I’m a big fan of the FMV games of yore — there’s just something I find oddly charming about them. Using video footage of real people as opposed to animated cutscenes allowed developers to tell stories with complex (and admittedly, often hilarious) narratives, even if they didn’t have the skills, funds, or time to create and animate character models. Full-motion video also allowed for more realism at a time when the photorealistic graphics we take for granted today were still decades out of reach.
One title that inevitably comes up when I talk about FMV games is Night Trap, a 1992 FMV horror title developed by Digital Pictures and published by Sega as a launch title for the Sega CD system. The game follows a group of teenage girls who are staying at an estate and being terrorized by strange, vampire-like beings. The player, a member of the Special Control Attack Team (called the Sega Control Attack Team in the original release), is directed to protect the girls by monitoring an in-home camera system and springing traps on the creatures of the night who are terrorizing them, hence the name Night Trap.
When I bring Night Trap up to friends and colleagues, the conversation usually shifts to the 1993 congressional hearings that eventually led to the formation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) in 1994. Along with Doom and Mortal Kombat, Night Trap was cited in the hearings as an example of a violent game that could potentially harm children. Although the goal of the game is for players to protect the girls from the vampires, failing to spring a trap at the right time generally leads to FMV cutscenes of them dying because the player goofed up. These scenes are fairly tame, but Nintendo — which was beefing with Sega at the time — was especially critical of the game.
“In the past year, some very violent and offensive games have reached the market, and of course I’m speaking about Mortal Kombat and Night Trap,” former Nintendo of America chairman Howard Lincoln testified in 1993. “And let me say that, for the record, I want to state that Night Trap will never appear on a Nintendo system. Obviously, it would not pass our guidelines.”
