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Night Trap fan is porting the FMV classic to a browser

Original game's producer is helping out.

Last year the creators of infamous FMV adventure Night Trap acquired the rights to their cult classic and launched a Kickstarter to remaster the 1992 Sega CD curio. Unfortunately, the project fell significantly short of its $330K goal, but fear not! Night Trap super fan Dave Voyles is in the process of porting the controversial classic to a browser.

Night Trap is often cited as one of the main games that led to the creation of the US video game ratings board, the ESRB.

In a blog post at Gamasutra, Voyles, who also works as a "senior technical evangelist" at Microsoft, explained that he was able to whip up a quick prototype in which you can switch between camera feeds. It's not a fully functional game yet, but it proved to Voyles that he was on the right track. As such, he's recruiting more fans to help make this dream a reality.

"My goal was just to crank our a prototype in 45 minutes, and it worked!" Voyles told Eurogamer. "I really haven't spent much time on it, past that."

One of Night Traps' original producers, Rob Fulop, has expressed interest in this browser revival. On Voyles' blog, Fulop said: "Somewhere I have a VHS tape containing a quad split of all four time coded master tracks running in synch - we moved about a year ago and I will take a look thru the boxes piles in my office that I haven't unpacked yet - good luck!"

That being said, Voyles is aware that others owning the Night Trap IP may be less charitable with this free fan-made port. After all, executive producer Tom Zito spent $250K to acquire the rights to the game last year. "Worst case, if they ask to stop, then I just stop. It was a fun hack to put together," Voyles tells me.

So why spend so much time and energy on Night Trap, a game that received dismal reviews upon release and is mostly known for being pulled from store shelves in the US due to its subject matter (vampires murdering teenage girls was considered taboo for video games in 1992)?

"I love this game," Voyles tells me. "It really is one of my favorite games of all time, because it was so different from everything else that came before it."

Cover image for YouTube videoMega-CD Longplay [072] Night Trap