Night Trap

About Night Trap

Night Trap (1992) is Digital Pictures' full-motion video game for the Sega CD in which players watch surveillance cameras and spring traps on vampires stalking a teenage sleepover, a centrepiece of the 1993 Senate hearings that led to the ESRB.

Night Trap in Depth

A police squad, S.C.A.T., has the player watch live surveillance footage of the Martin household and trigger traps to catch anyone endangering the guests. Cameras cover eight locations, the entryway, living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, driveway and two hallways, and a map shows how they connect. The player switches freely between them to follow events and eavesdrop for clues, helped by the undercover agent Kelli, and must avoid trapping her, other agents or the guests. A trap works only when a sensor bar moves into the red zone, and only with the correct access code, one of six colours; when the Martins change it, the player must overhear the new code and wait for the speaker to leave before switching. Counters show how many intruders have entered and how many have been caught.

Five teenage girls have vanished after staying at the Martin winery estate, and the family refused to let police search it. S.C.A.T. found traps, cameras and a control unit in the basement and spliced in an override. As five more girls, among them Kelli, arrive with Lisa's younger brother Danny, the house is invaded by Augers, vampiric beings that need blood, and the Martins themselves turn out to be vampires. Events and the ending vary widely depending on whom the player saves.

Making Night Trap

Fulop, James Riley and Tom Zito devised it for Axlon's VHS-based NEMO system, later called Control-Vision, which Hasbro backed. Zito hired Terry McDonell to write an original script after a Nightmare on Elm Street deal fell through, and Riley directed the 35 mm shoot over 16 days in Culver City in 1987, with Diff'rent Strokes star Dana Plato. With Sewer Shark, it shared a budget of about $4.5 million. Hasbro cancelled Control-Vision in 1989 over hardware costs, so Zito bought the footage, founded Digital Pictures and released Night Trap as the Sega CD's first interactive movie in November 1992.

Critics enjoyed its B-movie humour but found the gameplay shallow. At the December 1993 Senate hearing, Joe Lieberman said it promoted sexual aggression against women, and Toys "R" Us and Kay-Bee pulled it from shelves; Sega withdrew it in January 1994, calling it a misunderstood parody. The hearings led to the ESRB. It sold 400,000 copies by 1998 and was later ported to the 3DO, 32X and PC, and a 25th Anniversary Edition followed in 2017. It is often listed among the worst games ever but has become a camp cult classic.