FMV release Night Trap – 25th Anniversary Edition is out on PlayStation 4. Read our Night Trap – 25th Anniversary Edition to see if the game is for you!

 

Night Trap released almost 25 years ago. Let that sink in for a second. Night Trap isn’t just any game – it is, in fact, a piece of history. Way back in 1993, the Congressional Hearings on Video Games Violence took place. And this was during the rivalry between SEGA and Nintendo. Howard Lincoln from Nintendo, used Night Trap to make SEGA look bad by testifying at the hearings, promising that this kind of game would never appear on a Nintendo console.

Many US Senators who had never even played Night Trap picked out a particular scene in the game involving a girl in a nightgown who had been captured by Augers and attempted to drain her blood, which was in fact satire rather than violence. The hearings compared the violence in Night Trap to Mortal Kombat which is, as you know, an actual violent game. The end result was the creation of the ESRB board which we’re very familiar with nowadays. Now you can understand why Night Trap has a special part in gaming history.

I didn’t get to play Night Trap, but my older brother managed to get a copy before it was pulled from the shelves all around the world – it was one of his favorite SEGA CD game, and he completed it many times. After playing it for myself for the first time on PS4, I found the game to be a lot of fun: there is no real violence, and it is a pure comedy.

Despite the flaws and faults of Night Trap, I fell in love with it immediately. I do have one warning for players with hearing issues: there are no subtitles/closed caption in the game. As listening for color codes is a required part of the game, there are no visual cues. I would not recommend the game to players who have hearing difficulties.

As mentioned before, Night Trap is an FMV (Full Motion Video) game, which means it’s basically an interactive story. We’ve been getting more of these lately on PS4, such as The Bunker and Late Shift, and I have to say I enjoy them!

 

In Night Trap, a group of teenagers has disappeared near the Martin household, and the SCAT team has to take complete control of the CCTV system – it is up to you to investigate what is going on around the house. The security consists of eight cameras and several traps dotted around all rooms. The house is regularly invaded by Augers, a group of misfit vampires who have no teeth to drain the blood from victims. They improvise by using some kind of blood extraction contraption. Very bizarre I know, but it’s very comical – there is zero malice in the game. The goal is to trap the Augers before they harm the slumber party guests.

Across eight rooms, which are displayed as small squared cameras below the game screen, you have to switch screens as the Augers appear – you’ll then activate contraptions to trap them. All rooms are linked, so if you see an Auger leave a room you’ll soon see them enter the next one, so you need to be on the ball with switching cameras.

When an Auger walks over a trap, a little bar below the game screen goes from green to red, so you need to act fast to trap every one of them. If you manage to trap all Augers, you’ll end up with a perfect score that might help you unlock some stuff! If you miss too many Augers, then it is game over, and you’ll be relieved from duty since you put the lives of the girls in danger. You need to watch and listen carefully to what is being said in each scene to change the color codes for the traps, so it’s really important you really listen or else game over it is.

Night Trap is not just a straight port on PS4 since it’s actually a remaster, including some interesting bonus content- The original footage has been cleaned up as much as possible, clearly increasing the resolution for the presentation to give us the definitive version of Night Trap. You can play the revamped version of the game or the original version along with different layouts for different years. And by trapping all 100 Augers you will unlock Scene of the Crime – a short prototype created several years before Night Trap.

I had a blast playing Night Trap, but did find it weird there are no subtitles for the game, as well as no short tutorial to get the hang of things. FMV games are back in full swing, so this is the perfect time to dive into one that is now part of gaming history. Kudos to Screaming Villains for their work on the game since the footage has been considerably revamped giving us the definitive version of the game.

Disclaimer
This Night Trap – 25th Anniversary Edition review is based on a PS4 copy provided by Screaming Villains.