Night Trap is a legend in the video game industry on its own. Screaming Villains took that legend and made it better. They added meaningful content with a new intro and some nice special features, as well as improvements to the gameplay design through faster/better navigation methods without messing up the original formula of the game. That’s not an easy task, but they pulled it off and it is now functionally perfect to play.
I feel like I’m getting a second opportunity to put a review together for a game that I adored on the Sega CD back in the early 90s. Of course, I was in high school adoring Electronic Gaming Monthly editors, specifically Sushi X, and wishing/hoping/dreaming that I could be a reviewer one day and talk about CD-based gaming. Alas, those were the days of youthful thinking and probably not the best judgement (stories for another day).
Anyway, here it is 25 years removed and I finally get a shot at reviewing one of the best/worst/controversial games of our time. A game that had a hand in the birthing of the ESRB and a game that was incredibly misunderstood. Also, bittersweetly-so, a game that featured the late/great Dana Plato (Different Strokes), who sadly passed away of a drug overdose of painkillers and muscle-relaxers in 1999. In short, there’s a lot to love and adore about this game, as well as honor. This game I speak of was/is called Night Trap.
It’s great to see Night Trap come back to a current platform thanks to the efforts of Screaming Villains. Maybe it will start a trend where Sega CD games make their way to current consoles (*COUGH, COUGH* Snatcher). Getting back on track, to be quite honest, I wasn’t sure that the developers could make any improvements to Night Trap to warrant a ‘remaster’ title, you know, outside of just simply cleaning up the video. Thankfully, and surprisingly, I was wrong about that notion. So. Very. Wrong.
Before we get too ahead of ourselves, and for those who have never played Night Trap in their life, let’s start with explaining the story. The story surrounds a group of girls who have made their way to a large house in the woods. The guests were invited by a family of vampires, who are responsible in feeding other vampires named Augers (those crawly ninjas you will see in the below videos). The Augers slowly make their way from room to room, using a series of passageways behind walls, to capture, trap and drain the blood of the guests. How does the gamer fit in? They’re part of the S.C.A.T. team (feel free to laugh), who are monitoring the house, and have put the gamer in control of traps that capture the Augers before they can kill guests.
Yep, that’s the story.
As ridiculous as it was back in 1989, when it was conceived for the Hasbro Control-Vision (codenamed NEMO, VHS-based), and 1992, when it was released on SEGA CD, the game featured full-motion video that users could interact with, which was amazing for the time. The premise of the gameplay design is that you would click from room-to-room in the game (as you can see below) using your controller, picking a room and then going there in hopes of trapping Augers before they overran the place. Originally, you would get small graphical representations of each room, usually guessing where the Augers would end up, and trying to catch the Augers at the right time and the right place to set off the trap. In addition to this juggling act, you would also have to be aware of the hosts, who would from time-to-time change a security code that would allow you to access traps. Back in the day, it was a complete crap-shoot and challenging when trying to capture all the enemies in the traps.
Screaming Villains has improved the gameplay design just a bit, probably thanks to the processing/graphical power of the current generation systems, where you can actually see perfectly clear small videos moving of what is going on in each room before you get there. For example, when Augers enter an area you can see them on the small video icons and it will give you time to rush to those rooms to potentially trap the Auger (see below). It may not seem like a huge upgrade for a remastering job, but let me reassure you that this is a significant improvement over the original gameplay design. It takes some unnecessary difficulty out of the gameplay process, because you can see the actual video of the room, while also keeping your eyes a lot busier than in the original version.
In addition to the above improvement, the video has been brought back to its original source footage, thanks to James Riley having a clean copy, and has been given an HD cleaning (as good as you can get for the 4:3 video). Does this make the video better? Visually, yes. Acting wise? God, no. It’s a terribly acted story, but hey! It was the late 80s and early 90s, and it was one of the first FMV video games of its time, where the gameplay design ruled above the acting, so we’ll cut it some slack.
Staying with original footage, the opening has changed significantly. I believe the above opening for the newly remastered version of Night Trap snagged first-take footage from Riley’s archives for a new beginning. The opening is obviously on a set, a cheap one that probably kills the ‘dark’ mood a bit in comparison to the old ending (see first video above), but it does bring a fresh first-take on the beginning of the game. It certainly was a pleasant surprise and it was nice to see all of the actors rather than a pixelated badly lit leader of the S.C.A.T. team (again, feel free to laugh).
Other wonderful additions to this game include a Survivor mode, where Augers appear randomly in the house and you have to pretty much guess the right security code to trap them. It’s insanely difficulty, but certainly anyone with Dark Souls experience will feel right at home. It’s also neat that Screaming Villains included this, as it does add a good level of challenge with a modern gameplay structural twist.
Another addition, and such a welcomed one that made me smile so big, was the ability to continue in the game. I know most of you were born with games continuing, but for some of us, especially Night Trap junkies, this didn’t exist in the original. You die, you start over. End of story. Early arcade rules (before Dragon’s Lair). While this game will still certainly test your patience, there are unclear check points where the game will save your progress before you die, thus allowing you to restart at decent progress point. That is such a huge and lovely option, folks. You just don’t know the struggle of the early 90s without that option. *small tear*
Anyway, there is also a mode, well special features in a sense, called The Basement. This includes the following:
– Dangerous Games – A nice documentary from 1995 that explains a bit about the game and its controversy. Let me just add that our government is driven by idiots, regardless of decade, which includes the current. If you need proof, please watch this. It’s short, but sweet and gives you some history. It’s never bad when you learn history in video games.
– James Riley Interview – A good history of the game that is led by James Riley, co-creator of Night Trap. If you need the origins of the game, where it started and who guided Riley to create it/promote it/sell it, then you don’t have to look any further.
– Timeline, Production Images, Scene of the Crime — All of these unlock by defeating the game. The last unlocked by getting a perfect Auger capture. That last one is a bit tough, but it will certainly be worth the efforts, as you get to see the prototype for Night Trap in action before it was called Night Trap.
As far as if the game is good, well in hindsight it isn’t a good game at all. It is certainly made better with the new hardware running it, especially with continuity and less time going from room-to-room, new options and special features, but the simplistic concept isn’t exactly groundbreaking for this day and age. You’re essentially pushing four buttons (one to navigate rooms, one to select rooms, one to set-off traps, one to change security codes for traps) and watching really cheesy video in the process. It’s not quite Plan 9 From Outerspace, but it’s not exactly Spielberg either.
Having said that, in my opinion this game is also epic on many levels. Without it, we have a government running reviews on game ratings, which would put us somewhere around ‘wow, that’s a dumbass way to do things’ and Australia’s government (they have a ratings board that gums up releases and their process is about as dumb as dumb gets, not to mention costly for gamers). Without Night Trap we’ll never be able to look back and see when rated M for Mature games started. Also, it was a cool concept that is mind-blowing when you consider it was running originally on VHS technology. Seriously, VHS. Not Beta. It also brought about a ‘choose your own adventure’ mentality, which could have been (I can’t confirm this) the beginning of multiple endings and choice-based gaming design (think Mass Effect or Life is Strange type of design). Anyway, it deserves the love and respect for all its been through and what it has meant to the modern industry, as well as Sega’s success back in the early 90s (I miss those days). It was also a must-have game in the early 90s for CD-based gaming systems, with the 3DO version being the most visually fun, so the history and coolness factor alone will put it on a higher level than most games made today.
All-in-all, this game is worth your time and money because of its history and what Screaming Villains did to improve the design. Hopefully, we get more of this from past titles.
