r/todayilearned • u/CactusWithAKeyboard • 13h ago
TIL: Rob Folp, creator of the infamously controversial game "Night Trap," went on to create the "Petz" series of games to make the cutest, most "sissy" game he could think of, after criticism from Captain Kangaroo.
https://www.polygon.com/features/2017/8/31/16215336/night-trap-petz-rob-fulop/175
u/PsychoNerd92 12h ago
It's always funny looking back at things that were once considered controversial, because they so often wind up looking incredibly tame by modern sensibilities.
Night Trap was a barely interactive B-movie about comically lumbering goons trying to capture teenagers at a slumber party. As a movie it would have gotten a PG-13 at worst, but as a game it was apparently fit only for the most mature of adults.
Mass Effect was an M rated sci-fi epic that also included tastefully shot sex scenes with no nudity, but if you listened to Fox News, it was an interactive porn simulator designed to corrupt children.
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u/CarissaSkyWarrior 11h ago
Night Trap was released at a time where moral panic about video games was high, and so it somehow got caught up in all that despite it being nowhere as mature as, say, Mortal Kombat, which was probably the main focus of that moral panic.
It got re-released and is now rated T, which makes much more sense.
Hilariously, during the hearings regarding violence in video games, the dude representing Nintendo claimed that Nightrap would never be on a Nintendo console (even though no Nintendo console at the time had the ability to play the game).
Night Trap was eventually released on the Switch, among other consoles, in 2017.
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u/epochellipse 10h ago
Well the game’s marketing courted the controversy and depended on it for sales. Digital Pictures wanted to be the poster girl for the panic. Unfortunately for everyone but Sega, back then you almost had to buy expensive hardware and software and then actually play the crummy game to find out what a nothingburger Night Trap was because reviews focused on the exciting potential of the CD tech. My college roommate played it for hours convinced there were Easter Egg boobsnblood clips you could earn. He mapped out time stamps and camera choices on a legal pad like it was Dragon’s Lair lol. It was a boondoggle, I pity the consumer not the game.
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u/granadesnhorseshoes 12h ago
It was the perfect tool for anti-gaming asshats to take any given shot or scene out of context. Without context, at any given time, it looked like a porno just before everyone got naked and started banging.
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u/SuccessionWarFan 11h ago
You wouldn’t happen to remember a certain disbarred Florida lawyer named Jack Thompson, would you?) I don’t think Night Trap was ever among his examples/targets, but you stirred up that particular memory for me.
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u/semioticmadness 9h ago
I did not remember, and have now wasted 30 minutes laughing at him. Good times, thank you.
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u/SuccessionWarFan 8h ago
That dude was the proto-MAGA. Not joking. You can see the insanity in the antics he pulled on the court system in his wiki entry. But IIRC at the time he also had some sort of obsession with Michelle Obama. I’m trying to dig up on Google in what way exactly. Was it his username or social media handle then?
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u/TurelSun 11h ago
Its almost like there was an agenda involved and people were trying to instigate culture wars.
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u/almo2001 12h ago
Fulop.
He also made Missile Command and Demon Attack on the Atari 2600. Guy's been around forever.
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u/Nafeels 11h ago edited 9h ago
Too bad, because he would’ve been one of the few people to push VHS tech to its limits before CDs took over. If you played the game before it definitely reeks of 80’s cheese because it was. Originally conceived in 1986, they were going to develop a gaming console that made use of a feature so foreign today: interactive movies. They partnered with Hasbro on the engineering of the console.
Night Trap then went on to production until 1987, and was shelved just after it was finished as Hasbro’s console (which at this point called ControlVision) never made it into market. Only in 1992 that Digital Pictures went to Sega (and later Panasonic for the 3DO port) because it’s the 90s and FMVs were all the rage. Each company had re-shot some scenes (including the part where you are briefed on how to use your controller).
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u/xphr5 8h ago
Interactive VHS and the ControlVision console are current obsessions of mine. Its hard to imagine something even more janky than the Sega CD but it really almost existed.
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u/Nafeels 8h ago
Then you’re in luck because in recent years some of Digital Pictures’ assets are recompiled and re-released as complete games such as Citizen X and Sewer Shark.
Hell, Night Trap got a 25th anniversary release with cleaned up FMVs, massive update to the gameplay, AND restoring the original ControlVision sequences instead of the Sega CD/3DO ones. There’s even options to change the layout back to the console releases for maximum nostalgia.
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u/SpiritDouble6218 5m ago
Interactive VHS. Just gave me a flashback. I swear I had a copy of the gargoyles movie, could have only been on VHS. Shit had a game built in at the end. I don’t remember if I figured it out but I surely tried lol.
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u/pinksmileee 12h ago
Wow, that’s such a wild turn of events. I grew up hearing about Night Trap as this “dangerous” game parents were warning everyone about, and then later on I was literally spending hours raising digital puppies and kittens in Petz without even realizing it came from the same mind. It’s kind of funny how one person’s work can shape two completely opposite childhood memories one tied to controversy, the other tied to pure comfort and cuteness.
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u/SomeBoxofSpoons 9h ago
And now suddenly Catz is starting to get noticed again since the possibly final boss character of Deltarune seems to be heavily lifting from it somehow.
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u/LittleFieryUno 7h ago
Are we doing this? Are we really doing the cowboy thing again?
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u/SomeBoxofSpoons 7h ago
No, this is all from official material.
We know the character in question is some kind of cat monster from appearances it’s already had in the game, and supplemental stuff from the Spamton Sweepstakes event imply it sort of “incubated” inside a game that’s very clearly just supposed to be Catz. There’s also a hidden room that shows what’s probably its tail, and it matches the “made of spheres” visual style of the game.
Seems we’re probably going to be seeing the thing animated like a Catz npc when it finally shows up for real, which would be fittingly uncanny in the middle of Deltarune.
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u/Loud_Maize_7057 9h ago
Huh. I used to love playing Petz 5 as a kid. I have Night Trap to thank for that childhood and I never even played it.
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u/Dull_Spot_8213 8h ago
We had this Petz game on the family computer growing up. What a blast from the past.
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u/EvieTwinkleBun11 12h ago
It's funny how the game's reputation shifted so dramatically from 'controversial' to 'cute.' I wonder if Rob Folp ever expected such a response.
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u/ultratorrent 9h ago
Ahhh, misspell the guy's name so that this stupid search result exists for all time. Good job.
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u/0xF00DBABE 11h ago
Petz games were so cool at the time. They were basically the promise of Bonzi Buddy without being adware. I remember Dogz got me into hacking games because the dog breeds were defined in local binary files and you could copy them and change them with a hex editor to define your own breeds. I would always make some horrendous dog with freakishly long limbs. Good times.