Talk:Night Trap

Night Trap has been listed as one of the Video games good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. Review: July 21, 2017. (Reviewed version).

This article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

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The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future: Page 37 from https://retrocdn.net/images/f/fe/NextGeneration_US_38.pdf https://archive.org/details/weekly-famitsu-no.-258-november-26th-1993/page/39/mode/1up https://www.timeextension.com/guides/best-sega-cd-games-of-all-time?page=2 https://www.polygon.com/23940136/night-trap-sega-hasbro-vampires-augers

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1

There's a line in the article that states that Night Trap was banned in the UK. This was never the case, Night Trap was never banned in the UK. The line in question also has a reference to GamerPro (Jan 1995), I've found the magazine in question and the text is a bit confused, its states "...it will also be re-released in the UK, where it was previously banned with a 15-17 rating.", there are a number of things wrong with this.

• The UK doesn't have a 15-17 rating. It has a 15 rating.
• In 1993 Night Trap was rated as 15 by the BBFC, which means it was legally allowed to be sold. i.e. not banned by the body that had the power to ban it.
• A separate reliable source Mega, lists the official UK software charts in its November 1993 issue, and Night Trap is number 2 in the Mega CD sales chart.

I can't find any other sources to back up the "banned in the UK" claim, all the other sources and evidence point to it being wrong. If we believe that it was banned, somehow, a rated game was banned and this banned game managed to make it to the top of the sales charts and stay there for months.

I'm going to remove the line and its reference as its obviously the journalist getting the wrong end of the stick. - X201 (talk) 11:00, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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With a 25th anniversary re-release just announced for this game, anyone interested in pushing for GA status? I may put some work towards the page. TarkusAB 20:04, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Did a whole bunch, if someone wants to work on Reception that would be nice. Maybe I'll get to it someday. TarkusAB 19:40, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I got to it. TarkusAB 16:08, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

An IP user has added Screaming Villains in the developer section of the infobox a number of times. Each time it has been removed by myself or other editors. To explain the situation for the IP user. We have set rules about which developers appear in the infobox, developers of re-releases only appear in the infobox if the game has MAJOR differences from the game when it was originally released. I can't find any source that states that the Screaming Villains version of this game changes the gameplay, adds content or presents the game in a efferent way. Without a reliable source that states this, it can't go in the infobox. - X201 (talk) 07:38, 16 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Correct. Per Template:Infobox video game, ports should not be mentioned in the developer field but in the article text instead. Even in cases of major differences, I think that's more reason to not include it. Given the notability of this game being tied to its original release history, it doesn't make sense to add any developer there other than the original. There is a section of the article dedicated to the port, mentioning the developer there is enough. TarkusAB 09:43, 16 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This review is transcluded from Talk:Night Trap/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Indrian (talk · contribs) 00:37, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fake vampires, Dana Plato, and Congressional outrage. What's not to like? Happy to tackle perhaps the most infamous FMV game of all time! Indrian (talk) 00:37, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, I have read the article and made a number of changes for grammar, mechanics, and flow. Overall, the article is in fantastic shape, and I only have three additional points I would like to see addressed:

 Done*In his The Ultimate History of Video Games, Steven Kent interviews Tom Zito about his work on NEMO and the FMV games. Most of this is not relevant to Night Trap specifically, but the book does reveal that Zito originally wanted to make a horror game tie-in with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and only hired Terry McDonell to pen the original script that became Night Trap when that deal fell through.

• • Done, nice find.

 Done*As written, the article implies that Zito established Digital Pictures immediately after Hasbro nixed the NEMO project. In truth, Zito only established the company after he learned from former Isix employee Ken Melville that Sony was sniffing around Sewer Shark for release on the forthcoming Nintendo CD-ROM unit. This story is also recounted in The Ultimate History of Video Games.

• • I always like a copy of the source so I can read for myself. Do you have a copy of the passage so you could scan and send to me? Google Books free preview doesn't show this page...
    • I added a bit based on what you told me for the time being if you can't retrieve the passage. TarkusAB^talk 20:45, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • That's probably sufficient detail for our purposes here. I'll add a cite to Kent's book in the near future and get this review wrapped up. Indrian (talk) 20:58, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • Alright, I tweaked the language a bit to reflect the source a little better and added the page number to the citation. This shoudl be good to go. Indrian (talk) 01:41, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

 Done*I don't really like the name or placement of the "Controversy" section. The section is really just about the Congressional hearings and their fallout, so should be titled to reflect this fact rather than with such a generic name. Also, this feels like a part of the history of the game rather than reception to it, which is generally just reserved for reviews and retrospectives. I would move this out of and ahead of the reception material.

• • Done

And that's it. I anticipate no difficulty in resolving these relatively minor issues, so will place this review  On hold while my concerns are addressed. Indrian (talk) 14:30, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just chipping in on Indrian's last point, the the Congressional hearings section needs a small indicator that the problem was only in America and that the game was released without any fuss in the rest of the world. To balance the section and get a whole world view. - X201 (talk) 15:14, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

OK I retitled the section to say "United States congressional hearings" TarkusAB^talk 17:46, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, everything is looking good to my eyes. Let's get this sucker promoted. Well done! Indrian (talk) 01:44, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Figure it's better to have a conversation here rather than in edit summaries. Just want to explain what's going on with my recent edits: The summary section of the article is quite long and has a lot of technical details in it that are not all that important to understanding the overall notability of this game. And all of the information in the summary is (or can be) properly stated and cited in the appropriate sections below on gameplay, production and reception.

I question whether it's actually all that important to put in the summary that all the filming was done in 1987, for example - how does that establish notability? I agree it's important to discuss how Night Trap grew out of a prototype with a similar premise used specifically to obtain funding from Hasbro - that's core to its notability. But unless the WikiProject's standards have changed significantly in the last couple of years, my understanding was that we should still try to keep the summary as lean as possible and relegate non-essential details to the appropriate article sections.

For disclosure: I am the son of one of the lead developers on this game. I know almost as well as anyone about most of its development history. Not trying to use that as a "one-up" or anything - just mentioning it in case there was any concern that I'm just a random joe who came here to try to vandalize anything. Thanks. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 18:50, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

WP's standards for the lead overall haven't changed, I think we just differ on what we consider to be essential content. I agree that there were some details that were probably not necessary in that paragraph, such as the budget, length of shoot, and Plato's personal issues. However there is some information we seem to hold different opinions on:

• I think the fact that the filming was done in 1987 is essential. This was a full five years before the game was released, and before the Sega CD was even a thought. Placing this mark in the timeline is important to give the reader this perspective and help illustrate the length of time between production, cancellation, and eventual release.
• I expanded on the prototype a bit. Your edit mentions the system, the prototype, and the game, but fails to connect them all. The fact that the prototype was made to demonstrate the game to Hasbro and led to striking the deal which led to full Night Trap production is essential. If Hasbro never approved the Nemo, the game would have never entered production. The way you wrote it sounds like it was just any prototype game developed for this random system that Hasbro canned.
• Your edit does not make it clear that Digital Pictures was founded alongside the acquisition of Night Trap by someone who worked on the game before. The way you wrote it, it sounds like they were just any company that came in and bought it up. I still haven't worked this piece back in.

I think the other edits are OK. TarkusAB^talk 20:53, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I probably oversimplified that stuff a bit. Thanks for adding back in the details that establish why those elements are notable. And good point on the filming, though in that context it feels to me more like a random fact. I think for the 1987 filming bit to be more relevant to the lead, we should specifically point out in the Digital Pictures sentence how the game saw release 5 years later. (I went ahead and did this.) — KieferSkunk (talk) — 20:58, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I agree the 1987 wording sounds awkward and can be written better. TarkusAB^talk 21:02, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• https://web.archive.org/web/20041010222923/http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/june03/dumbestmoments/index6.shtml

Already used in article, the source is titled "VHS: The Future of Gaming" TarkusAB^talk 20:19, 15 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

the Plot section ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Trap#Plot ) includes:

  "What the gang does not know is the house is infested with Augers,
   vampiric beings that need blood to survive. The Martin family themselves 
   are in the process of becoming vampires. "  

But this doesn't seem to follow the actual plot present in the game. The Martin family members seem to be pretty well depicted as being vampires outright, or something similar, and not making any sort of transformation. There's multiple hints and context clues given to the audience/player that the family is ageless or immortal (or much older than the appear to be).

Kelly (Plato's character) outright tells the control team she thinks the family is literally vampires later in the game.

There's also dialog that explains the Augers aren't vampires, but a different (albeit related) sort of creature altogether. I don't think it was cited in older edits of the article, but it did come up previously in a (now archived) portion of the talk section. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Night_Trap/Archive_1#YouTube_link

[quote]

   Watch the playthrough video. When the game clock reaches 17 minutes Plato's character says, 
   "I think these might be vampires we're up against here." She and the others also call them 
   Augs and  Augers. There's also some dialogue in the video at the 22-minute mark, including:

   "What is an Auger?"

   "A vampire victim who's been half-bled and left there to die."

   "The poor creatures have just enough blood to survive, but not enough to become vampires."

   "Vampires, you gotta be jivin' me! Let's cuff these freaks and drag 'em downtown!"

   --jh51681 23:07, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[/quote] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kool kitty89 (talk • contribs) 12:55, 2 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I've fixed the inaccuracy about the Martin family being "in the process of becoming vampires." I don't follow what your issue is with calling the Augers "vampiric beings", since that phrase is perfectly suited to your description of them: "aren't vampires, but a different (albeit related) sort of creature". Martin IIIa (talk) 13:33, 13 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]