Millennials! They catch blame for being the death of everything, from affordable toast to home ownership.
Originally filmed in the ’80s and finally released in 1992, Digital Pictures’ FMV horrorshow Night Trap is also a Millennial that caught blame (alongside Mortal Kombat and other games) for killing something: the moral fabric of America.
While the game’s footage was meant as a send-up of bad horror movies and was shot in accordance with Hasbro’s guidelines for family-friendly games (meant, as it initially was, to be used in a game for Hasbro’s cancelled “NEMO” game console), it was one of the centerpieces of the 1993 U.S. Congressional hearings on video game violence.
Those hearings shaped the course of the game industry and inspired the formation of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. Now, 25 years after its initial release on Sega CD, a new version of the game has been released on modern consoles by Kentucky-based studio Screaming Villains.
To mark the occasion, we thought we’d stream a bit of it on the Gamasutra Twitch channel today at 12 PM Pacific (3 PM Eastern) to see how Night Trap holds up, as both a piece of game design and an example of perceived ’90s moral turpitude. If you have similar questions, tune in and join us!
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