Night Trap, the early-1990s FMV-based game that scandalized parts of America for its portrayal of apparent sexual violence, is getting a physical and digital release on Nintendo Switch, one year after the game celebrated its 25th anniversary.
Originally released on the Sega CD, the game, at its essence, is a fairly bare-bones FMV adventure which cast you in the role of a secret agent watching over a house filled with teenage girls. It underwent severe scrutiny in 1993, even going as far as being a catalyst (along with Mortal Kombat) for a US Senate hearing. Night Trap’s controversial moments, which included women being abducted in little more than a bathroom towel, also helped lead to the creation of the ESRB.
The re-release, produced by Limited Run Games, is headed to Nintendo Switch this summer on both the Nintendo eShop and through the Limited Run Games site.
Never say never!
Night Trap: 25th Anniversary Edition is coming to the Nintendo Switch this Summer both digitally and physically!https://t.co/j1ZxEqvV8L pic.twitter.com/ZbsXKWvkn1
— Limited Run Games (@LimitedRunGames) 20 April 2018
While neither a price nor a concrete release date has been announced, it’s absolutely fascinating to see this game crop up on a Nintendo console, especially when they were staunch critics of the game during the 1993 Senate hearing on violence in video games.
Now, though, it’s barely more than a mild male fantasy rolled into a big ball of poorly-produced FMV cutscenes. At best, an historically significant oddity and, at worse, a deeply troubling, technical mess of a game, those who want to re-play Night Trap on their Nintendo Switch (2018 is weird) still have some months to wait yet. If nothing else, it’s worth a playthrough to see how we’ve all moved on from the basement-dwelling weirdness of the early-to-mid 1990s.