Currently, it’s trendy for many indie and underground bands to release their music on dead media like cassettes, but Lords of The Trident has taken it one step further. Their latest video for the song “Chasing Shadows” off of their latest album “Shadows From The Past” is being released exclusively as a game that actually works on the SEGA CD console.
The video game console, popular from 1991 – 1996 has been out of production for nearly 20 years, but that doesn’t stop vocalist Fang VonWrathenstein from collecting Sega CD games and memorabilia. As luck would have it, one of the producers from Digital Pictures – a company responsible for the production of a number of Full Motion Video (FMV) games – is a huge fan of Lords of The Trident. After numerous talks, he was able to recruit some of his former Digital Pictures colleagues and the idea to craft the game was set in motion.
The band and the crew worked in secret for numerous months to create a “Make My Music Video” game for the system. These types of games were also created for Kris Kross, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, and INXS. Much of the backbone for previous Digital Pictures games (such as the controversial hit “Night Trap”) was used to create the game. “The real trick was making the console display widescreen,” Tom Zito the executive producer writes. “The old games were used to a smaller, non-widescreen display, so a lot of that had to be written from the ground up.”
To add to its exclusivity, only five official copies were ever created, and the music video can only be seen by playing the game, or by watching various playthroughs online. One copy of the game went to Pennsylvania-based YouTube gaming channel Halberd, run by the power metal vocalist Lee Prisby of the band Klaymore (and his video game channel Halberd). Another went to Ryan Schremp, a personal friend of the band and owner of the popular blog Topless Robot. A third copy made its way to long-time friends of the band, Guys Games and Beer.
The Lords of The Trident have also posted their own playthrough video, demonstrating the game achieving a perfect 100% score. On the SEGA CD version there are a number of different levels of playthroughs available that correspond to other previously-published Lords of The Trident music videos, but as of yet, no channels have posted them.
“It’s a dream come true for us (me, specifically) to have our very own Sega CD game. I’d like to thank Tom Zito and the rest of the guys at Digital Pictures for pursuing this crazy idea of ours. I can tell you I’ve already played the crap out of this game, and although we can’t make more copies for wider release, at the very least you can watch our 100%ed playthrough online!” says vocalist Fang VonWrathenstein.
