This VHS tape game system was Hasbro's NEMO project (a.k.a.
Control-Vision) that Nolan Bushnell (the Atari deity himself) was asked
to work on in around 1987 (this date seems a little late, but it is all
I could find). Nolan formed the company ISIX with Tom Zito to create
the bizarre idea of merging video games with video tapes. CD-ROMs were
still years away, this new storage idea seemed just crazy enough to
work.

Two games were made (or should I say filmed) for the system. Sewer
Shark was one, the infamous Night Trap (with Dana Plato, originally
called Scene of the Crime) was another. A football game (supposedly
with John Madden involved) was in the works along with a Police Academy
game (great idea, who wouldn't want to be Steve Gutenberg?).

The whole project was canned just before systems were supposed to hit
the shelves in early 1989. The high cost of RAM at the time was keeping
the system's retail price at $299, while the NES system was selling like
hotcakes at $99. Hasbro decided not to fight the big boys of the
console game market and pulled out.

Tom Zito took the game footage and later headed up Digital Pictures,
releasing Sewer Shark and Night Trap for the Sega CD in 1992. The
beautifully fluid technology switching of video feeds from the video
tape of the NEMO system was completely wasted on the slow Sega CD
system. Gameplay was constantly interrupted by seeks and loads. This
did not make for a good gameplay experience (but lots of games still do
this... when will this industry learn?).

In 1993, Senator Joe Lieberman picked out Night Trap and Mortal Kombat
as typical examples of how video games had become overly violent and
corrupt America's youth. This spurred sales of used copies of Night
Trap to a fever pitch (I was working at a game store at the time and the
game was already out of print). In addition to people getting their
head drilled and such, there was one particular scene in the game in
which one of the Augers (hooded, mysterious intruders) "molested" one of
the pretty young co-eds. This was one of Lieberman's favorite scenes to
pull out. Of course, the rumor mill misinterpreted this and some of the
masses took this to mean that the point of Night Trap is to rape and
kill girls (I heard someone say this at a party during this media
brouhaha was getting nation-wide attention).

This led Sega to form the Video Game Council (VGC) to set up certain
standards and ratings for video games to follow. Later, the
Entertainment Standards Review Board (ESRB) was established based upon
this model and this is the rating system that the video game industry of
North America uses today. Similar to the rating system used for movies,
all games are rated in one of the following main categories:

EC: Early Childhood
E: Everyone
T: Teen
M: Mature
AO: Adults Only

So there it is, a whole lot of history and a strange series of events
that lead to a detailed age appropriateness rating system all stemming
from one abandoned video game system that almost nobody (not even those
in the industry) remember or have even heard of today.

Tony

P.S. Got Night Trap on your dusty Sega CD at home? Just beat the game
and watch the credits until the words, "In Memory of Stephen D.
Hassenfeld" come up on the screen. Press Up, A, A, A, A, A to see
hidden footage of Tom Zito and others demonstrating a prototype of
"Scene of the Crime" to Hasbro executives in 1986.

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Pinal [danp--massmedia.com]
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 8:12 PM
To: <Address Masked>
Subject: Sewer Shark (a bit OT maybe BUT NOT SPAM!)

Sewer Shark was created by Hasbro for a device that never hit the
market. This was 15 years ago. The game unit went between your TV and
VCR. It took the 60Hz output from the VCR as 4 15Hz video streams. It
also multiplexed the audio into at least 16 different channels. The
unit
then overlayed sprites, etc. on the video. Based on what was going on
in
the game logic, you were presented on of the 4 video tracks and
appropriate
audio. Besides obvious drawbacks, you could never demand the user to
rewind. Sewer Shark was the best use of this device. When a branch in
a
tunnel came up you switch video feeds. Most of the audio tracks were
giving various feedback on how you were doing, but other were devoted to

game over and giving you a restart/continue or even a new game. A new
game
had it's own intro video and dialogue. And the user could die and never

wait more than 30 seconds to start a new game. The unit itself
controlled
the difficulty and could give you more and harder enemies. The game was
so
cleverly designed, it covered up many of the systems drawbacks and you
simply couldn't guess at how it was done.

All other versions were done by Hasbro wanting to recoup the $1M they
paid
John Dykstra (Star Wars) effects company to create the sewer sequence,
and
game developers figuring they could get some expensive production assets
cheap.

Dan

At 07:25 PM 9/26/2003, Darryl Giors wrote:
>Question:
>How do I block all this SPAM about SPAM? :P
>
>Ok, now that I've contributed to the spam I wanted to respond to what
DP
>said about Sewer Shark...
>Was there a VCR edition of that game? The version I remember seeing
was
>for the Sega CD addon for Sega Genesis. This game came out about the
same
>time as the controversial "Night Trap". I sort of remember a port to
3DO
>as well.
>
>Perhaps I'll do a Google search on this one...
>
>-Darryl Giors