Infamous 90s FMV horror Night Trap launches on Switch next week
Despite Nintendo's 25-year-old pledge.
Fans of retro naffness will be thrilled to learn that developer Screaming Villains' remaster of the infamous (and endearingly terrible) 90s FMV horror game Night Trap is coming to Switch on August 24th.
Night Trap, if you're ready for a swift history lesson, originally released on the Sega CD back in 1992 - although it was actually created considerably earlier in 1987, with the intention of releasing it as a flagship title on Hasbro's ill-fated Control-Vision console.
Night Trap casts you as a special agent tasked with protecting a group of teenagers from a delightfully 80s vampiric threat. That involves scouring CCTV footage from cameras dotted around a family home, while a slumber party unfolds; if you spot anything untoward, you can trigger traps to ward off intruders. As you might imagine, given the FMV format's limitations, interaction is minimal - but it does feature one of gaming's greatest musical numbers.
Night Trap on Switch will be the same 25th Anniversary Edition that released on PS4 and PC last year. Which means the entire experience is played using the original uncompressed video footage, displayed at a much higher resolution than that of the Sega CD version. Additionally, it restores a number of deleted scenes, adds a behind-the-scenes developer commentary, and numerous other goodies - all for the bargain price of £10.99 on Switch's eShop.
If nothing else, August 24th will be a red letter day for both Night Trap and Nintendo. The game infamously caused quite a stir shortly after release, finding itself singled-out during a United Senate committee hearing on violent video games in 1993. As a result, Howard Lincoln, then Senior VP at Nintendo of America, infamously pledged that "Night Trap will never appear on a Nintendo system". How times have changed!