Wow! That was a great story!
Thanks for all the info!

--- "Tony A. Rowe" <trowe--sparkunlimited.com> wrote:
> 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
> > 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
>
>
>
>
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