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It is a sick and disgusting video game in my judgement... Shame on people who produce that trash!
-Senator Byron Dorgan circa 1993
those are the words taken from the infamous senate hearings on violent video games, the targets included Mortal Kombat, Lethal Enforcers, (more specifically the Konami Justifier accessory included with the genesis port of the game, a brightly colored but still somewhat realistic looking revolver.) and the one Byron is tearing into...
Night Trap
but it very nearly didn't have to end this way.
as the story goes, the videos used in the game were originally filmed in 1986. for the unreleased "Control-Vision" console. and was funded by Hasbro.
yes, a children's toy company. they were pretty strict in terms of what would be allowed as well, with a harsh ban on "reproducible" violence meaning the vampires (or "augers" as the game called them.) could only suck blood using a deliberately goofy looking device.
however, Hasbro would cancel the control-vision in 1989. leaving the rights to the game (and Sewer Shark, another title that would resurface on the SEGA CD.) in the hands of one Tom Zito.
Zito would then go on to form a new company known as "Digital Pictures" in 1991, before finally bringing the game out to the public the next year thanks to the storage capabilites of CD-ROMs.
then everything went horribly wrong.
it was really more of a case of bad timing than anything else, Mortal Kombat was the real epicenter of controversy at the time due to it's then shocking amounts of gore. but centering the hearings around just one game wasn't going to cut it. so the politicians of the time trawled around game stores of the time, and stumbled upon this shocking box...
horrifying, isn't it? clearly this game was a brutal gorefest just like Mortal Kombat!
and so, a spectacular misunderstanding was created. turning a random b-movie that was already toned down under the whims of Hasbro was somehow mistakenly considered to be one of the most violent games out there.
thankfully the hearings would prove to be helpful in the long term. an industry-wide ratings system was created, ensuring that both sides of the debate were placated in some form.
while Nintendo (whose chairman at the time, Howard Lincoln, infamously stated that Night Trap would never be released on a Nintendo console.) now had a reason to gradually wean off their notorious censorship bureau, eventually abandoning it entirely by the late N64/early Gamecube era.
Night Trap would gradually trail off on the public consciousness after this. with some later ports to more powerful CD-based hardware, and completely different artwork due to what happened with the original.
note the big M rating attached to the game, and the fact they made a whole short documentary about the controversy.
nowadays, the game is especially benign compared to more violent modern games. with the current re-releases receiving a teen rating. even though it's one of the factors in the ESRB's existence.
...wait a minute, NINTENDO Switch?!?
yes, Howard Lincoln left Nintendo back in 2000. though i'd imagine it'd probably still be allowed even if he was still there.
if you want to play the game exactly as it was back when it first launched on the SEGA CD, it's actually going to be included in both regional versions of the upcoming SEGA Genesis Mini 2. there's even multiple regional variants included, so you can import the Japanese version with it's much better library and still play it in english.