Digital Pictures

Background

Digital Pictures was a company specializing in video games featuring exclusively full-motion-video for gameplay that were usually released on the Sega CD/Mega-CD, 3DO and Windows. It was founded in 1991 by Lode Coen, Mark Klein, Ken Melville, Anne Flaut-Reed, Kevin Walsh and Tom Zito, and originated from an attempt to produce a game for a failed VHS-based game system Zito developed called the Control-Vision, codenamed NEMO.

The company's best-known title, the cult-classic Night Trap, was originally produced as a Control-Vision title before being converted into a Sega CD title. Despite some controversy for its mature-themed content, the game proved to be a best-seller. Digital Pictures went on to create other FMV-based titles primarily for Sega hardware, and has been regarded as a pioneer of the interactive movie genre. The company declined in the mid-1990s due to waning interest in full motion video games and closed in 1996; its final title, Maximum Surge, went unreleased and was later repurposed into a 2003 film called Game Over.

Logo (October 15, 1992-1996, 2017)

Visuals: On a black background, a green globe appears incredibly close to the screen and starts to zoom out until stopping in the middle of the screen (now being quite small). A red shape resembling a "d" zooms out and rotates placing itself on the left of the globe and a blue shape resembling a "p" places itself on the right of the globe. The words

Digital Pictures

fade in above.

Variants:

Occasionally, the logo would feature the text "Licensed by Sega Enterprises, Ltd." underneath on some Sega CD games (very few games from Digital Pictures were on the Saturn, though).
There would sometimes be no line underneath the "Pictures" and it would be bold like the "Digital" part.
On ''Slam City, the globe turns into a basketball and bounces on the ground 3 times before the logo fades out.
On the Make My Video series, after a bit "Digital Pictures and the "dp" would disappear as the globe eases in a bit, then "MAKE" comes in from the right in front of the globe and flashes, then it would repeat for "MY" and "VIDEO", then the name of the artist or band, depending on which MMV game you're playing (Kris Kross, INXS, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, or C+C Music Factory) would zoom out onto the globe, and then after a second zoom in away from the screen before fading out.

Technique: CGI.

Audio: A mixture of radio static, beeping noises and a descending electric guitar noise culminating in a loud "BANG!" noise when the text fades in. The Slam City variant also features a man shouting "SLAM!" The MMV series has a guitar riff on each flash with the last one sustaining itself for the duration of the logo.

Availability: The regular and the no line version can be seen on all versions of FMV games like Sewer Shark, Make My Video, Ground Zero Texas, Double Switch, and Night Trap. The "Licensed By" variant can be seen on Corpse Killer and Slam City with Scottie Pippen. It appears on just about every FMV game on Sega CD/Mega-CD, 3DO, Windows, and Mac, and even later CD-based systems like the Sega Saturn and the PlayStation (it may be on FMV games on CD-i and Amiga CD-32 as well). This logo was preserved on the 2017 re-release of Night Trap for PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PlayStation Vita.