Title: Night Trap CD Released: 1995 Genre: Adventure Developer: Digital Pictures Publisher: Digital Pictures Regions: USA Availability: Uncommon

Of all the 32x CD games, Night Trap is the most desirable and fun to play, if nothing else than for its sheer notoriety and awfulness. The plot of this Full Motion Video “game” involves a group of wealthy suburbanites with a taste for blood and a S.C.A.T. (Sega Control Attack Team) agent, played by you. Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to protect a group of hapless teenagers who are visiting the murderous yuppies for the weekend. Cameras have been set up all through the house, and you must set off “traps” to catch the evil henchmen who are trying to capture the teenagers, a group that includes the late Dana Plato (playing an agent.) Gameplay is marginal at best, involving switching cameras throughout the house and listening for "codes" (which are very easy to miss if you're not in the right place at the right time.) If you miss out on an important clue, you really have no choice but to go back to your last save point and start over. The gore factor is surprisingly low, and the grainy video quality doesn't help the graphical situation (though the video is markedly sharper the the ultra-fuzzy Sega CD original.) Many expects in the industry believed that "Interactive Games" were the future of videogaming, but the novelty wore out faster than expected. After playing Night Trap for a few minutes, it's easy to see why. Regardless of it's entertainment value, Night Trap is a legitimate milestone in the history of video games, and many of the game's scenes (especially the "party" scene near the beginning) are so shockingly terrible that you just have to keep playing to see what happens next.

Dana Plato is best known for her role in the wildly popular 1980’s situation comedy Diff'rent Strokes. In a sad turn of events, she went on to have an illegitimate baby, starred in several B-grade and "exotic" films (including one called Different Strokes) and was eventually incarcerated for robbing a video store. She died in 1999 of a drug overdose. Her costar, Todd Bridges, was also arrested for armed robbery, assault, and drug possession. The diminutive star of the series, Gary Coleman, has since worked as a security guard, has appeared in several music videos, and most recently graced our mailbox on a flyer advertising video games.
 
 
 

Night Trap was originally scheduled to appear on a console called the Control-Vision, an interactive system from Hasbro Electronics that had been developed by Nolan Bushnell’s Axlon Company (Nolan Bushnell is considered to be the father of video games.) The Control-Vision was deemed too expensive to be a mass-market product and was canceled. The game eventually appeared first on the Sega CD.

Night Trap is the game that originally started the whole debate over violence in video games. Senator Joel Lieberman was greatly offended by the violence in Night Trap (this was before his unsuccessful bid for the Vice Presidency) and threatened to introduce a Congressional bill that would force Sega and other manufacturers to instigate a rating system for their games. Oddly enough, Night Trap had not been a successful Sega CD titleup to that point and seemed destined to fade away into obscurity. The controversy revived interest in the game and sales exploded, causing Night Trap to be ported over to several other platforms. Backfire!