Night Trap

Night Trap is an interactive film in which you follow a group of girls on a weekend stay at a house where something is going on with the neighbors and the guests, and your job is to protect them. The player sits at a security system control panel, switching between cameras in individual rooms and springing traps at just the right moment to neutralize intruders. The peculiarity is that the entire plot runs in real time across all the rooms simultaneously — while you're watching the kitchen, something you'll miss is happening in the hallway right now. Part of the gameplay is also switching between color-coded traps, since without the correct code the traps won't work.

Technically, this was the flagship of the entire Mega-CD concept. The game consists overwhelmingly of live-action footage, which the console handles in a small window with a heavily limited palette, so the picture is grainy and colors break up into blocks. Even so, the production is impressive within the add-on's limits, mainly because the video runs smoothly and the player switches between cameras instantly. Sound carries the entire atmosphere: dialogue, screams, and the well-known theme song are all recorded from disc. The mood is deliberately campy — the game is more a parody of eighties B-movie horror comedies than a genuinely frightening title.

At the time, Night Trap became famous mainly outside the realm of gaming itself: it became one of the main targets of the American debate on violence in games, which ultimately led to the creation of an age rating system. Ironically, this attention brought it immortality — it remains one of the most cited symbols of the FMV era to this day. The gameplay itself is short and requires memorizing the schedule of events, which many players consider dated. But as a piece of gaming history and an entertainingly naive curiosity, it works wonderfully, especially in company, where hunting for the right camera becomes a group sport. Watching other people's scenes and commenting along the way is today the biggest fun the game offers, and it carries with it a peculiar charm: it's more an interactive film to put on for friends than a game one returns to alone.