‘Night Trap’ coming to Nintendo Switch
Fix for ‘virus’
LOS ANGELES, April 21, (RTRS): The 25th anniversary edition of the controversial ‘90s game “Night Trap” is coming to Nintendo Switch, publisher Limited Run Games announced Friday on Twitter.
“Never say never! ‘Night Trap: 25th Anniversary Edition’ is coming to the Nintendo Switch this Summer both digitally and physically!” it tweeted. Limited Run Games specializes in releasing physical copies of digital titles, mainly for PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4.
“Night Trap” was first released by Sega in 1992. The schlocky full-motion video (FMV) game, which starred “Diff’rent Strokes” actress Dana Plato, was about a house full of scantilyclad teenage girls and the vampiric creatures that hunt them. The player, as a special agent, must watch “live” surveillance footage of the teens and trigger traps to capture the monsters pursuing them.
By 2018 standards, the game is pretty tame. But 1992 America thought it was “shameful,” “disgusting,” and “ultra-violent,” Kotaku reports. The US Senate committee held a hearing at the time about video game violence led by senators Joe Lieberman and Herb Kohl, where “Night Trap” was often cited along with Midway’s “Mortal Kombat.”
That hearing led to the introduction of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) and the labeling system publishers still use for video games today.
The decision to publish “Night Trap” is strange for Nintendo, which prides itself on its family-friendly image. Back in August 2017, Screaming Villains, the studio working on the 25th anniversary edition, said on Twitter that it would love to get the game on Switch, but Nintendo declined. Apparently, it’s had a change of heart since then. Variety reached out to Screaming Villains to ask why. We’ll update this story when we hear back.
Panache Digital Games co-founder and creative director Patrice Desilets spoke on Friday during the Reboot Develop conference about the creative concepts behind his latest project, “Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey.”
Desilets announced the project, a third-person action-adventure survival game where players tackle the dangers of a prehistoric Earth, last year. “It is the story of us coming down the trees, getting up, and surviving for the last 10 million years,” he said.
The hour-long speech touched on 20 concepts that influenced the game. Like a slightly befuddled history professor, Desilets discussed topics ranging from mutation, art, and death, to, oddly enough, the French-Canadian curse word “tabarnak.” It originated in Quebec during the early 19th century as a way to express frustration with a controlling Catholic church. It’s like an emotion to the French people, Desilets explained, and it exists only in Quebec. For him, it serves as a reminder that he comes from a certain tribe.
“We all have a tribe like that. And never forget that,” he said. “Don’t forget that you come from a culture. Talk about it.”
Desilets didn’t reveal many details about “Ancestors,” but apparently showed a pre-alpha build to reporters behind closed doors during the conference. No combat was shown, according to Eurogamer, and a release date was not announced.
“Minecraft” players who like to download customized skins for their character avatars don’t need to worry about malware anymore, developer Mojang has said. The company said it resolved the issue by releasing a patch that removes all of the information from skin files except the actual image data itself.
The studio’s assurances came one day after cybersecurity company Avast claimed hackers were distributing malicious software via skins created in the PNG file format and uploaded to “Minecraft’s” official website. The virus could potentially reformat a person’s hard drive or destroy their backup data. It estimated nearly 50,000 “Minecraft” accounts were infected. That is a pretty low number, though, when compared to the game’s 74 million active players worldwide.