Stuff You Should Know
Selects: Night Trap: The Video Game Failure that Changed the Industry
Sat, 17 May 2025
In the early 90s a video game was released that changed the industry, despite poor sales and bad game play. That game was Night Trap. In this classic episode Chuck and Josh present that story.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What is Night Trap and why is it significant?
Yeah, but you're not actually controlling the player, which was the big difference in these games from the regular games.
You're creating a sequence. You're doing this and then sitting back, and then hopefully the thing you're hoping to happen happens. Now, the thing that differentiates that from Night Trap is that there was no coherent story. While you were off doing something that you were supposed to be doing to win the game, the story kept going on over here. So you can't follow a storyline that way.
No, which is a big deal. That was a big differentiator between it and Dragon's Lair.
All right. Well, let's take a little break here. That's a good setup, I think. And we'll come back and get more into Night Trap right after this.
I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast.
Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.
This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.
We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players... All reasonable means to care for themselves.
Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is.
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Chapter 2: How did Night Trap influence video game ratings?
Yeah, I guess that's why they called them augers because it was kind of like an auger.
Yeah, yeah.
The tool was. Yeah, that's what I guess. Well, crowbar, towbar, what was it called?
Crowcar? Trocar? Trocar, yeah. Crowbar.
But, yeah, they never – I mean, Jim Riley was like, they clearly never even played the game.
Yeah, no.
They were talking about – The cover of the thing was lurid. They didn't like the cover of the box.
Yeah. Yeah, they definitely hadn't played the game. It was just impossible from what they were saying happens in the game. And the big one was, like you were saying, that it – It let players carry out sexual violence against women. No, you do the opposite of that. Right. There's violence that is carried out by the augers if you don't do it right, if you're not good at the game, if you lose.
Yes, exactly.
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