was a step
up for sure, from what I can tell, like the
graphics worked a lot better. The problem is is this
is nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Nineteen ninety two was when it was finally released as
a CD ROM game.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yeah, they had shot all this footage in the late eighties,
but it looked like the late seventies. There was a
big difference between say nineteen eighty eight and nineteen ninety two.
Style Wise, it was apparent, visually apparent, and immediately apparent
to anybody, say, a video game playing age. Yeah, I
agree that was a big strike against night Trap to
begin with, But probably the biggest stripe of all was
(26:35):
that it wasn't a highly playable game. It was not
a good game, and it probably would have just kind
of faded away like it sold. I guess enough that
it qualified as like a not a disaster. They at
least did more than break even, but it probably would
have just fallen into the dustbin of history had it
(26:56):
not been for Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Senator
Herb Cole of Wisconsin, a couple of Democrats who created
this crusade about violent video games in I think nineteen
ninety three.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Yeah, and so this very much mirrored if you listen
to our Satanic Panic episodes and the PMRC and music
label MPAA m PAA, Like this was all the time
when everyone was saying, hey, listen, we need to start
at least labeling the stuff so parents know what their
kids are doing and just watch a little bit, you know,
(27:32):
there's all kinds of it was in the Netflix documentary.
But there's all sorts of stuff on YouTube about these
hearings where they're talking about the disgusting trash and the
filth and the hyper violence, and it's like, it's really
not that violent.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
So here's the thing. They went after Moral Kombat, Yeah,
which was super violent, it really was. Yeah, And they
went after night Trap, which was again cartoonish. Not a
drop of blood spills from a person's body, right, had
ladies in lingerie one? Yes, Okay, I'm not defending any
(28:05):
kind of violence against women, of course, not defending objectifying women.
But Night Trap was unfairly railroaded. Oh yeah, because for
some reason, I think probably because it was it was film,
it was people. Like the people were controlling people.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
That was the difference, because there was there were one
hundred exploitation movies and horror movies by this point, share
two hundred, yeah, three hundred. It was a thousand times
worse than this. Yeah, But the fact that you were
controlling Yet they never said, and they make a big
point about this in the documentary, like you weren't doing
(28:47):
the violence, Like the whole point of the game was
to stop the augurs. That's like you weren't the person
doing the augur You're preventing the violence.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Yeah. I guess that's why they call them augurs because
it was kind of like an augur.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, yeah, the tool was Yeah, that's what I get tobar.
What was it called crow car trocar? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
But yeah, and they never I mean he Jim Riley
was like, they clearly never even played the game.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yeah, no, they were talking about the.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Cover of the thing was lurid. They didn't like the
cover of the box.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, yeah, they definitely hadn't played the game. It was
just impossible from what they were saying happens in the game.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
And the big one was like you were saying that
it it let players carry out sexual violence against women. No,
you do the opposite of that, right, there's violence that
is carried out by the augurs if you don't do
it right, if you if you're not good at the game,
if you lose, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
But even then, like even in the most disturbing scene,
which was the one with the lady and the and
the night looking in the mirror, the augers come in
behind her and it's for sure creepy looking at first,
but you know, then they get out the croke Car.
I can't even remember tro Car and she's like ah ah,
and it's like the worst B movie. And then they
(29:59):
just sort of dragger over the threshold of one of
those doors.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
I would say, gently escorted, yeah, through.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
The doors, like you don't see any of the violence
even No, it's all just suggested, right, yes.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
But again, Night Trip got lumped in with Mortal Kombat,
and because of this, because it was very clear that
the writing was on the wall. The media has a
really great track record of saying, oh God, if we
don't come up with a rating system ourselves, right, Congress
is going to impose it on us. And so they
came up with the ESRB, the Entertainment Software Rating Board.
(30:35):
It was an industry created, self imposed rating system that
was brought about in large part because.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
Of Night Right. So Sega pulls the game.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Eventually, it became really popular because of these senatorial hearings, right,
which is what always happens.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yes, it's exactly right. It was starting to fade away.
It would have been lost to history, and then the
senators came in and we're like's go buy that game.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Kids wanted to play it, but Sega did eventually pull it.
Digital Pictures re released it as their own distributor and
rated it M for mature, And that should have that
should have also been the end of it, right.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah, I should have just kind of went away, especially
after Sega pulled it, because it got pulled from KB
Toys and Toys r US because the kids. But like
you're saying, it was still around, and then when Sega
pulled it was like you couldn't find it anyway, right,
that should have been the end. And then in twenty fourteen,
Tom Riley, Jim Riley, Jim Jim Riley started a Kickstarter
(31:40):
and said we're going to resurrect Night Trap. All we
need is three hundred and thirty thousand dollars. People are
going to go crazy for this all following Yeah, yeah,
it's going to be the greatest kickstarter in the history
of kickstarters. And it was not the greatest kickstarter ever.
It was a really, really bad kickstarter. They had a
lot of criticism, skeptics, and ultimately only garnered I think
(32:02):
about forty thousand dollars when they were after three hundred
and thirty.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
And that was in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Yeah, so that obviously was the end of night Trap, Right,
that was not.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
The end of night Trap, the bad game that refused
to die.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
In twenty sixteen, there was a video on YouTube that
showed someone playing night Trap on their telephone on their smartphone,
and I don't know if it was Jim Riley or
one of the original devs saw it and was like,
what is going on.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
You can't play night Trap on a smartphone?
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Yeah, because it was never developed that the technology, and
let's that smartphone is playing a CD that I don't
know about in the background.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
And they got in touch with the person.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
His name was Tyler Hogle and he was a mobile
game programmer who followed was a fan of the original
as like in a cult fan way.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
That's a deep cut at that time, a.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Super deep cut, and then basically said I'm going to
get a playable version hacked together for smartphones and did
it like semi successfully.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yeah. So he basically created this just on his own.
And then once the video surfaced, Yeah, and the original developers,
Jim Riley and some of the others got in touch
with them. They said, here, man, here's here's we lost
the code years ago. No one has any idea where
it is but we do have original thirty five millimeter footage,
(33:22):
which is timestamps, which is really critical because you have
to wait. As we'll talk about how to play it
in a second. The timing is everything between the video
and the player's controls. So with the timestamps, Tyler Hogle
was able to basically create a new modern, twenty fifth
anniversary edition that just is actually kind of a as
(33:44):
far as night Trap goes, it's the best night Trap
that there could possibly be.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Yeah, that was the twenty seventeen twenty fifth edsh rated
tea for teens.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
This time still preposterous, which.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Is funny, And apparently the you know you said he
lost the code, but he was, that's really easy, Like
I've got all this footage that's time stamped. Yeah, it's
like I can code this thing in my sleep.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Basically he basically did. So there's a twenty fifth edition
of night Trap, which apparently Nintendo has a version of oh,
which is kind of funny because at the time of
those Senate hearings in nineteen ninety three ninety four, Nintendo
famously said they would never allow night Trap on their platform,
(34:26):
and they did.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, and Nintendo is still sort of known as the
more family friendly unit.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
I think they even had a bloodless Mortal Kombat if
I'm not mistaken, or maybe it was a setting.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Oh I think yes, it rings a bell. Did you
see the new Mortal Kombat movie? Did you any I
have seen zero Mortal Kombat movies. The new one just
came out on hbox. Is it good?
Speaker 3 (34:48):
That's pretty good? I mean, did you play the game.
Do you have nostalgia for the game?
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Sure? Yeah, you should watch it.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Okay, it's good enough.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
It looks good and there's great fights and then some
nice Easter eggs and it's like the Mortal kom that
movie that should have been because they made one previously.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
That wasn't that great. Yeah, from the nineties.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Yeah, but this one looks it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Okay, okay, where you rip.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Out spines and hearts and.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
And the way they do the blood, it looks just
like the game.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Is it rated T for teen? It's rated R okay
because it's a movie.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
But we mentioned that it wasn't that great of a
game because of the gameplay. One of the biggest problems
was that you've got all these stories going on in
these different windows, but you can only kind of control
one at a time, So when you're controlling one scene,
other stuff is going on, and we mentioned that makes
(35:40):
it impossible to follow the actual story.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
That's a problem, so it suffers there.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
But there's also this thing where you have a red light,
a green light, and a yellow light. And when these
lights turn on, if it's the right color light, is
when you engage the trap button, and that's when the
auger will flip out the window.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
But it has to be timed right.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Yeah, And apparently while you're in these other rooms, if
you want to follow the story for a couple of minutes,
they will change the codes, the color codes, right, So
if you're in another room, they'll be like, the code
is now green, yes, and you don't know that because
you're not watching it. So you go back and you
think the code is red, and so you're losing the game.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Yeah, because you have to have the right security code
activated to activate the traps. Because this is the Martin's
family's security cameras. The Martin family, the vampires are the
ones who created the traps. You're just hacked into it
thanks to your pals at SCAT, right. You're basically freelancing
for it. But when they change those codes, it doesn't
(36:38):
show on screen.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Right.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
The character tells another character to go down to the
basement and change the code.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
A different screen that you may not be watching, Yeah, in.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
A different room that you can't hear or see or
anything like that, because you're in the living room and
this conversation is happening in the kitchen.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
That is not a thing where it's like, oh, that's
a cool little little little feature, you know, gay part
of the gameplay that is a maddening ho yes, a bug, right,
So that's a big part. That's a big problem with
it as well. And then also you don't have to
get a perfect you don't have to play a perfect
game to win. But if any of the augers get
(37:15):
any of the characters, you lose. If too many augers
start to accumulate, you lose, and you get yelled at
by the leader of scat it's kind of funny, he
gets really mad at you for screwing up. But to win,
it's you're basically memorizing where to go win, and it happens,
especially toward the end, really quick, so like you'll you know,
(37:38):
set off a trap in one room and you have
to go remember what room you're supposed to go to
to get the trap set for the next auger, And
it's not really fun. It gets really intense towards the end,
but not necessarily fun.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yeah, I mean, hats off to the grabster because he
actually played this thing and tried to play it, which
was more than I was willing to do.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
But I did watch the walkthroughs.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Did you see the night Trap video or the lip
sync video?
Speaker 3 (38:03):
I did not.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
There's actually a theme song night Trap, look Out behind
You or something like that that one of the characters
does an air guitar tennis recket lip sync too wow
dancing while the other characters have to watch and pretend
like they're not mortified with embarrassment at seeing this. It's
really something.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Oh man.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
I kept waiting in the documentary for a big reveal
that like George Cline was one of the augurs or something,
but Dana Plato was about as you know, yeah, a
list as it got at the time, which was probably
C list at the time.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Yeah, yeah, you got anything else?
Speaker 3 (38:37):
I got nothing else? Night Trap, go seek it.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Out, night Trap, look Out behind You.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
If you want to know more about Night Trip. You
don't even have to play. You can just go on
YouTube and watch basically the movie, and even then it's
still generally incoherent. But since I said it's still generally incoherent,
it's time for listener man.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
I'm gonna call this speed reading trauma. Hey, guys, I
should start with the obligatory long time, first time, finally
reason to email, and here I am so hello. I
didn't think that a short stuff on speed reading, of
all things, would trigger my first email, but here we go.
Halfway through the show, I was flooded with a vivid
memory of speed reading in my elementary school gifted class.
Speaking of other scams, this was in the early nineties.
(39:22):
My teacher would drag a transparency with a printed passage, Oh,
I kind of remember this across an overhead projector at
increasing speeds, and after each pass we would take a
comprehension test.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
I had no idea that this was a scam.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
I just thought it was a standard part of the
curriculum that I wasn't very good at, and I felt
terrible about it. Then again, in my Louisiana public school curriculum,
we also had to get a hunting license and shoot
clay pigeons as part of Louisiana history in middle school.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
I grew up shooting clay pigeons.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Really for school. No, okay, I would like to try.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
That is cool.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Skeet shooting.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Yeah, that's another way to put it.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Looks like fun. Just stand behind.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
That's the rule, right basically anyway, Thanks so much for
the entertainment and education edutainment, especially this past year. I've
often had you in my ear while I work from
home to feel a little less solitary. That is from
Kate Ellis Jensen in Boulder, Colorado.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Thanks a lot, Kate, that was a good email. Very
sorry to set off the trauma, but I'm glad that
it's passed. I'm presuming it passed.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah, I kind of remember that happening, but I certainly
was not in a gifted class.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
It doesn't sound like a very fun procedure. It kind
of sounds like Ray Finds revealing himself to Philip Seymour
Hoffman and Red Dragon. Oh spoiler, so you see.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Yeah, you know I'm.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Talking about Sure, we've talked about that recently.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Yeah, the wheelchair and fire scene.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
This rule hilarious but also really funny. If you stop
and think about it. Sure, that movie just danced on
the line and sometimes it went over. Agreed. Well, if
you want to know more about Red Dragon, Oh wait,
I already said that stuff. If you want to get
in touch with the like Kate did, then you can
email us like Kate did at Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
(41:07):
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's select,
I've chosen our twenty twenty one episode on night Trap
the video game one of those overlook pieces of pop
culture history about one of those unfortunate pieces of technology
that emerged during a sea change, which made it utterly
out of date the moment it was born. It's a
great story about a not at all great video game,
(00:22):
and I hope you enjoy it. Welcome to Stuff You
Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck
Bryan over there, there's Jerry over there being Sally, and
(00:45):
this is Stuff you should Know. Ye video Obscure Lost
video game episode. How did you hear about this? This
is a your request.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, Trap is the game that we're talking about. And
I heard about this from watching the Netflix documentary series
High Score.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Did you netflix and chill while you were watching that? Jerk?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
No, I Netflix by myself and chilled because Emily.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Wasn't watching this.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
That's a different thing.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yeah, this is a different thing.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
This was a documentary series on Netflix, I think six
parts that covered the history of video games, I can
recommend it in one way in that it was a
very light kind of fun watch, but it is by
no means comprehensive and a little goofy at times, and
how they handled some.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Stuff on Night Trips specifically or.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Like the whole series.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
But it was fine, and it's you know, if you're
in the from a certain generation and in the mood
for like five plus hours of a bit of a
nostalgia kick, you could do worse things.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
But it's not great.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Have you ever seen that documentary? I think it's King
of Kong? Oh, sure, man, that is one of the
best time I've ever made. I haven't seen a year.
They go to see it again.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
It's great.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I think our old buddy Josh Bearman might have written
the original story that that was.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Oh I'm not surprised you had something.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
To do with that.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
But Night Trap I learned about because in episode five
they covered when video games started becoming violent, so Mortal
Kombat obviously factored in heavily in that episode. And then
this game called Night Trap. There's another game I do
want to cover on a shorty by the way, one
of the first LGTBQ games ever that was really interesting.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
And had a cool story. What the heck is it called?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
I can't remember now. I saw this a couple of
months ago, so it's been a while.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Oh what was it?
Speaker 3 (02:41):
I can't remember, but it was.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
It's great and that'll make it for a good shorty okay,
but a really cool story behind it. But this is
night Trap, which figured in as the game that kind
of brought about along with Mortal Kombat, but was really
central informing what ended up being the ratings board for
video games.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
I mean, that's that's like understating it. Like this one game, yeah,
paired with Mortal Kombat, basically led directly to the creation
of that.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, So that's really why it's notable. The other thing
that made it notable, and we'll get into all this,
was that it was a a live action as in
they shot you know, a little movie, right, and that
you controlled, Yeah, that you sort of control, you.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Could conceivably theoretically pathetically control.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Because it wasn't a great game, but it lives in
infamy because of every because it's a really cool story.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
I think in the end, it is a pretty cool story.
And the whole thing starts actually with a play from
the I think it was written in nineteen eighty one
by a playwright named John Oh. What's his last name?
Krasank Okay, I want to say, son, I want to
krisanch Shit, you don't think so? I don't know. Maybe well, regardless,
(03:57):
he wrote a few episodes of Due South. What was that?
It was like a show about a Canadian mountee.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I think, oh, all right, yeah he wrote this and
it was if you've been to Sleep No More in
New York, you may have the play Tamara to think
because it is a lot like the concept of Sleep
No More.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
As far as I know, this was the one that
broke that ground.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
I think so in the ground they broke it.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
It's about the painter Tamara de Olympica, who have never
heard of.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
She was a Polish painter who lived in Italy in
the roaring twenties, okay, when the fascists were starting to
take power, and she took no guff from them, no guff, hedonistic,
amazing art deco painter, art deco portraitist, basically interesting. So
her work's really interesting. I didn't know anything about it.
I'd never heard of her until this too, but I
(04:48):
looked her up. She seemed pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
But This is a play about her where it is
set on a multi floor building. There are scenes taking
place at the same time in multiple rooms, and as
an audience member, you can move from one room to
the other, missing out on some stuff, seeing some stuff, interacting.
I mean it's Sleep No More. Yeah, they I don't
know if they just totally ripped it off or if
they said, hey, it's been you know, thirty years. Who's
(05:13):
going to remember Tamera, right?
Speaker 1 (05:15):
I think it was like they broke that ground, and
once you break that ground, you're going to have people
following your wake.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
There's probably been other stuff that did this, but Sleep
No More I think just got so much attention in
New York for its run. It might still be going
or maybe coming back after the pandemic.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
I would like to see that. I would love to
see Tamra too, But this it was. It ran in
New York, but it started a Toronto Art festival I think,
oh interesting, and then some producers set it up in
la and that's where it had its longest run. From
about the mid eighties to the nineties. They had this
(05:51):
just kept going and going and going. I was reading
an La Times article on it. But the reason that
it factors into this is because it's basically the basis
for this game Night Trap, where there are different things
going on in different rooms and you kind of cycle
toggle between the different rooms through security cameras in these
(06:13):
rooms right to see what's going on. And while you're
doing that, you're missing stuff that's happening in other rooms
in this game, and if you miss too much stuff,
you lose. If you catch enough stuff and you do
everything right and press all the correct buttons, you win.
But that's that's basically how it applies. It's like this
(06:33):
almost an homage to this play in video game form,
but it's full motion video, meaning it's like a film
or TV show that you vaguely control or put better
you interact.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
With, Yeah, and the idea of the game, and we'll
get a little bit more into the development of it
in a minute, but it is basically like a party
happening at this house, young like co ed types like
sorority girls.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Maybe ye.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
It's very sort of titillating, and that was one of
the big deals.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
A little bit. I think this for the time. Yeah,
for the time, I wouldn't say, I mean you got
married with children was like ten times more titillating those
This is very tame. I think.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Well, you know, obviously part of the controversy comes from
assaults on women in the game, understandably, but again we'll
get to that. It is even tame compared to a
lot of the stuff that was out at the time.
But what's going on in the game is they are
these pseudo vampires called augurs that are the bad people
(07:36):
in this game. And Jim Riley, who conceived of this game,
when he had the idea of I think he was
watching security camera a security camera screen with all these
different rooms and it hit him like what a great idea,
And then he saw this play and he said, we
can actually do something like this, Like what if a
user and a game player could go into any of
(07:59):
these views that they want and if they're missing something,
they're missing something it might be important, but they're in
control of the.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Game, right, And I mean that's the story rather right.
But again, I think you really pointed out something important
that that was the concept in the actuality. They kind
of missed the mark a little bit. Yes, So with
the game the it was originally designed as part of
(08:26):
a platform called Control Vision. I think internally it was
called Nemo an Emo and it was being created by
a company called Axelon, And Axelon was actually a Nolan
like video game company name, but it was a Nolan
Bushne old company. After Atari, he founded Axelon, among others,
I think he created five companies at the same time
(08:49):
in parallel. Using this incubator that he had created, and
the developers at axeln started creating a full motion video
VHS based we should point out, yes, I'm VHS and
to get from one place to another, rather than this
was the breakthrough thing. This is the thing that made
(09:11):
this work, and they did get it to work. But
using VHS tapes, you could toggle between stuff in virtually
real time without the VHS player having to rewind or
fast forward, which would have really just kind of put
the kibosh on the whole thing. But instead, because of
the interlacing that video uses, they could actually choose what
(09:38):
field to show at what time and basically switch between them.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Which was I mean, it looks archaic, but it's a
remarkable technology at the time to be able to do that.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Right, Yeah, it's still mind blowing. Like I'm like, I've
they vaguely understand how this actually works, but the fact
that they actually got this to work and had a
proof of concept going enough that Asro was like sold,
that was a big deal.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah, and this was eighty five.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
One of their designers was the legendary Tom Crane who
designed Pitfall, one of my favorite all time games on
the Atari.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
That's a good one.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
But it was a good team and they went apparently
to these Tamera performances. They were also inspired by Dragon's Layer.
Do you remember that game?
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I do. I was never into it, but I remember
watching it and just it looked cool.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
I mean it was an animation game where it was
fully animated and used LaserDisc to project this animated footage.
So it looked awesome, but it was just it wasn't
that great. The gameplay wasn't great.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
No, but it followed a story. There was a story. Yeah,
that was happening, and then every once in a while
there's something you had to do to move the story
along right as part of the game, and if you
didn't do it right, the dragon like turned you into
to Ash or something like that.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Right, Yeah, but you're not actually controlling the player, which
was the big difference in these games.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
For the regular game.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
You're you're creating a sequence like you're doing this and
then sitting back and then hopefully the thing you're hoping
to happen happens. Now, the thing that differentiates that from
Night Trap is that there was no coherent story while
you were off doing something that you were supposed to
be doing to win the game. Yeah, the story kept
(11:15):
going on over here.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
So you can't follow a storyline that way, no, which.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Is a big deal, and that was a big differentiator
between it and Dragons Later.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
All right, well, let's take a little break here.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
That's a good setup, I think, and we'll come back
and get more into Night Trap right after this. All right,
(11:51):
so I mentioned the augurs, We need to explain a
little bit about this game and what it was supposed
to be and what it ended up being, because Netflix
Dementary Jim Riley basically is like, well, the first thing
they created a demo called Scene of the Crime.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yes, and it was a.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Detective game and Hasbro liked it, like I said, but
they had a big problem because the original idea that
Jim had was to have ninjas, and he's like, it'd
be great.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
These ninjas come in.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
They got throwing stars, they got weapons and they're doing
all this stuff and you can control it and it's
super cool. And Hasbro is like, wait a minute, we
can't have what we call reproducible violence. So anything that
a kid like kids love throwing stars, and we can't
show ninjas throwing throwing stars into people because a kid
will go and do that. You can't have a knife
(12:43):
because the kid can go get a knife out of
a drawer. It's got to be something that a kid
cannot reproduce.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
So they said, okay, well, how about what if the
ninjas turn out to be and I'm sorry, I know
ninja is the plural of ninja, Sorry for sure. What
if they turn out to be vampires?
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Right?
Speaker 1 (13:00):
And Hasbro said, I kind of like where you're going
with this, But kids can still like bite people on
the neck.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
I think it came the other way though. I think
that was a note from Hasbro.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Oh was it?
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I'm pretty sure they were like, what if they were vampires?
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (13:15):
And Jim Riley was like, Okay, I guess I can
do that, okay, biting people's necks, And then Hasbro was like,
can't do that because the kids can bite next to.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
So what they found, and this is a great metaphor
for the night Trap overall. Yeah, what the ninja Originally,
what they turned out to be in the end were
loping vampires who used what looked like a Ghostbuster's pro
tom pack with a collar of the kind that Arnold
(13:45):
Schwarzeninger was wearing at the beginning of Running Man, like
a clamp sort of yes, yeah, on the end, and
that that is what they used to draw the blood
from the hapless teens who you were in charge of
protecting Night Trap.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, so what Hasbro did was they noted it to
death and neutered it to death because they said. He
even was like, all right, I can do vampires. They
can run around and hurt people. And they said, no, no, no,
they can't even run around. It's too scary if they're fast. Yeah,
So they came up with augurs who in the game
they are described as vampires who had been half bled
(14:24):
and left to die. So they are not quite vampires,
but they aren't human either, and that makes them lopy
and lumbery instead of being able to move fast. And
if you see them, they look like they're wearing garbage bags.
They're lumbering around they're drawing the blood using a trocar.
Is what the name of that thing was.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Oh, it was okay because it was definitely its own thing.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
It was its own thing, and it's funny.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
In the documentary, Jim Riley was like, in the end,
he said, this trow car, which you know, it didn't
show it explicitly. It showed the clamp going around the
neck and this little drill and so out of a
shaft start and then sort of moving and then blood
being drawn. But it doesn't like going in the neck
or anything. No, but he said what they ended up with,
he said to me, was something far creepier than a
(15:10):
vampire biting someone's neck. Sure, but they were like, it's
not reproducible though, so it's fine.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
And it's also it's weird that Hasbro was so fixated
on not including reproducible violence because apparently they saw night
Trap as a way to interest adults, right, because they
had apparently found out during focus group testing of Seen
in the Crime. I believe that the parents who were
(15:36):
in the room or were part of the focus group
were saying, like, I really kind of liked this. It's
like a TV show, but I get.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
To contry it because it looked like something that they understood.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Right, Yeah, and so Hasbro was like, oh, okay, this
has been like a kid's thing up to this point.
Maybe we can finally crack into the adult market with
this stuff. So it's weird that they that they kidified
it to death if they were trying to use it
to capture adults, but maybe they were like, it has
to go both ways in case adults don't like it.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Well, I think in the documentary they make the point
that Hasbro was I think the adults were looming out
there as a possibility, but they were like.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Adults will never play video games.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
So what they really wanted until they grow up and
then continue to.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Play video games.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Well, they really were after was a teenage market, which
didn't fully exist at this point. Gotcha like an old
like sixteen and seventeen year old boys, which is why
they put sorority girls in. Like a nighty at a
slumber party was an all in an effort to sort
of titillate, you know, people.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Like me, right, and it worked like a charm.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
I had never heard of it back then, because you just.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
You would play night trap in Netflix and chill by yourself.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
So they actually had to shoot this like a movie,
you know. They shot it in Culver City on a
sound stage. And what they would do back then for
and there were more full motion games of the time,
and you would try and cast one recognizable face among
this cast just sort of they called it the anchor
to like, all right, well this has got so and
so in it.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
And who did they cast for Night Trap?
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Dana Plato from from Different Strokes. Kimberly. Yeah, Kimberly who
passed away very tragically. Man, I was reading about her life.
She had a hard, sad life.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Man, very tragic story.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yeah, it is. It's very sad. And they actually went
back and ruled their death of suicide later. Did you
know that. I don't know if I knew that. Yeah,
she died by suicide ultimately because she overdosed the like
drugs or yeah, soma, I believe, which is like a
generic lore tab interesting, which I think you really have
to try. Like, I don't think that's an accidental thing,
(17:46):
which is probably why they did that. But it was
at a family reunion in Oklahoma, Wow, which I'm like, God, man,
that's that's just a sad ending. And her son actually
died by suicide.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Later, No, I think I knew that, like not super
long ago, right.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Like yeah, in the twenty tens, yeah, oh.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Man, very sad, but yeah. Dana Plato was cast as
that anchor. She played Kelly, who was a secret agent
who had infiltrated the house.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
She was undercover.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Yeah, she's undercover.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
And she would talk right to camera and say things
like you've got to get to the other room because
the augurs are after whoever mayor helper, Yeah, go help her.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah, and we should say also, so the group of
crime fighters that she was a part of was called SCAT. Yeah,
the Special Control Attack Team SCAT. And then I don't
know if we also said so the people who own
the house had invited this group of teens that included
undercover Dana Plato Kelly, who which I saw admittedly on Wikipedia.
(18:51):
This is a great example of night trap being night
trap in the In the credits at the end, Kelly's
name is spelled with a y on the end. In
the players the user's hand guide and deny tonight. Yeah,
that's night trap for you right there. But the family
that invited the kids, these teenage girls out for a
(19:13):
weekend at their house are actually themselves vampires with teeth everything,
not augurs.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
They're actually they don't attack people.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
No, they brought them there for the augurs.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Right right right to source their blood. I guess there
is a pretty funny scene in it. When did you
watch any of it?
Speaker 1 (19:28):
I watched the whole thing. I watched. I think Crumpy
Gamers did like a playthrough.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Yeah, they have a full I watched.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
There's stuff too, and yeah, I've watched a lot of
night Trap stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
The best part is when they're explaining in the game
what the augurs are and the woman says, you know,
it's a vampire who's been blah blah blah, and one
of the scat guys is in the background and he goes.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
You've got to be jiving me.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
I'd like see that.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Oh it was great.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
It was like, was this game made in nineteen eighty
nine or nineteen seventy three?
Speaker 3 (19:58):
It was really confusing. Yeah, like what era it was?
Speaker 1 (20:01):
So you said it was shot on a sound stage
in Culver City and it took like thirty days almost.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
But he is shooed a ton of stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yes, because it was like a two hundred and fifty
page script which is incredibly long. Wow ed who helped
us out with this one. He points out that a
two hour movie might have one hundred and twenties page script.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
It's about a minute per page. As the rule of thumb, this.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Is two hundred and fifty pages for a video game
that was not very good. Yeah, they didn't have a
lot of dialogue, but there were a lot of different
outcomes that happened in one just one particular saint short.
So if you shot a scene, you had to shoot
it multiple times to get what you wanted, and then
you had to shoot those multiple times multiple times for
each outcome.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Yeah, and we should say that the violence in the game,
like we said, is suggestive for the Augers.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
You don't know, we see anything.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
The only real violence is when the Augers are dispatched of.
But it is very much a wiley Odie bugs bunny
sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah, it's the definition of cartoonish.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, Like they will be a murphy bed will flip
them out of a window, or they'll just whow, like
fall through a trap door.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
The stairs, very like one of the things. If they're
coming down the stairs, you can trap them by collapsing.
This cartoon when they fall into the trap like a
smoke machine pours smoke out of it. It's impossible that
they weren't going for cartoonish violence. There's no right, of course,
the producers and directors. Yeah, we're trying to be like
(21:32):
scary in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
But it was shot by Don Burgess, who was nominated
for an Oscar less than a decade after Night Trap
for Forrest Gump.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
So they had a real team.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
It wasn't just you know, they didn't, you know, say
all right, let's go out in the valley and use
some like a porn crew.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Sure, just do this thing like.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
They had a real crew, know, and apparently has Bro
spent depending on who you ask, least a million dollars
on this.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yeah, they said one to five in the documentary, so
they put some money into it, and it is not
apparent on the screen. The sets look terrible. The the doorways,
I don't know if you noticed, but any doorway, they
didn't build the door down to the floor. They built
the door down to like a one foot tall step over,
(22:22):
So anytime someone opens the.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Door, they step over this like one foot tall like
wooden set.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
That's awesome. I mean the set is. It's basically like
they could have repurposed it for growing pains or family
ties or something.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Mate or no, they probably would have said, like, this
doesn't look good.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Right, maybe small wonders. I think they used it for
small wonder How about that.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
There is no nudity we should point out. But it
again was never going to be kid friendly. But also
when you when you will get to the court stuff,
when you hear how it's described by these senators.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
It's so over the top, it's so over the top.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Yeah, should we take a break? You don't want to
take a break.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
No, I'm excited and I'm ready to keep going.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Let's take a break, all right? Well, I guess we
should take a break. By saying that Hasbro dumped the game?
This is a nice cliffhanger. Hasbro dumped the game?
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Well, Hasbro dumped the game or not?
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Chuck, Okay, we'll find out right after this.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Okay, Chuck, cliffhanger ants er time.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Hasbro dumped the game because a it wasn't that great,
But the big reason was because CD Rahm Technology started
up and they were like, we've got VHS technology and
we suck a million five into this Turkey, like, let's
just dump it.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
And that should have been the end of.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
It, not just Night Trap, but the whole Control Vision thing,
that the whole platform that Night Trap was just going
to be a game on totally gone. Hasbro said forget it.
The thing is, the people who worked on designing this
game said no, no, no, no, Hasbro's being short sighted.
It's too good this game in particular. Maybe control Vision
(24:20):
is good. Granted the VHS thing, we're going to just
forget about that, but this game is too groundbreaking to
just let die. So they actually went to Hasbro and said,
how much will you sell us the footage, the code,
the whole shebang for Night Trap for and the designers
actually bought the game from Hasbro and took it and
founded their own company, Digital Pictures.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Do you know how much they sold it for?
Speaker 1 (24:43):
But now I couldn't find didn't find it either. I
would guess peanuts. Basically, they probably were like, I don't
ever want to hear the words night or Trap together again.
Get it out of here. But these these designers, developers, directors, writers,
everybody got together formed Digital Pick and bought it and
started developing Night Track, ironically for CD ROM which is
(25:06):
the very type of media. Yeah, that killed it in
the first place.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
By Jim's telling on the documentary, I don't know if
they were already going CD ROM or if it was
initiated by Sega. But he got a call, he said,
out of the blue from Sega, who had their gaming
system at the time, Sega Genesis and then Sega CD
was an add on system featuring this new cd RHALM technology.
(25:35):
And he said, they got a call, They said, hey,
you want to develop this for CD RAM And he
probably got a good laugh out about that and the irony,
and then said sure, because night Trap must live.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Yes, this guy is dedicated to night Trap living. If
there's one thing that he wants to keep alive in
the world, it is night Trap, that's right. So they
started developing it for CD ROM. It was a step
up for sure, from what I can tell, like the
graphics worked a lot better. The problem is is this
is nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Nineteen ninety two was when it was finally released as
a CD ROM game.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yeah, they had shot all this footage in the late eighties,
but it looked like the late seventies. There was a
big difference between say nineteen eighty eight and nineteen ninety two.
Style Wise, it was apparent, visually apparent, and immediately apparent
to anybody, say, a video game playing age. Yeah, I
agree that was a big strike against night Trap to
begin with, But probably the biggest stripe of all was
(26:35):
that it wasn't a highly playable game. It was not
a good game, and it probably would have just kind
of faded away like it sold. I guess enough that
it qualified as like a not a disaster. They at
least did more than break even, but it probably would
have just fallen into the dustbin of history had it
(26:56):
not been for Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Senator
Herb Cole of Wisconsin, a couple of Democrats who created
this crusade about violent video games in I think nineteen
ninety three.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Yeah, and so this very much mirrored if you listen
to our Satanic Panic episodes and the PMRC and music
label MPAA m PAA, Like this was all the time
when everyone was saying, hey, listen, we need to start
at least labeling the stuff so parents know what their
kids are doing and just watch a little bit, you know,
(27:32):
there's all kinds of it was in the Netflix documentary.
But there's all sorts of stuff on YouTube about these
hearings where they're talking about the disgusting trash and the
filth and the hyper violence, and it's like, it's really
not that violent.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
So here's the thing. They went after Moral Kombat, Yeah,
which was super violent, it really was. Yeah, And they
went after night Trap, which was again cartoonish. Not a
drop of blood spills from a person's body, right, had
ladies in lingerie one? Yes, Okay, I'm not defending any
(28:05):
kind of violence against women, of course, not defending objectifying women.
But Night Trap was unfairly railroaded. Oh yeah, because for
some reason, I think probably because it was it was film,
it was people. Like the people were controlling people.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
That was the difference, because there was there were one
hundred exploitation movies and horror movies by this point, share
two hundred, yeah, three hundred. It was a thousand times
worse than this. Yeah, But the fact that you were
controlling Yet they never said, and they make a big
point about this in the documentary, like you weren't doing
(28:47):
the violence, Like the whole point of the game was
to stop the augurs. That's like you weren't the person
doing the augur You're preventing the violence.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Yeah. I guess that's why they call them augurs because
it was kind of like an augur.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, yeah, the tool was Yeah, that's what I get tobar.
What was it called crow car trocar? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
But yeah, and they never I mean he Jim Riley
was like, they clearly never even played the game.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yeah, no, they were talking about the.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Cover of the thing was lurid. They didn't like the
cover of the box.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, yeah, they definitely hadn't played the game. It was
just impossible from what they were saying happens in the game.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
And the big one was like you were saying that
it it let players carry out sexual violence against women. No,
you do the opposite of that, right, there's violence that
is carried out by the augurs if you don't do
it right, if you if you're not good at the game,
if you lose, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
But even then, like even in the most disturbing scene,
which was the one with the lady and the and
the night looking in the mirror, the augers come in
behind her and it's for sure creepy looking at first,
but you know, then they get out the croke Car.
I can't even remember tro Car and she's like ah ah,
and it's like the worst B movie. And then they
(29:59):
just sort of dragger over the threshold of one of
those doors.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
I would say, gently escorted, yeah, through.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
The doors, like you don't see any of the violence
even No, it's all just suggested, right, yes.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
But again, Night Trip got lumped in with Mortal Kombat,
and because of this, because it was very clear that
the writing was on the wall. The media has a
really great track record of saying, oh God, if we
don't come up with a rating system ourselves, right, Congress
is going to impose it on us. And so they
came up with the ESRB, the Entertainment Software Rating Board.
(30:35):
It was an industry created, self imposed rating system that
was brought about in large part because.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
Of Night Right. So Sega pulls the game.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Eventually, it became really popular because of these senatorial hearings, right,
which is what always happens.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yes, it's exactly right. It was starting to fade away.
It would have been lost to history, and then the
senators came in and we're like's go buy that game.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Kids wanted to play it, but Sega did eventually pull it.
Digital Pictures re released it as their own distributor and
rated it M for mature, And that should have that
should have also been the end of it, right.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah, I should have just kind of went away, especially
after Sega pulled it, because it got pulled from KB
Toys and Toys r US because the kids. But like
you're saying, it was still around, and then when Sega
pulled it was like you couldn't find it anyway, right,
that should have been the end. And then in twenty fourteen,
Tom Riley, Jim Riley, Jim Jim Riley started a Kickstarter
(31:40):
and said we're going to resurrect Night Trap. All we
need is three hundred and thirty thousand dollars. People are
going to go crazy for this all following Yeah, yeah,
it's going to be the greatest kickstarter in the history
of kickstarters. And it was not the greatest kickstarter ever.
It was a really, really bad kickstarter. They had a
lot of criticism, skeptics, and ultimately only garnered I think
(32:02):
about forty thousand dollars when they were after three hundred
and thirty.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
And that was in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Yeah, so that obviously was the end of night Trap, Right,
that was not.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
The end of night Trap, the bad game that refused
to die.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
In twenty sixteen, there was a video on YouTube that
showed someone playing night Trap on their telephone on their smartphone,
and I don't know if it was Jim Riley or
one of the original devs saw it and was like,
what is going on.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
You can't play night Trap on a smartphone?
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Yeah, because it was never developed that the technology, and
let's that smartphone is playing a CD that I don't
know about in the background.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
And they got in touch with the person.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
His name was Tyler Hogle and he was a mobile
game programmer who followed was a fan of the original
as like in a cult fan way.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
That's a deep cut at that time, a.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Super deep cut, and then basically said I'm going to
get a playable version hacked together for smartphones and did
it like semi successfully.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yeah. So he basically created this just on his own.
And then once the video surfaced, Yeah, and the original developers,
Jim Riley and some of the others got in touch
with them. They said, here, man, here's here's we lost
the code years ago. No one has any idea where
it is but we do have original thirty five millimeter footage,
(33:22):
which is timestamps, which is really critical because you have
to wait. As we'll talk about how to play it
in a second. The timing is everything between the video
and the player's controls. So with the timestamps, Tyler Hogle
was able to basically create a new modern, twenty fifth
anniversary edition that just is actually kind of a as
(33:44):
far as night Trap goes, it's the best night Trap
that there could possibly be.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Yeah, that was the twenty seventeen twenty fifth edsh rated
tea for teens.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
This time still preposterous, which.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Is funny, And apparently the you know you said he
lost the code, but he was, that's really easy, Like
I've got all this footage that's time stamped. Yeah, it's
like I can code this thing in my sleep.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Basically he basically did. So there's a twenty fifth edition
of night Trap, which apparently Nintendo has a version of oh,
which is kind of funny because at the time of
those Senate hearings in nineteen ninety three ninety four, Nintendo
famously said they would never allow night Trap on their platform,
(34:26):
and they did.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, and Nintendo is still sort of known as the
more family friendly unit.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
I think they even had a bloodless Mortal Kombat if
I'm not mistaken, or maybe it was a setting.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Oh I think yes, it rings a bell. Did you
see the new Mortal Kombat movie? Did you any I
have seen zero Mortal Kombat movies. The new one just
came out on hbox. Is it good?
Speaker 3 (34:48):
That's pretty good? I mean, did you play the game.
Do you have nostalgia for the game?
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Sure? Yeah, you should watch it.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Okay, it's good enough.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
It looks good and there's great fights and then some
nice Easter eggs and it's like the Mortal kom that
movie that should have been because they made one previously.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
That wasn't that great. Yeah, from the nineties.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Yeah, but this one looks it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Okay, okay, where you rip.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Out spines and hearts and.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
And the way they do the blood, it looks just
like the game.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Is it rated T for teen? It's rated R okay
because it's a movie.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
But we mentioned that it wasn't that great of a
game because of the gameplay. One of the biggest problems
was that you've got all these stories going on in
these different windows, but you can only kind of control
one at a time, So when you're controlling one scene,
other stuff is going on, and we mentioned that makes
(35:40):
it impossible to follow the actual story.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
That's a problem, so it suffers there.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
But there's also this thing where you have a red light,
a green light, and a yellow light. And when these
lights turn on, if it's the right color light, is
when you engage the trap button, and that's when the
auger will flip out the window.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
But it has to be timed right.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Yeah, And apparently while you're in these other rooms, if
you want to follow the story for a couple of minutes,
they will change the codes, the color codes, right, So
if you're in another room, they'll be like, the code
is now green, yes, and you don't know that because
you're not watching it. So you go back and you
think the code is red, and so you're losing the game.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Yeah, because you have to have the right security code
activated to activate the traps. Because this is the Martin's
family's security cameras. The Martin family, the vampires are the
ones who created the traps. You're just hacked into it
thanks to your pals at SCAT, right. You're basically freelancing
for it. But when they change those codes, it doesn't
(36:38):
show on screen.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Right.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
The character tells another character to go down to the
basement and change the code.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
A different screen that you may not be watching, Yeah, in.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
A different room that you can't hear or see or
anything like that, because you're in the living room and
this conversation is happening in the kitchen.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
That is not a thing where it's like, oh, that's
a cool little little little feature, you know, gay part
of the gameplay that is a maddening ho yes, a bug, right,
So that's a big part. That's a big problem with
it as well. And then also you don't have to
get a perfect you don't have to play a perfect
game to win. But if any of the augers get
(37:15):
any of the characters, you lose. If too many augers
start to accumulate, you lose, and you get yelled at
by the leader of scat it's kind of funny, he
gets really mad at you for screwing up. But to win,
it's you're basically memorizing where to go win, and it happens,
especially toward the end, really quick, so like you'll you know,
(37:38):
set off a trap in one room and you have
to go remember what room you're supposed to go to
to get the trap set for the next auger, And
it's not really fun. It gets really intense towards the end,
but not necessarily fun.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yeah, I mean, hats off to the grabster because he
actually played this thing and tried to play it, which
was more than I was willing to do.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
But I did watch the walkthroughs.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Did you see the night Trap video or the lip
sync video?
Speaker 3 (38:03):
I did not.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
There's actually a theme song night Trap, look Out behind
You or something like that that one of the characters
does an air guitar tennis recket lip sync too wow
dancing while the other characters have to watch and pretend
like they're not mortified with embarrassment at seeing this. It's
really something.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Oh man.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
I kept waiting in the documentary for a big reveal
that like George Cline was one of the augurs or something,
but Dana Plato was about as you know, yeah, a
list as it got at the time, which was probably
C list at the time.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Yeah, yeah, you got anything else?
Speaker 3 (38:37):
I got nothing else? Night Trap, go seek it.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Out, night Trap, look Out behind You.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
If you want to know more about Night Trip. You
don't even have to play. You can just go on
YouTube and watch basically the movie, and even then it's
still generally incoherent. But since I said it's still generally incoherent,
it's time for listener man.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
I'm gonna call this speed reading trauma. Hey, guys, I
should start with the obligatory long time, first time, finally
reason to email, and here I am so hello. I
didn't think that a short stuff on speed reading, of
all things, would trigger my first email, but here we go.
Halfway through the show, I was flooded with a vivid
memory of speed reading in my elementary school gifted class.
Speaking of other scams, this was in the early nineties.
(39:22):
My teacher would drag a transparency with a printed passage, Oh,
I kind of remember this across an overhead projector at
increasing speeds, and after each pass we would take a
comprehension test.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
I had no idea that this was a scam.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
I just thought it was a standard part of the
curriculum that I wasn't very good at, and I felt
terrible about it. Then again, in my Louisiana public school curriculum,
we also had to get a hunting license and shoot
clay pigeons as part of Louisiana history in middle school.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
I grew up shooting clay pigeons.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Really for school. No, okay, I would like to try.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
That is cool.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Skeet shooting.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Yeah, that's another way to put it.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Looks like fun. Just stand behind.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
That's the rule, right basically anyway, Thanks so much for
the entertainment and education edutainment, especially this past year. I've
often had you in my ear while I work from
home to feel a little less solitary. That is from
Kate Ellis Jensen in Boulder, Colorado.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Thanks a lot, Kate, that was a good email. Very
sorry to set off the trauma, but I'm glad that
it's passed. I'm presuming it passed.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah, I kind of remember that happening, but I certainly
was not in a gifted class.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
It doesn't sound like a very fun procedure. It kind
of sounds like Ray Finds revealing himself to Philip Seymour
Hoffman and Red Dragon. Oh spoiler, so you see.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Yeah, you know I'm.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Talking about Sure, we've talked about that recently.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Yeah, the wheelchair and fire scene.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
This rule hilarious but also really funny. If you stop
and think about it. Sure, that movie just danced on
the line and sometimes it went over. Agreed. Well, if
you want to know more about Red Dragon, Oh wait,
I already said that stuff. If you want to get
in touch with the like Kate did, then you can
email us like Kate did at Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
(41:07):
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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