Waching daily Jul 27 2017

(Intro Music)

- Night Trap.

The name no doubt brings to

mind the FMV craze of the early 90s.

The controversial bathroom scene

plastered across the news.

- "These obvious sexual

aggression against the woman in

Night Trip which kids do have access to."

- Dana Plato, the child sitcom star who suffered

from drug and alcohol abuse

and would passed away a few short years

after the release of the game.

In the early 90s society was grappling with

the fact that games once viewed as toys for

children could now have characters

that looked real, vivid worlds,

and crystal-clear dialogue.

Video games were growing up

and in clear view of the public eye.

Beneath it's perceived b-grade

movie schlock, grainy graphics, and silly

theme song is a game that made a lasting

impact on the video game industry.

This is the story of Night Trap.

How it was made,

its legacy, and how more than

25 years later we're finally able to see it

as as originally meant to be seen.

- You with me control?

We're going in.

(Theme music)

(Retro gaming music vibe)

- If you really want to kind of get the

full context of Night Trap,

I think you need to look back to

you know, Dragon's Lair,

a decade before Night Trap came out.

Ŵhich kind of introduced the

idea of video games as this cinematic

experience based on, you know,

real footage, real live video, or cartoon video

as the case may be.

That kind of set off

a sort of splinter of video game design

that was based around the idea of how

can we make movies work as video games

or video games work as movies.

It wasn't like a prevailing trend in the industry

but it definitely was a concept that

people wanted to explore.

- Dragon's Lair, Space Ace and other games of

that ilk are presented as fully animated cartoons

in which the gameplay consists of visual

cues to indicate that you must press

a button or point the joystick

in a specific direction.

- Dragon's lair is very binary.

You either you know get past the

current trap or you die,

there's not much to it,

and most you know most of those

interactive cartoon type games were like

that all the way up to like Time Gal or something.

And everyone always tried to

put their own spin on it and come up

with interesting outcomes,

but it was still pretty much just like you know,

Simon Says do you respond at the right

time at the right with in the right way.

It differs from a video game and it's

not a computer-generated signal it's,

it's recorded you know digitized video

from another source.

You can have more

realism in the the world view but it

also kind of limits the interactivity

because it can't be extremely dynamic

- These games work by combining custom

arcade hardware with laserdisc technology.

These vinyl record size discs

contain composite analog video and can

store up to about one hour of video per side.

laserdisc was high tech but the format

struggled to be widely adopted for home

use outside of Asia.

However the video home system,

or VHS format was beginning

to reach a fever pitch.

Introduced two years introduced two years,

these magnetic tape based

video cassettes were much more consumer

friendly and decks that could play these

tapes were rapidly becoming cheaper.

Hasbro, one of the world's largest toy compaines,

was experiencing a golden age

due to the success of GI Joe,

Transformers, and My Little Pony

CEO Stephen Hassenfeld was deeply

interested in breaking into the home

video game scene that had been

rejuvenated by the Japanese company Nintendo.

(Industrial Metal Tones)

Hasbro partnered with

high-tech toy manufacturer, Axlon,

a startup from Atari founder Nolan Bushnell,

to create a product that could compete with Nintendo.

What they came up with was a device they

codenamed Nemo which manipulated the

interleaves fields of a VHS tape

allowing you to switch between

multiple video tracks.

- I was working with Nolan Bushnell on a

series of interactive advertising

and interactive retailing campaigns.

And I got a call from a guy who was actually

my neighbor, Rob Philip,

who had developed Demon Attack,

and a number of Atari games.

And he knew of a guy named Tom Zito,

working with another Nolan Bushnell company

that had actually been presented,

there was a guy, an engineer who came in

with this wafer that allowed you to

attach it to a VCR and be able to

interact with the video cartridge as

your video source,

but you could interact up to four choices

at any one time.

And they were trying to figure out

what to do with it.

So Tom wanted to put together

some demos to take the Hasbro.

My focus was more about these environments where

you could go anywhere at any time or

feel as if you could move more freely

and then it wasn't you know,

decision, response, decision, response.

One of the easiest ways

to think of that is surveillance cameras.

The first demo we did was Scene Of The Crime

to kind of test out, play test,

the idea of being able to move around

and through surveillance cameras and see how

interesting that was.

The basic idea is that this wealthy man

has a safe full of money in his library

and he has this new surveillance system.

Where you, participate, is the security guy

and he tells you to

please watch the safe and if anybody

tries to break in he wants to know about it.

- Watch them with the cameras.

If anyone tries anything,

I want to know about it.

- Then you can move around the house,

switching cameras to try to follow

what's going on of course everybody has

a plot to steal the money and then after

a three to five minute a quick period

sure enough somebody stole the money.

The lights were out.

It was hard to tell exactly who it was.

You couldn't just sit in the room.

So you're trying to figure out

who's involved, how it happened,

and then he says okay who did it,

and then you guess.

So really simple concept but

I think it was one of the first times that

you could play this experience a hundred

times or more and never feel like you

were doing the same thing.

Four of us flew back to Hasbro,

pitched it to Stephen Hassenfeld,

and a boardroom of twenty-two executives.

They all got into it, they loved it.

That day we got funding.

Significant funding to start

what became Digital Pictures.

- Not so fast young lady,

did you and your little friend friend

have fun playing with Daddy's safe did we?

- Get Your hands off me! - I want the combination of that safe.

- [James] We put together five, six demos.

We did a lot of play tests,

so we would bring in things like Scene of the Crime,

or Baseball or, and in this case,

the parents were going wait a minute,

that's a real image you're interacting with TV.

I can do this.

I think in part Hasbro liked

the fact that this could be a strategy

to get into the video game business.

To get into your living room.

To, you know, generate additional revenue

in this growing accelerating market.

And would have potentially full family audience.

- Just stick to the plan.

- Then they said okay we want to

do a title that uses this and at that

point I was working on a number of other

things but I felt like surveillance

cameras is great,

but to have more effect

on what happens rather than just an

observer looking at what's going on,

if we could create some device that allowed

participants to feel more engaged and be

able to subtly change the story,

again not branching or changing the

ending but in fact be able to do

something and watch how the story changes.

There were all these different people

sitting around the table speaking

completely different languages,

having very different sensibilities,

trying to find some common ground.

We bring in a writer, a director, a game designer,

a software programmer,

who were having constructive arguments

about interactive narrative

which is very tricky.

And a lot of people will say,

we don't want people

to look the wrong way or be doing,

we want to control their experience and

to give this to novice or non filmmakers,

it goes against everything

that they've been trained to do.

The first concept was to take the sort

of wealthy guy and you know with a safe

full of money to the extreme so it was a

billionaire who had you know Fort Knox

in his house, modern house, in Lake Tahoe.

He was able to do this with comfort and

leave knowing that he had this next

generation security system which

included the latest surveillance cameras

and also this these traps of gadgets.

And so happens one weekend his daughter

shows up for a slumber party with all of

her teenage friends and the house is

attacked by ninja burglars.

And the reason I thought ninjas would be the

cool approach would be

that they move in the shadows.

You start off with this

really simple clean concept that you

know could be refined and really

have an edge to it and a look and stuff,

and you end up with this thing that is

a combination of bad notes over time.

Somehow it went from ninjas focus on

getting the money you know and the girls

being able to you know they were sort of

not the key but they were very much

caught in the mix to... vampires.

- [Coury] The setup for what we know

today as Night Trap is fairly simple.

Teenagers have been disappearing while

visiting the local winery estate

of Mr. and Mrs. Martin.

Their enormous home

has eight security cameras installed

which are oddly connected to a number

of traps that can be used to catch intruders.

The special control attack team,

or scat, has taken control of the

system so that they can monitor what's going on.

They sent an undercover agent, Kelly,

played by Dana Plato to work her

way into a group of teenagers they have

been invited to stay at the home.

You, the player, are the member of scat who has

been assigned to operating the cameras and traps.

It's up to you to help Kelly

figure out the mystery of the

disappearances but also to protect the

girls from these odd creatures dressed

all in black referred only to as augurs.

it's pretty campy but that is a huge

part of the appeal.

- And you you keep your

eyes open we're all depending on you

especially Kelly, she should be there now.

I'll switch you over and good luck.

- There was this thing called

reproducible violence.

First time I had heard that term

but it turns out to be a very real thing,

and hasbro in particular was very

concerned about that.

We went into kind

of the supernatural realm with the

vampire and they said no no we don't

want to see you know vampires biting the

girl so these were toothless vampires

and they could not move too quickly so

they actually had to be kind of sick so

they had to be toothless, sick, vampires.

(Laughing)

It just kept getting worse.

And the odd term came because they really

needed blood and the only way they could get it

was to auger in with a device like the

trocar which was that neck thing with the drill.

That cleared as a non reproducible violence.

Well it sure that should be really

gruesome frankly I mean I I thought that

in our effort

to homogenize this thing and make it

more friendly and less scary

it actually was pretty creepy in terms

of these you know strange characters

walking around with the trocar

- [Coury] Production of Night Trap began

in earnest during the summer of 1987,

with Jim Riley in the director's chair.

The entire shoot took place

in Culver City, California

and took under a month.

- In this case the

script writing was so bizarre because

you had to do two things.

You you had to

create a world then you had to navigate

within that world.

You had technical

limits of what you could actually do but

you were cheating that to make it look

like you could do anything so that was a

whole thing and then for the moment you

could write a scene but the scene had to

motivate somebody to go somewhere else.

But the script was not 120 pages the

script was like this right with a

timeline and people were going move how

do I read this I mean you know it's kind

of like I'm okay I'm here and what

because everything was by the way time.

Right because you only had that much

time for the scene so blocking was very

different you know rather than sitting

down with the actors and saying you know

what's what's the intent here and you

know should you walk over here and you know

where should you, it was like okay,

you have 24 seconds in

this room right so how do we block this

where you're going to end up going out

that door but it's got to look natural right,

and you gotta, you gotta be out

that door in 18 seconds because in 18 seconds

you're going to appear in the hallway.

I walked around with a timeline

I think became sort of a joke which is

you know where are we now and I'd have

to take the timeline out and it we've

had eight tracks, right,

four at any one time with stills and

I would be able to figure out so it was tricky.

We shot days and nights you know

sets and locations.

I was surprised at how

quickly everybody got into it and it

wasn't it wasn't difficult for them to go,

oh I get it, okay, so you know I'm

going to be here but I could be over there

and then depending on what happens

with the Auge I might and they got into it.

And and in some cases they

adjusted their performance accordingly

which was a wonderful surprise we didn't

have a lot of money to cast named

talents and that sort of thing.

Dana Plato was someone

who we were lucky to get.

- Wow there is something about Kelly.

- Hmm woman's intuition again huh.

- Oh Victor you monster,

come on let's go we don't want

to upset the Augurs.

- All the Augs were stunt guys

with trash bags taped to them,

but they, when the trap went, they had to be in a

position where they were balanced right

because when they drop through the floor

they've got to be able to do it.

How do you move, you do this,

so that became the Aug walk.

We had to figure out in the

shooting how to be most economical so we

generally shot out each environment.

The bedroom is the first when the first sets

were shot and the lobby or the foyer,

was one of the last.

Most of the continuity,

there were so many other issues

that continuity like that was the

least if anybody's concerned.

Trying to create an environment where

the cast and to some degree the DP and

the lighting guys really could

participate as if they were making a movie.

What was interesting is we shot an

Night Trap on thirty five-millimeter.

In fact Don Burgess was the DP,

an exceptional DP.

You know went on to do Forest Gump.

Not that night trap lost his career and

we had a number of really interesting

people that were experimenting it's

really the best way to say with this

sort of new platform not quite sure what it was.

There were other technical restrictions

that they were very nervous

about things that were too dark I mean

the way it was originally envisioned was

that it was really cool and edgy.

I wouldn't say film noir but it was

something that was going to be

cinematically kind of dark, mysterious, edgy,

and it turned out to be super bright.

Because they were concerned

that if it got too dark that it would pixelate.

I mean Don Burgess,

this brilliant DP,

is having to essentially

light the room like everything's got neon lights

and we were all unhappy about that,

but at the same time it's the first

time it's being done and there

were a lot of people involved and

everybody was making their best guess.

The post was very tricky.

I ended up using I think

it was edit flex at one pass.

It was the only way to cut this

because what you end up with it's a

puzzle where you're trying to figure out

okay I got a little piece right there

and I got a piece that ties into that.

So think of it as you know a 3d chess game.

- [Coury] With production wrapped on Night Trap,

along with a second title, Sewer Shark,

it was time to get down to the business of

putting these games together.

- What happened though was, you know,

everybody started to realize,

wow this is tricky stuff.

Part of it, is that there was

never a real formula and then Hasbro decided

that it didn't want to move forward.

They began I think to understand that this is

a significant investment this is like

starting a studio it's not just the

hardware it's actually you know the cost

of the titles which we're running back

then about two to three million.

- [Coury] With the Nemo and it's film project shelved,

the involved parties went their own ways,

a disappointing end to a project that

generated so much excitement.

- VHS tape is a linear medium.

It's you could I guess

automatically fast-forward to a certain

part but very inconveniently and the

advent of the cd-rom technology in like

1987 88 that was kind of seen as an

opportunity to sort of jump in and you

know all of a sudden you had a portable

affordable format for home consumers

that had the data capacity to keep

compressed movies so it really sort of

opened up all these opportunities.

- So we're in this huge house

with all your friends!

We have telephones, we have a car,

your parents are gone,

and you say so?

- Come on Sarah,

what's the first thing you think of?

- [Everyone] Party!

- [Coury] When Japanese company Sega

released a cd-rom add-on for their

successful 16-bit game console,

the Sega Genesis,

Tom Zito and companies saw a

platform that was powerful enough to

release the sorts of projects that they

had envisioned for Hasbro's Nemo.

Zito purchased the raw footage shot for the

two games for the Hasbro system.

Along with the help of some others Zita would

create the company digital pictures to

develop and release these games and

others like it for Sega CD ROM named the

Sega CD in the United States.

James Riley was brought back

into the fold to help

complete Night Trap for the new machine.

- Tom negotiated to deal with Sega who had

come up with the Sega CD which was

just powerful enough to stream.

Oddly enough the VCR was 60 fields a second

which we would break into 15 fields per track.

The CD was comparable

Back then it's Donkey Kong, it's Mario Brothers,

you know really simple pixelated graphics.

So all of a sudden

there was this option to play,

or experience a live-action interactive

world that was all photo real with

real people etc.

- [Coury] The video quality was adequate but

heavily limited by the power of the machine.

Video footage could playback at

15 frames per second at a resolution

of just 168 by 104.

This video was also hindered

by the consoles color palette

and a number of possible colors on

screen at one time.

Sega brought some of the original cast

back together to shoot additional scenes

to make Night Trap feel more

at home on their own system.

The original footage used a

mock-up controller while the new scenes

would replace this with a Sega control pad.

Also changed, SKAT now stood for a

Sega control attack team.

Finally in October 1992,

over five years since shooting had wrapped,

Night Trap released on the Sega CD

in the United States.

A glance of the box art

should have given anyone a strong

suggestion that this might not be just for kids.

(Singing)

- Night Trap was I think an attempt to

make something a little more interactive

I don't know if it was necessarily a

really successful attempt but there was

an idea there of doing something other

than just like watching a movie.

It was more ambitious than you know your

Dragon's Lair almost like a graphical

adventure where you're always in the

same place and you're just watching

different locations and kind of managing

all the things that are happening

throughout the mansion.

So I really think that they

were doing something interesting here,

- You never know at the time

whether it's a novelty or whether

it's the beginning of a major thing.

Nobody quite knew what to make of it.

You know we called it fmz,

or live-action interactive

or whatever those things were.

- [Coury] Like all FMV games,

the gameplay is limited,

but Night Trap gives the player

more agency than earlier games in the

genre by allowing the freedom to move

around the house.

You have access to eight rooms

and you can catch the Augurs as they

walk over traps with the press of a button.

A story plays out in real time

across the Martin estate with

different things going on in each room

If you fail to catch enough augers or if

any of the girls get killed,

then it's game over.

You piece together the full

narrative over multiple plays as you

learn what happens at set times in

different rooms throughout the house.

- And in fact when it was ported over Sega CD

I felt more concerned.

Yes it was being released,

but it was being released on a game platform.

And sure enough you know,

everybody was going well,

this isn't really a game.

I mean this is an interesting thing

and it's fun and,

for a lot of people they didn't

need a heavy interaction so the live

action real characters was more

interesting at least for a period of time.

- [Coury] Regardless of one's opinion of the game,

it ended up selling fairly decently.

Had average reviews by video game

publications and was considered a

showpiece for the power of Sega's new hardware.

Japan even received a fully

dubbed version of the game.

(Speaking Japanese)

Digital pictures had

a winning formula on their hands and

would put a number of other movie games,

as Rob Phillip called them, into production.

Double Switch, which features an

evolution of the trapped gameplay,

would release in 1993 shortly before Night Trap

was thrust back into the limelight,

front and center.

- Today is the first day of Hanukkah

and we have already begun

the Christmas season.

It is a time that

we think about peace on earth and

goodwill towards all people and also

about giving gifts to our friends and

our loved ones but it is also a time

when we need to take a close hard look

at just what it is that we are actually

buying for our kids and that is why we

are holding this hearing on violent

video games at this time.

That is why we

intend to introduce legislation on

violent video games as soon as Congress returns.

Night Trap goes out and,

still a new market.

Nobody quite knows what's going on,

and I don't think the sales were that great.

And then all of a sudden there's a Senate hearing

on violence and video games,

and Night Trap is one of the premier.

I'm just thinking you're kidding.

- It was so new it was so revolutionary

at the time that it first came out,

that it was ideal fodder

for somebody who wanted

to use it as a political hand grenade.

(Dangerous Tones)

- I think Night Trap got swept up sort of

unfairly in in a lot of the

controversies that were raging in the

U.S. in the early 90s about video game violence.

But I think that was, you know,

as part of the the growing pains of video games

went through because the audience

that followed videogames was growing up,

but again those video games

are still being sold in the toy section.

So there was the stigma like,

oh video games of her kids and so you had

things like doom where you're travelled

to hell and Gourley explode demons or

Mortal Kombat where you rip out the

spine of your defeated foe or whatever.

And yeah some of that stuff was pretty graphic.

It's silly in retrospect

because the graphics were

very limited but at the time like

Mortal Kombat was realistic looking because

instead of having computer drawn

and character like hand-drawn characters,

that use digitized photographs.

- Megan, this isn't going to work.

You're not scaring me.

Wait, what are you doing?

(Screaming)

- if you saw the Senate hearing what it

looked like if somebody had just edited

out the most violent things from

different games including Night Trap,

and put it together and showed it to these

guys who of course most likely

never played video games,

so they didn't really understand the market,

but what they thought

is my eight-year-old kid is

being trained to kill people.

If you talk to the kid and go

what are you talking about,

this is like it you know not a big deal.

So I think what happened is they

were selects that were made including

the trokar scene in the bathroom of Night Trap,

they said not only is this violence,

not only you're promoting violence

to our kids and somehow

subconsciously turning them into

violent criminals but because it's

real it's actually more scary.

Up until that time it was pixelated graphics

and when it became real I think everybody

thought oh my god now now this is really bad.

- I actually did see TV reports that the

object of the game which was to

kill and rape sexy coeds.

- The the downside to

courting controversy is that sometimes

it actually works and controversy does

arise and so video games ended up going

to Washington and being put before a

congressional hearing where the entire

industry was basically scrutinized and

according to parental watchdogs like

Joseph Lieberman and Tipper Gore.

They were found wanting

and found inappropriate for children.

- I don't think there was a lot of

understanding of what was

going on in the business.

I don't think that Night Trap

in comparison to some of the

other games that were out at that time,

was that violent.

It did have its moments,

and when you just like anything once you

take those things and you put them

together you can make anything look like

the worst horror film you've ever seen.

- Unlike Mortal Kombat, or Doom,

Night Trap is not an extremely violent game.

There is there is the implication of violence

and some sort of very abstract science

fictiony violence and the fact that it's

mostly inflicted on young women like

there is this element of voyeurism and

there's there's something about it

that's a little bit uncomfortable for sure,

but, you know, the women they are

never unclothed and it's never

sexual violence so it walks I think a

pretty careful line to avoid being

outright tasteless and yeah I mean you

can definitely you know talk about like

the the exploitation and targeting of

women with this with this game and there

certainly is room for you know like

discussing hey is is appropriate for your kids.

- You know we have seems to me

have to begin to exercise some common

sense to protect their children and when

you say and what others say and my guess

is the person that marketed this

particular game says this is not for

kids this is adult entertainment.

The fact is you know and I know that kids in

this country will have wide access to it.

- Well I saw something, 16 year old boys,

get it banned by Toys R Us you know you

can't keep nothing but a supply at the warehouse.

- But thank God because two

things happen one is sales as of Night Trap

just went through the roof and then they

came up with the rating system.

The irony is that Night Trap is still on the list

of most violent games

You know and you look at what's

out there I mean there's no comparison.

- The end of the hearings I walked up to

Lieberman and I said to him,

"Senator have you ever actually played this game?"

and he said, "I don't have to, this is film."

- [Coury] In January of 1994,

amid rumors of Night Trap being banned,

Sega themselves would pull

the game from store shelves.

Several months later Night Trap would return

to retail with a mature rating in tow.

This rereleased would be handled by

Digital Pictures themselves so all the

Sega centric footage had to be removed.

Other than this alteration and new cover art,

everything else would remain the same.

A common misconception is that the bathroom

scene had been censored but in fact it has not.

In addition to this re-release,

Night Trap would see ports

to other consoles throughout the year,

including Panasonic's new 32-bit 3do hardware.

This version saw an increase in

video resolution of the Sega CD although

it ran at a lower frame rate.

A higher quality version was released alongside

Sega's news 32x hardware and add-on for

the Genesis and Sega CD.

This version returned the framerate

to the original 15 while maintaining much

of the improved resolution and color

of the 3do version with some compromises.

The final versions of Night Trap were released

in 1995 for ms-dos and Mac platforms under

the title Night Trap Director's Cut.

These rented a frame rate of 12 frames

per second meaning it was closer in

quality to the 3do port.

Despite it's director's cut label the PC and Mac

versions contain no new footage in the

main game however it did feature an

exclusive user interface.

In 1996 with interest in FMV games waning

Digital Pictures released their final game,

Quarterback Attack before shutting down.

Despite a slight resurgence of interest in

Night Trap in 1999 with the death of Dana Plato ,

there simply wasn't much of a place in the

video game market for FMV games anymore.

For all intents and purposes

the genre was dead.

- A really good video game

is you have full control,

the world is very believable,

and full of fascinating characters,

and you're motivated to do a number of

things to achieve whatever the goal is.

But it's a high level of interactivity

and that's more important

than the believability of your environment.

- I think any system that had

a preponderance of FMV games tended

to take it on the chin the

Sega CD and the 3do also CDI,

like there wasn't really

much you could do with an FMV game.

- You know branching, changing the ending,

even to some degree just changing

camera angles or trapping,

that is one of 20 or 30 things

you've got to figure out to

make this compelling.

I mean to a larger market

rather than just the novelty of,

"Wow it's kind of a video game

and it's real and so that's kind of cool

and but it's not very interactive I'm

feeling sort of bored I'm gonna go over

here to my game."

And I think that was you know,

in a badly was a sad way

that was the life and death of the thing.

- Darling would you like to do the honors?

- Oh thank you my dear.

- [Coury] Over the next two decades the gaming

landscape would change significantly.

Games on cd-rom would become the norm

before moving onto DVD ROM

and then to blu-ray.

Digital downloads provided an

alternate cheaper method to release

smaller titles on home consoles.

After the success a number of independent game

developers had with using the

crowdfunding site Kickstarter,

the creative team behind Night Trap thought

it might be time to bring it to a new

generation under the name,

Night Trap Revamped.

Launching on August 10th all

the original creators came together

in a pitch video they had the industry of

buzz and long-term fans excited.

- Rob contacted me and said hey we've had

a lot of news with fans saying that

they'd really like to see Night Trap

re-released with better quality.

- Now we've come together again with the

objective of bringing full motion video,

Night Trap specifically,

to modern platforms

that can best support them.

- [Coury] Intentions were good.

With a $330,000 goal,

there was to result in digital

downloads of the game on HD platforms,

along with a physical release.

After the first day Night Trap Revamped had

accrued over ten thousand dollars toward this goal.

Unfortunately this momentum wouldn't continue.

People began to question if all the perks promised

were viable for the funding goal.

Too many the Kickstarter felt ill-conceived

and it wasn't long before

bad word of mouth began to spread.

In the end Night Trap would only raise

$39,843 of its desired

$330K goal with 664 backers,

just 12 percent of what they had hoped to make.

- I think in a way it was an

interesting exercise but I wasn't

disappointed and and I don't again

I don't feel like you know gotta bring

Night Trap back I don't have the gamer

view of that there are some people that

grew up with the game.

- [Coury] As quickly as Night Trap

had emerged from the shadows

it had the floor dropped out from

underneath it like one of the traps

in the Martin estates.

The question was was the dream of the fans dead.

In May 2016 seemingly out of nowhere a

video appeared on YouTube depicting

Night Trap being played on

a Samsung smartphone.

It was immediately picked up

by various gaming news sites and then as

quickly as it had appeared it disappeared.

This demo was the handiwork

of a programmer named Tyler Hogel,

who had been working on a number of ports

of Digital Picture games for mobile devices.

- I had a worked on Double Switch and

worked on Quarterback Attack and then

I was kind of bored and didn't have

anything to do at that time and was

basically waiting for the next job.

So I had a I had one blind up just didn't

know the start date and then my friend was

all like you know what you should

recreate Night Trap and post online

anonymously and see what happens.

I was like that's an awesome idea.

I recreated all disc one in about three days.

It was glitchy but for the most part it worked.

Recorded a five minute video of it,

posted on YouTube just see what happens.

Then two days later it had a

couple thousand views on it,

showed up on a few

different video game websites and

then um these websites they start

contacting Tom Zito asking him about it,

saying hey are you involved with this in any way.

He said no so then at that point

it was like well he already knows about

it so why not contact him and see what happens.

So send him an email with the

link to the video and then he contacted

me immediately probably within

ten minutes asking a couple questions

then he asked for my phone number.

Then the next day gave me a call and was like

what do you want to do with this

and I was like well if I'd like to release it,

if I can and he's like alright cool

let's work something out.

- [Coury] Finally in 2017,

Tyler's one-man development studio

Screaming Villains released Night Trap

25th anniversary edition for consoles and PC.

seeing a T for teen rating on this remaster

goes to show just how much the

video game industry has changed since 1993.

Fans and newcomers alike can now

experience the game as as originally

envisioned with a number of enhancements

and extra features.

Also making good on

the original promise of the Kickstarter,

stands goodbye a physical addition from

publisher Limited Run Games.

- What's happening now is it's worth bringing

back Night Trap and some other things just

because there are a lot of people that

would love to see it in in better resolution

and I don't know where the film is.

I mean fortunately I made a copy

of the original timed masters,

and those were again timed for this unknown world.

So everything's bright but even then

you're going to see a lot more contrast

in a lot more detail than you did

through the Sega CD.

- The hardest part about making it

is that the source code

to the original game no longer exists

sp that was already an issue right there,

but luckily they sent me the master footage

it was all already lined up

exactly at the exact same time and their

correct order that it appears

in the original games.

So it was actually very

easy to put everything together the way

it's supposed to be and then what the

other stuff it was basically just

playing the original versions of the

game several times to figure stuff out

like what triggers a game over for

missing too many augs and things like that.

- [Coury] Now only does Tyler Hogan's version

present a fully uncropped 4:3 aspect ratio

of the source material and a new user interface,

there's also a number of features

for old fans such as classic

screen layouts for Sega CD, 3do, and PC.

In addition we finally get to see a bunch

of cut content that has never been public.

- There is one scene the very

beginning the introduction,

there's I believe it's three minutes long,

Nobody has ever seen that which actually

explains the story better so it kind of

baffles me that it was never in the

original game and then the other one though,

was a death with the character Danny.

If I had the guess I would say it

was removed for obvious reasons because

I guess I don't know the age of Danny,

but I guess people could interpret

that as a twelve or thirteen year old

getting a drill in his neck and at the

time people probably would have

made a big deal about it.

Another thing that was done was theater mode,

but the biggest complaint

that was the storyline because

you can't really watch a story because

you're too busy you have to trap an Aug,

so now when you play the game and beat

it you unlock theater mode and then once

you play the game again any time you watch a video,

that video gets unlocked in theater mode,

so now you can actually

go back and watch all the story related videos.

Survivor mode that's another new feature,

because with Night trap it's the

same game every time,

nothing ever changes,

so with the introduction of

Survivor mode it's now a competitive

thing to where when you play the game,

Augs appear in random places so the idea

is to get as far as you can.

Basically rounds, basically you'll play round one,

three or four Augs will appear in

multiple rooms then at the next round

they'll appear in completely different

rooms so it's a different game

every time you play it.

- [Coury] perhaps the most

interesting bonus feature might just be

that scene in the crime is included and

fully playable but you're going to have

to play a perfect game to see it.

While Night Trap now looks better than ever before,

the master footage does have the

occasional hit of tape damage which

unfortunately cannot be helped.

It's not very prevalent but it does crop up

from time to time.

These tapes are also missing

a couple of scenes so Hogels best option

was to replace those with video

from the 32x edition.

This is the best that Night Trap

will ever look unless one day the original film

is found and rescanned,

not an impossibility but highly unlikely.

But the real question is,

what will gamers of today think of Night Trap?

- I actually think you could show

this game to a kid who likes

Five Nights at Freddy's and you know maybe,

when they're a little older and they

would be like oh yeah

this is like that game.

- I'm also very interested

in people that have never been in this

world before and don't think of it as a game,

and don't think of it as a movie,

but think of it as live action interaction.

- I think this could be an

interesting lesson like you know what

we're video games like in the old days,

well here's here's what we had instead

of Mass Effect back then.

We had this was this was interactive storytelling,

this was you know like dynamic

choose your own outcome type storytelling.

- Today you say interactive

and it's like yeah yeah so what,

you know what specifically do you mean.

Your computer's interactive right,

so back then it was a people didn't understand

when you said interactive,

they really didn't know what that meant

or they have very different ideas about

what that meant.

So in some ways that

part of it I think it's going to be fun.

- Night Trap is a part of videogame history,

whether you like it as a videogame or not.

Video games I think would be

different today if not for a Night Trap.

- I knew I could count on you, thanks.

You are wonderful and next time I'm on

special assignment I'm going to insist

that you back me up.

I'd go anywhere with you

and feel secure knowing that you

were at the controls.

Now you wouldn't.

I didn't think so.

Bye bye, see you next time!

(MLIG Theme Music)

- And I will say this,

Night Trap and Night Trap 2,

world of difference.

Night Trap 2 is going to have

a much darker edgier look, style,

and I think it's going to be

far more experiential and in part

because we're going to shoot significant

parts of it in VR.

There will be two releases,

one linear in one VR but it's

going to be super cool.

For years afterwards front my friends

you know who are also in the film

business would go hey Riley you know

I look over they go..

(laughing)

- I have this horrible feeling that 20

years from now somebody's in calling us

saying Jim, we want to do an interview.

And I'm going to say great you know

is it is it Wire Head is it is it this

new show

no Night Trap the classic the great the great

you know we want to get the behind the

scenes of Night Trap.

Now we're pulling this

stupid binder every five years

going yeah well we had a lot of fun.

(MLIG Theme Continues)

(Night Trap Music)