Stuff You Should Know - Night Trap: The Video Game Failure that Changed the Industry

Episode Date: May 27, 2021

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. This is that story. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. 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 silly and this is Stuff You Should Know.

Video, obscure, lost video game episode. How did you hear about this? This is your request. Yeah, so Night Trap is the game that we're talking about and I heard about this from watching the Netflix documentary series High Score. Did you Netflix and Chill while you were watching that? No, I Netflix by myself and chilled because Emily wasn't watching this. That's a different thing. Yeah, this is a different thing. 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 stuff. On Night Trap specifically or in general?

The whole series. I got you. But it was fine and if you're 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 but it's not great. Have you ever seen that documentary, I think it's King of Kong? Oh, sure. That is one of the best documentaries ever made. I haven't seen it in years. I got to see it again. It's great. I think our old buddy Josh Bierman might have written the original story that that was. Oh, I'm not surprised. He had something to do with that. 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. Yeah. 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 and had a cool story. What the heck is it called? I can't remember now. I saw this a couple of months ago. So it's been a while. Oh, what was it? Can't remember. But it was, it's great and that'll make 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 in forming what ended up being the ratings board for video games. I mean, that's, that's almost like understanding it like this one game. Yeah. Paired with Mortal Kombat basically led directly to the

creation of that. 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 live action as in they shot, you know, a little movie. Right. And that you controlled. Yeah, that you sort of controlled. You could conceivably, theoretically, hypothetically control. Because it wasn't a great game, but it lives in infamy because of every, because it's a really cool story, 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 1981 by a playwright named John, what's his last name? Krizanck. Okay. I want to say, I want, or Krizanck. Shit. You don't think so? I don't know, maybe.

Well, regardless, he, he wrote a few episodes of Do South. What was that? It was like a show about a Canadian Mountie, 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 thank because it is a lot like the concept of sleep no more. As far as I know, this was the one that like broke that ground. I think so. And the ground they broke it, it's about the painter Tamara de Limpica, who I've never heard of. She was a Polish painter who lived in Italy in the roaring 20s. When the fascists were starting to take power and she took no guff from him. No guff. Hedonistic, amazing art deco painter, art deco portraitists 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 looked her up. She seemed pretty cool. 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. I don't know if they just totally ripped it off or if they said, hey, it's been 30 years. Who's going to remember Tamara? I think it was like they broke that ground. And once you break that ground, you're going to have people following your wake. 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. I would like to see that. I would love to see Tamara too, but it ran in New York, but it started a Toronto art festival, I think. Interesting. And then some producers set it up in LA, and that's where it had its longest run from about the mid-80s to the 90s. They had this 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 rooms 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 basically how it applies. It's like this 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 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 co-ed types like sorority girls, maybe. It's very sort of titillating,

and that was one of the big deals. A little bit. I think this is overstated. Even for the time, I wouldn't say. I mean, you got married with children was like 10 times more titillating. This is very tame, I think. Well, 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 in this game. And Jim Riley, who conceived of this game when he had the idea of, I think he was watching 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. What if a user and a game player could go into any of 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 game. Right. And I mean, that's... Or the story, rather. Right. But again, I think you really pointed out something important. That was the concept. In the actuality, they kind of missed the mark a little bit. Yes. So with the game, it was originally designed as part of a platform called Control Vision. And I think internally it was called Nemo, N-E-M-O. And it was being created by a company called Axelon. And Axelon was actually in Nolan... Such an 80s, like video game company name.

But it was a Nolan Bushnell company. After Atari, he founded Axelon, among others. I think he created five companies at the same time in parallel using this incubator that he had created. The developers at Axelon 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 was the thing that made 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 kibos in the whole thing. But instead, because of the interlacing that video uses, they could actually choose what field to show at what

time and basically switch between them. Which was... I mean, it looks archaic, but it's a remarkable technology at the time to be able to do that. Right. Yeah. It's still mind-blowing. I 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 Hasbro was sold, that was a big deal. Yeah. And this was 85. One of their designers was the legendary Tom Crane, who designed Pitfall, one of my favorite all-time games on the Atari. That's a good one. But it was a good team. And they went apparently to these Tamra performances. They were also inspired by Dragon's Lair. Do you remember that game? I do. I was never into it, but I remember watching it. It looked cool. I mean, it was an animation

game where it was fully animated and used laser disk to project this animated footage. So it looked awesome, but it wasn't that great. The gameplay wasn't great. No, but it followed a story. There was a story that was happening. And then every once in a while, there's something you had to do to move the story along as part of the game. And if you didn't do it right, the dragon turned you into ash or something like that, right? Yeah, but you're not actually controlling the player, which was the big difference in these games from the regular game. You're creating a sequence. 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. The story kept going on over here. So you can't follow a storyline that way. No, which is a big deal. That was a big differentiator between it and Dragon's Lair. All right. Well, let's take a little break here. That's a good setup, I think. And we'll come back and get more into Night Trap right after this. I'm here to help. This I promise you. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael, and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life

step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and

pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. 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 in the Netflix documentary, Jim Riley, basically is like, well, the first thing they created a demo called Scene of the Crime. Yes. And it was a 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. These ninjas come in, 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 stars into people because a kid will go and do that. You

can't have a knife because a kid can go get a knife out of a drawer. It's got to be something that a kid cannot reproduce. 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, everyone. What if they turn out to be vampires? Right. And Hasbro said, I kind of like where you're going with this. But kids can still like bite people on the neck. What else you got? I think it came the other way though. I think that was a note from Hasbro. Oh, was it? I'm pretty sure they were like, what if they were vampires? Okay. And Jim Riley was like, okay, I guess I can do that. Okay. Biting people's necks. And then Hasbro was like, you can't do that because kids can bite necks too. So what they found, and this is

a great metaphor for the night trap overall. Yeah. What the ninja originally, or what they turned out to be in the end, were loping vampires who used what looked like a Ghostbusters Proton pack. Sort of, yeah. With a collar of the kind that Arnold Schwarzenegger was wearing at the beginning of Running Man. Like a clamp sort of. Yes. 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 as night trap. Yeah. So what Hasbro did was they noted it to death and neutered it to death because they said, even was like, all right, I can do vampires that 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're described as vampires who had been half-blood and left to die. So they are not quite vampires, but they aren't human either. And that makes them lopey and lumbery. Right. 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. Okay. Because it was definitely its own thing. It was its own thing. And it's funny in the documentary, Jim Riley was like, in the end, he said this trocar, which, you know, it didn't show it explicitly. It showed the clamp going around the neck and this little drill inside of a shaft start and then sort of moving and then blood being drawn. But it doesn't

show 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 vampire biting someone's neck. Sure. But they were like, it's not reproducible though. So it's fine. 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 apparently found out during focus group testing of a scene of the crime, I believe, that the parents who were in the room or were part of the focus group were saying like, I really kind of like this, like a TV show, but I get to control it. Right. Because it looked like something that they understood. 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 kidfied 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. 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, adults will never play video games. So what they really wanted until they grow up and then continue to play video games. Sure. What they really were after was a teenage market, which didn't fully exist at this point. Oh, gotcha. Like an old like 16 and 17 year old boys, which is why they put sorority girls in

like a nightie at a slumber party. Right. Was in all in an effort to sort of titillate, you know, people like me. Right. And it worked like a charm. I had never heard of it back then. Because you just, you would play Night Trap and Netflix and chill by yourself. 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 yeah, there were more full motion games of the time. And you would try and cast one recognizable face among this cast to sort of, they called it the anchor to like, all right, well, this has got so and so in it. And who did they cast for Night Trap? 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, man. Very tragic story. Yeah, it is. It's very sad. And they actually went back and ruled her 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 suddenly. Was it 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, 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 as well later on. I think I knew that, like not super long ago, right? Like, yeah, in the

2010s. Yeah. Oh 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. She was undercover. Yeah, she's undercover. 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. Marry me. Help her. Yeah, go help her. Yeah. And we should say also, so the group of crime fighters that she was a part of is called SCAT, 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 I, which I saw admittedly on Wikipedia. This is, 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 player's, the user's handguide. That's night trap for you right there. But the family that invited the kids, the teenage girls out for a weekend at their house are actually themselves vampires with teeth and everything. They're not augurs, they're actually vampires. And they don't attack people. No, they brought them there for the augurs. Right, right, right. To source their blood, I guess. Yeah. There is a pretty funny scene in it when, did you watch any of it? I watched the whole thing. I watched the, I think grumpy gamers did like a playthrough. Yeah, they have a full thing. I watched their, their stuff too. And yeah, I've watched a lot of night trap stuff. 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, you've got to be jiving me. I didn't see that. Oh, it was great. It was like, was this game made in 1989 or 1973? It was really confusing. Yeah. Like what era it was. So you said it was shot on the soundstage in Culver City. Yeah. And it took like 30 days almost. They had to shoot a ton of stuff. Yes, because it was like a 250 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 120 page scripts. It's about a minute per page is the rule of thumb. This is 250 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 could happen in one, just one particular scene. Sure. So if you shot a scene, you had to shoot it multiple times to get what you wanted. Right. And then you had to shoot those multiple times, multiple times for each outcome. Yeah. And we should say that the violence in the game, like we said, is suggestive for the augurs. You don't ever see anything. The only real violence is when the augurs are dispatched of. Yeah. But it is very much a Wiley Coyote Bugs Bunny sort of thing. Yeah. It's the definition of cartoonish. Yeah. Like there will be a Murphy bed. We'll flip them out of a window where they'll just, whoa, like fall through a trap door. The stairs, like one of the things if they're coming down the stairs, you can trap

them by collapsing the stairs. Yeah. They'll go flat. That's a cartoon. When they fall into the trap, like smoke machine, pour smoke out of it, it's impossible that they weren't going for cartoonish violence. There's no way. Oh, of course. The producers and directors were trying to be like scary in any way, shape or form. But it was shot by Don Burgess, who was nominated for an Oscar less than a decade after Night Trap for Forrest Gump. So they had a real team. 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. Sure. And just do this thing. Like they had a real crew. No. And apparently Hasbro spent, depending on who you ask, at least a million dollars on this. Yeah. They said one

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 notice, but any doorway, they didn't build the door down to the floor. They built the door down to like a one foot tall stepover. So anytime someone opens the door, they step over this like one foot tall, like wooden set. That's awesome. I mean, the set is basically like they could have repurposed it for growing pains or family ties or something like that. Or no, they probably would have said like, this doesn't look good. Right. Maybe small wonder. I think they used it for small wonder. How about that? There is no nudity. We should point out. But 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, it's so over the top. It's so over the top. Yeah. Should we take a break? You don't want to take a break, do you? No, I'm excited and I'm ready to keep going. 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. Oh, okay. Hasbro dumped the game. Wait, wait. Well, Hasbro dumped the game or not, Chuck? Okay. We'll find out right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end

of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never,

ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangeh Shatikler. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on

this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck. It's cliffhanger answer time. Hasbro dumped the game. Oh my gosh. Because A, it wasn't that great. But the big reason was because CD-ROM technology started up and they were like, we've got VHS technology and we sunk a million five into this

Turkey. Like let's just dump it. And that should have been the end of it. Not just Night Trap, but the whole control vision thing. The whole platform that Night Trap was just going to be a game on. Totally gone. CD-ROM killed it. Hasbro said, forget it. The thing is, the people who worked on designing this game said, no, no, no. Hasbro is being short-sighted here. It's too good. This game in particular, maybe control vision 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. Do you know how much they sold it for? No, I couldn'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 to get it out of here. But these designers, developers, directors, writers, everybody got together, formed Digital Pictures and bought it and started developing Night Trap. Ironically, for CD-ROM, which is the very type of media that killed it in the first place. Yeah. 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-ROM technology. And he said, they got a call that said, hey, you want to develop this for CD-ROM. And he probably got a good laugh out about that and the irony. And then said, sure, because Night Trap must live. 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 was 1992? 1992 was when it was finally released as a CD-ROM game. Yeah. They had shot all this footage in the late 80s. But it looked like the late 70s.

There was a big difference between, say, 1988 and 1992 style-wise. It was apparent. Visually apparent and immediately apparent to anybody, say, a video game playing age. Yeah. Agreed. That was a big strike against Night Trap to begin with. But probably the biggest strike of all was 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 terror, 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 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, 1993. Yeah. And so this very much mirrored, if you listen to our Satanic Panic episodes and the PMRC and music labeling. MPAA. MPAA. Like this was all the time when everyone was saying, hey, listen, we need to start at least labeling this stuff so parents know what their kids are doing. And just watch it a little bit. You know, there's all kinds. 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 hyperviolence. And it's like, it's really not that violent. So here's the thing. They went after moral combat. 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. But it had ladies in lingerie. One. Yes. Okay. I'm not defending any kind of violence against women. Of course not. I'm not defending objectifying women, but night trap was unfairly railroaded because for some reason, I think probably because it was film. It was people. Like the people were controlling people. That was the difference because there was, there were a hundred exploitation movies and horror movies by this point. Sure. 200. Yeah. 300. 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 the violence. Like the whole point of

the game was to stop the augers. That's yes. Like you weren't the person doing the auger. You're preventing the violence. Yeah. I guess that's why they called them augers because it was kind of like an auger. Yeah. The tool was. Yeah. That's what I guess. Well, crowbar or towbar. What was it called? Crowbar. Crowbar. Crowbar. Yeah. Crowbar. But yeah. And they never, I mean, Jim Riley was like, they clearly never even played the game. Yeah, no. They were talking about. The cover of the thing was lured. They didn't like the cover of the box. Yeah. They definitely hadn't played the game. It was just impossible from what they were saying happens in the game. And the big one was like you were saying that it let players carry

out sexual violence against women. And no, you do the opposite of that. Right. There's violence that is carried out by the augers. If you don't do it right, if you, if you're not good at the game, if you lose, yes, exactly. But even then, like even in the most disturbing scene, which was the one with the lady and the, and the nightie 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, the croak car. I can't even remember. Trokar. Trokar. And she's like, ah, ah, and it's like the worst B movie. And then they just sort of drag her over the threshold of one of those doors. I would say gently escorted through the door. Like you don't see any of the violence even. No. It's all just

suggested. Right. Yes. But again, Night Trap 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. That's right. It was an industry created self-imposed rating system that was brought about in large part because of Night Trap. Right. So Sega pulls the game eventually. It became really popular because of these senatorial hearings. Right. Which is what always happens. Yes, exactly right. It was starting to fade away. It would have been lost to history. And then the

senators came in and were like, go buy that game. Kids wanted to play it. Yeah. 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 also been the end of it, right? Yeah. It 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, it was like you couldn't find it anyway. Right. That should have been the end. And then in 2014, Tom Riley, Jim Riley. Jim. Jim Riley started a Kickstarter and said, we're going to resurrect Night Trap. All we need is $330,000. People are going to go crazy for this. Is that a cult 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 that had a lot of criticism, skepticism, and ultimately only garnered, I think, about $40,000 when they were after 330. And that was in 2014. Yeah. So that obviously was the end of Night Trap, right? That was not the end of Night Trap. The bad game that refused to die. Yeah. In 2016, 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? You can't play Night Trap on a smartphone. Yeah. Because it was never developed that technology unless

that smartphone is playing a CD that I don't know about in the background. And they got in touch with the person. His name was Tyler Hogle. And he was a mobile game programmer who followed, was a fan of the original, like an occult fan way. That's a deep cut at that time. 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. Yeah. So he basically created this just on his own. And then once that video surfaced 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 35 millimeter footage, which is timestamped, 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 25th anniversary edition that just is actually kind of a, as far as Night Trap goes, it's the best Night Trap that there could possibly be. Yeah. That was the 2017, 25th edition, rated T for teens this time. Still preposterous. Which is funny. And apparently, you know, you said he lost the code, but he was like, that's really easy. Like, I've got all this footage that's timestamped. Yeah. I can code this thing in my sleep, basically. He basically did. So there is a 25th edition of Night Trap, which apparently Nintendo

has a version of, which is kind of funny because at the time of those Senate hearings in 1993-94, Nintendo famously said they would never allow Night Trap on their platform. And they did. Yeah. And Nintendo is still sort of known as the more family friendly unit. Yeah. I think they even had a bloodless Mortal Kombat, if I'm not mistaken. Or maybe it was a setting. Oh, I think yes. It rings a bell. Did you see the new Mortal Kombat movie? Did you have a new one? I have seen zero Mortal Kombat movies. The new one just came out on HBO Max. Is it good? It's pretty good. I mean, did you play the game? Yeah, yeah. Do you have nostalgia for the game?

Sure. Yeah. You should watch it. Okay. It's good enough. It looks good. And there's great fights, and then some nice Easter eggs. And it's like the Mortal Kombat movie that should have been, because they made one previously that wasn't that great. Yeah, from the 90s. Yeah. But this one looks, it's pretty cool. Okay. Okay. You rip out spines and hearts, and I'll go check it out. And the way they do the blood, it looks just like the game. Is it rated T for Teen? No, it's rated R. Okay. Because it's a movie. 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 it impossible to follow the actual story. That's a big problem. So it suffers there. Yeah. 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. Right. And that's when the auger will flip out the window, but it has to be timed right. 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. Right. And so you're losing the game. 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 show on screen. Right. The character tells another character to go down to the basement and change the code to orange. And a different screen that you may not be watching. Yeah. In 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. That is not a thing where it's like, oh, that's a cool little feature, you know, part of the gameplay. That is a bog. Yes, it's a bog. 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 any of the characters, you lose. Right. 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, you're basically memorizing where to go win. And it happens especially toward the end really quick. So like, you'll 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 toward the end, but not necessarily fun. 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. But I did watch the walkthroughs. Did you see the night trap video or the lip sync video? I did not. There's actually a theme song night trap. Oh, right. Look out behind you or something like that. That one of the characters does an air guitar tennis racket lip sync to dancing while the other characters have to watch and pretend like they're not mortified with embarrassment at seeing this. It's really

something. Oh man. I kept waiting in the documentary for a big reveal that like George Clooney was one of the augers or something like that. But Dana Plato is about as, you know, A-list as it got at the time, which was probably C-list at the time. Yeah. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Night trap. Go seek it out. Night trap. Look out behind you. That's right. If you want to know more about night trap, you don't even have to play it. 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 Mail. I'm going to 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 the vivid memory of speed reading in my elementary school gifted class speaking of other scams. This was in the early 90s. 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. I had no idea that this was a scam. 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. I grew up shooting clay pigeons. Really? For school? No. Oh, okay. I would like to try that. It's cool. Ski shooting? Yeah, that's another way to put it. Looks like fun. Just stand behind. 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. Thanks a lot, Kate. That was a good email. Very sorry to set off the trauma, but I'm glad that it's past. I'm presuming it past. Yeah, I kind of remember that happening, but I certainly was not in a gifted class. It doesn't sound like a very fun procedure. It

kind of sounds like Ray Fiennes revealing himself to Philip Seymour Hoffman in Red Dragon. Oh, spoiler. Do you see? Yeah, that's creepy. We've talked about that recently. Yeah, the wheelchair and fire scene was very 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 us like Kate did, then you can email us like Kate did at StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups,

even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.