The Game That BROKE The Gaming Industry

Though more adult video games needed to be made distinctly clear to unsuspecting parental purchasers, the discussion surrounding Night Trap and others was heavily flawed, in that most of the people discussing how appropriate it was, hadn't actually played.

As such, many took the most infamous portion of the entire thing - a shower scene, in which a girl in a nightgown is aggressively captured by the Augers and subjected to torture - to reflect the whole product, as this scene was played during proceedings. Similarly, it seemed to be ignored that your intentions in the game are supposed to be to protect these women - not rip their heads off like Mortal Kombat.

After all of this, Night Trap was pulled from shelves by SEGA, who officially stated they felt the existence of the game was hindering discussions around making an industry-wide rating system.

Unofficially, stores that had the game in had been receiving mass amounts of phone calls to complain Night Trap was "warped" and needed to be banned from stores. It was indeed banned from the likes of Toys R' Us and other child-friendly establishments at this time.

In 1994, an industry-wide rating system - in the form of the Entertaining Software Ratings Board - would be created. Night Trap was given a hefty Mature rating - largely because of the role it played in generating the controversy that would lead to this rating method in the first place.