This week, we are offering you a brand new edition of our “Headlines From The Past” series, going back to Tuesday, January 11, 1994. With recent events happening in the world, the story about questionable video games has once again surfaced nationwide. While today’s video games are certainly a lot more graphical than they were in the 1990s (thanks to improvement of technology, which will never end), some games, that we may think of as tame, were just in the same type of hot water when they were first released. However this article from the Milwaukee Sentinel, makes me wonder if the reporter actually did her homework before submitting it to the editor.

The writer of this story is a woman by the name of Karen J. Cohen of the States News Service. It is very obvious that she was very upset about the Sega video game Night Trap, but more than likely, her reasoning for hating it was because it was “the thing to hate”. In my opinion, I don’t feel that she actually ever took the time to actually play the game in question, but more than that, I’m not even sure if she has ever even taken the time to actually play any video game at all. (The fact that she on more than one occasion, just called them “videos” as opposed to “video games”, for instance.)

If anyone out there is a fan of Alfred Hitchcock films, you know that he mostly did amazing angles and film shots to make it look like there was more happening that what really was happening. For instance, in the film “Psycho”, during the famous shower scene, (which was parodied in one scene in Night Trap), watch the entire murder happen, and tell me if you can find any time where the knife actually stabbed Janet Leigh. You won’t find it. In this article, Ms. Cohen states that there is a scene where men surround a woman, wrap a device around her neck and murder her by sucking the blood out of her. Okay, does someone want to tell me when you saw blood getting sucked out of the her body? If memory (and a video) serves me right, the device barely went around her neck, she just screamed, and she’s dragged out of frame. Did you see any blood being sucked?

For those that don’t know, I am a big advocate in the whole freedom of speech thing when it comes to video games. (I personally believe that the AO rating by the ESRB should be used as a way of showing true adult games, and not as a death rating.) But if I’m going to argue that a game is suggestive, at least I will admit if I never played the game before. For Karen’s sake, while I think she’s extremely passionate about women not getting exploited (as I am as well in this modern age), I think she should have at least gotten her facts straight, in my opinion. The full article is below.

SEGA TAKING VIDEO GAME NIGHT TRAP OFF THE SHELVES

By Karen J. Cohen

States News Service

Washington, D.C. – In the face of criticism over its sexually violent images, Sega of America Inc. Monday announced that it would withdraw the video game Night Trap from the market and reintroduce a revised version of the game.

The game shows scantily clad young women threatened by masked men shrouded in black. At one point, the Night Trap, like many other videos released in the last few years, uses sophisticated computer technology to create images of near movielike {sic} quality.

Sega’s move comes less than a month after U.S. Senate hearings on the graphic mayhem featured in a number of video games aimed, some experts insist, at the children’s market.

Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Herbert H. Kohl, who along with Connecticut Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman conducted the video hearings, said Sega’s decision shows that public opinion has turned against violence as entertainment.

“This should be a wake-up call to those in the industry who think that depictions of violence against woman are appropriate for children’s entertainment,” said Kohl, chairman of the Senate’s Juvenile Justice Subcommittee.

Senators and others are calling for a government-created rating system that would alert parents to violent or graphic game content. Further Senate hearings on video violence are scheduled for March.

“This was a recognition on Sega’s part this thing had become an incredible source of controversy,” said Norman Sandler, of Powell Tate, the Washington-based public relations firm that represents Sega.

“Night Trap as become a lightening rod, and as long as that controversy continues, there was a feeling on the part of Sega it would become more difficult to pursue and industrywide {sic} rating system,” Sandler said. Sega won’t market the new version until such a system is in place.

Sega and other video game makers are scrambling to create their own ratings format in the hope of convincing the government that no federal oversight is needed. Sega’s announcement came last weekend in Las Vegas, where industry representatives were meeting to collaborate on a ratings plan.

Sega did not say what changes would be made in the video, one of the company’s best-sellers. But Sandler said the recall did not signal that Sega had decided the contents of the game were objectionable.

Shortly after the December Senate hearings, Tom Zito, CEO of Digital Pictures, the creator of Night Trap, wrote a column in the Washington Post defending the game as “low-budget parody of vampire films.”