According to a recent tweet from Limited Run Games, the cult classic FMV game, Night Trap, will be making its way to the Nintendo Switch this summer. This news comes a quarter of a century after Nintendo stated the game would never appear on one of its consoles.
The tweet from Limited Run says it all, "Never say never." While other platforms got their hands on the 25th anniversary edition of Night Trap in recent years, the game never made it to a Nintendo console. That's partially because, a full 26 years ago, Nintendo took a hard stance against the game, which we'll dig into a bit more in just a moment.
For now, what you need to know is that Night Trap will arrive on the Switch this summer in both physical and digital formats, though no price point has been attached to the game just yet. The game goes for $15 on other platforms, though, so we figure it'll be somewhere in that ballpark.
Night Trap originally came out in the early '90s and, along with games like Mortal Kombat, earned enough negative attention to put it on the U.S. government's radar. Violence was the concern, and the hearings that followed actually led to the formation of the ratings board that still governs games to this day, the ESRB.
In case the term FMV is throwing you, that stands for full motion video (think Her Story). It was a popular trend back in the day to implement actual recorded footage into games, with the player's actions determining the outcome of events. These typically involved some cheesy sets and equally cheesy acting, which is kind of endearing in its own weird way.
Anyway, the game went on to become a cult hit and was hard to get your hands on until recent years. Still, if you're wondering why it's so crazy to see Night Trap on the Switch, here's a brief clip from a Dec. 1993 Senate hearing in which Nintendo of America's Howard Lincoln bashes the game and makes a pretty bold claim.
For starters, Howard Lincoln states that the games industry has not transitioned from kids to adults. We'd hold that Lincoln was stretching things a bit even in the early '90s with that claim, but we can certainly agree that the demographic was nowhere near what it has become today.
Next thing you know, he mentions Toys-R-Us, which I only bring up as a sad reminder that those no longer exist.
Finally, he takes a shot at Night Trap and uses its initial lack of a rating to strengthen his argument that the current ratings system was not doing enough to properly monitor and rate games. On that count, we can absolutely agree with him.
Still, Nintendo said at the time that Night Trap would never appear on their platforms, but it looks like the statute of limitations on that claim has officially run out.
