Censorship: the bane of my existence. Indulge me for a little soapbox discussion. The video game medium has always been sensitive when it comes to clothing issues, intensity, ‘off’ items, and language. Why? Video games, since the NES rebooted the industry, have always been viewed as children’s’ toys. If you were an adult that played you were shunned. The world is much more open to video games now, but it isn’t perfect. Adult players aside, parents worried that their kids would become corrupted if they played video games with ill content in any form. Mortal Kombat and Night Trap are two early examples of games that caused a media frenzy. Looking back at them now, well, it seems like a joke. What made people flip out over these two games?
While there still are instances of controversies I think it’s less of an issue now than it was back when I was growing up through the 90s. It’s crazy considering video games look more realistic now than ever and yet there is a thankful gap in scandals. There’s a gap yes, but they still exist. Instead of bringing up the past I thought it would be more insightful to showcase twenty-five more modern games that have been the target of censorship. I won’t be just targeted my region of North America either. We’re going to take a trip around the globe to see just how silly these problems can get. Buckle up for an offensive ride through ridiculousness. Some of these may shock you.
25 Nothing Going On Here
This might be my favorite entry on the list and it concerns South Park: The Stick of Truth. North America is the only version of the game that is completely uncensored, but everywhere else has slightly different cuts. In Germany, all uses of Nazi gestures, clothing, and symbols were removed. That’s actually illegal in that country. There is an abortion scene that was replaced with a crying statue in Europe. A similar tactic was used in Australia regarding a group of characters getting probed by aliens. That was replaced with a Koala crying. It was a little hard to crop both images together so I just included the Australian one, which is much funnier anyway. That is some master trolling on Ubisoft’s part right there.
24 All Hail Brahmin
I touched on this topic before, but it bears repeating. First of all, cows are considered sacred in India. That’s probably a fact you already knew from various forms of media. The first time I heard about this was via Apu on The Simpsons. So it goes to reason that the country would have a problem with Fallout 3. Why? The Brahmin. These mutated beasts may be ugly, but they’re still cows and thus sacred to Indians. That’s why the game was outright banned in their country since it is possible to not only mess with them, but to also bury them six feet under if you catch my drift. It would be a little hard to censor the game so that you couldn’t harm the Brahmin at all.
23 Blacked Out
I still can’t believe Gal*Gun: Double Peace was released outside of Japan. The plot is basically about a Cupid girl who accidentally hits you with a love shot that makes you irresistible to women so that they flock you like a horde of zombies. You’re armed with a gun that essentially gives these girls, uh, let’s say a burst of pleasure so powerful that they faint.
The things you can do to these girls in this game are astounding.
Now sometimes you can poke and prod these characters in a sort of x-ray mini game. You can still do that in the North American version, but if you try and capture that video natively with the PS4’s internal system, the video will come out with a big black box in the middle of it. If you’re curious, watch me play it.
22 A Cold Cover Up
Shiva, in the Final Fantasy series, has always been depicted as a bit risqué. She’s always covered up mind you, but there seems to be less and less clothing on her cold body as time goes on. And let us not forget the Shiva cycle sisters in Final Fantasy XIII. Kind of a weird sisterly love situation going on there if you know what I mean. Anyway, in Final Fantasy XV, her appearance changed in the Chinese version of the game. Before it was cold, blue skin with light garments of crystals. In China, she was lightened up to make her look less like she woke up from the grave and now wears a skintight blue suit instead. It’s a very mild change, but still interesting.
21 G’Day Hill
As far as I’ve researched Australia seems to be the highest offender when it comes to refusing games due to excessive scenes, or lewd acts. Silent Hill Homecoming took awhile for their ratings board, the OFLC, to pass the game. Let’s see they had to remove certain scenes where parts of the body were getting drilled into. An enemy was originally shown getting chopped in half. Yep, that’s out. The overall blood and intense content was trimmed down. That’s about it. It’s odd considering the violence isn’t what’s so creepy about these games. It’s the mental damage that will really stick with you. Here’s another strange fact. Atari published Silent Hill Homecoming for the Australian version. Are they even still a thing today? Oh what a world.
20 Trippin’
Of course one of the crassest series of all time is going to get censored in Australia. I already told you they have a history. This time substances were removed from a game. What offensive series am I talking about? Grand Theft Auto? Nope. You’re close though. Saint’s Row IV.
Keith David is Vice President for life.
There is a mission where Shaundi obtains alien narcotics to gain superpowers in order to help The Boss out. See it’s not that putting illegal substances in games is offensive in Australia. It’s about rewarding players for using them. If a character happened to take them and there was a negative effect, well, as far as I’ve researched that might be more okay to show on screen.
19 Skin Deep
Thankfully getting down and dirty with your gal pals in The Witcher 3 is easier and way more explicit. You’re not going to see Geralt actually give these ladies a hot beef injection, but it gets pretty risqué. Well, that is unless you’re playing the Japanese, or Middle Eastern version of the game.
This may be the best man in a tub scene I have ever witnessed.
All bare skin was completely removed from those iterations. Also, the carnage was toned down as well. Again, it seems silly to release games of this nature in places with stricter regulations. Putting clothes on people sure I get, but when you also remove a lot of the violence, well, I mean this is a game about monster hunting.
18 A Full Deck
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt turned into one of my favorite games of all time. I never played the previous two games so it prompted me to go back and try them out. The Witcher 2: Assassin’s of Kings, wasn’t as good, but still really stellar. The original game is a bit harder to go back to. It plays completely differently in a style that’s more reminiscent of a sloppy Diablo. Now here’s something I didn’t expect. I was used to seeing women, and I mean a lot of women, fully revealed in the second and third game. In The Witcher, you get cards for lying with a lady instead. In the North American version these cards were changed so that they had clothes on. And here I thought PC games were the Wild West.
17 Cards Against Humanity
The PS Vita, sadly, did not gain much popularity outside of Japan. With little support, companies decided not to make games for it, which is a catch 22. Instead, a lot of obscure games came to the system from Japan with a lot of those being RPGs. I’m surprised at some of the titles we received including Monster Monpiece. It’s a tactical RPG wherein you use cards to battle your opponents in arenas. All of the cards and warriors are women. In Japan these girls are more scantily clad whereas in North America over 40 of the 350 cards had to be censored. Good news for all of you purists out there. A complete uncensored version was released on Steam. Sorry Vita fans, you’re still out of luck.
16 Drilled To Bits
Until Dawn was a surprise hit when it came out in 2015. One, it did the branching narrative thing right. Two, it was in development heck forever as it was originally announced as a PS3 game back in 2012. It defied all expectations and garnered a cult following and for good reason. However, there is some controversy regarding the gore factor yet again from Japan.
Hey look it’s Mr. Robot!
The worst scene in the game concerns the player having to choose between saving your friend Ashley, or Josh. It doesn’t really matter who you pick because Josh will always be the one to literally get chopped and it’s pretty realistic. Yeah, I can see why you wouldn’t want to see that Japan.
15 Nope
Fire Emblem was a series I always wanted to love, but was hard getting into. It wasn’t until Fire Emblem Awakening that I really fell in love with the series since it added a Casual mode so fallen warriors could return in the next battle. That said I was overjoyed when the sequel was announced, Fire Emblem Fates, which turned out to be good, but not great. Opinions on the game itself aside let’s talk about a big backlash the game received. Originally there was a mini game in the Japanese version that essentially let you grope your characters. That was toned down in the North American release and people lost their minds. Seems silly considering this is primarily an RPG and not some weird groping simulator.
14 Armed And Dangerous
Once again Nintendo accidentally offended Europe. In Mario Kart 8 Deluxe the squid girl from Splatoon used an arm gesture deemed offensive in their country. The act is equivalent to raising your middle finger to somebody. You’d think someone would have realized that before it made it onto shelves.
Squid kids are rude.
Well thankfully the gesture was patched with an update. It’s probably the easiest fix in this whole list. Yes it was offensive to a certain part of the world, but it’s also not something anyone can get angry about removing. I guess purists will always be angry over censorship, but small stuff like this is laughable to me. Can you imagine if the middle finger made it in? The U.S. news would have a field day with that one.
13 Hail Censorship
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus goes some places I was not prepared for. The gameplay is fine, but the story is what really sold me. One of these amazing scenes, SPOILERS, concerns B.J. Blazkowicz going to Venus. As if that wasn’t already wacky enough, he’s going there undercover as an actor so he can play himself in a movie directed by none other than commander in chief himself, Adolf Hitler. Now I touched on this earlier with South Park: The Stick of Truth, but all symbols of Nazis are illegal in Germany. Why a game about fighting them gets localized for their territory is beyond me. Anyway they removed Hitler’s mustache in order to make him less, uh, Hitler-like as you can see above. Personally I think it looks creepier without it.
12 A Fatty Subject
Another fun Fallout 3 fact is in regards to Japan and it’s another topic I covered in that previous article. So everyone knows about the Fat Man weapon right? For those unaware, it fires mini-nukes and is obviously pretty devastating. If you know your World War II history then you’ve probably figured out the weapon’s name is derived from one of the atomic bombs that dropped on Japan.
I just want to set the world on fire.
Yeah, so it goes to reason that they’d want that name changed. For the Japanese version of Fallout 3, the Fat Man is called the Nuka Launcher. Strangely enough, it’s still referred to the Fat Man in texts and dialogue conversations. Was anyone paying attention to the programming?
11 Voices In My Sack
Is LittleBigPlanet a cute platformer starring the ever-adorable Sackboy, or is it a racist nightmare? The former of course, but there was a controversy regarding the first game’s release. A week shy of its debut a music track was found in the game that contained lines from the Koran. This offended the Muslim community so millions of copies were pulled from retailers and the game had to be delayed so that the discs could be patched.
My sack is filled with lies.
I’m surprised they didn’t just rely on a day one patch to fix the problem instead of recalling everything, but this was back in 2008 when the HD era of the PS3 and Xbox 360 were still trying to figure things out. What a time.
10 What’s The Point?
The Last of Us wears it’s mature rating on its sleeve proudly. The themes of the story along with the action all scream Oscar worthy. That said other parts of the world couldn’t handle certain aspects of the gore. European versions removed dismembering enemies be it during gameplay, or in cutscenes. The camera simply panned away if the scene itself couldn’t be cut. Look. This is a game about the apocalypse with zombie-like creatures running around. It’s a tale about how mankind has fallen and there’s a lot of evil other than the monsters out there. Why would you censor that? Is ending someone with a shotgun really less offensive than seeing his or her arm fly off?
9 Mowed
I love crossover games especially when two properties seem the most weird together. The more bizarrely juxtaposed they are, the better basically. Now while it is a pretty decent fighting game with an intensely hilariously wacky story, it is sadly toned down for fans hoping to see DC heroes spill their guts.
And boom goes the dynamite.
This game is rated T for teen and thus the gore was toned down. Oddly enough the North American version received more censorship. The Joker and Deathstroke both use guns in their fatalities. Instead of showing the blast the camera instead pulls away as you hear the boom. Really? I’m surprised this region’s ratings board would find that offensive, but again it is rated for teenagers. Sometimes these changes will surprise you.
8 A Fluid Notion
This one is very mild, but also kind of creepy when you think about it. In the Japanese version of Resistance: Fall of Man, all blood is removed. A lot of times blood was changed to a different color like purple, or green to get a lower rating in the olden days. Why the color matters is beyond me. Removing it altogether is creepy to me. This alternate history game puts the world against invading aliens, called Chimera, during what would be World War II. I can kind of see it if they were human enemies, but who gets offended when seeing alien blood? It doesn’t make sense. No blood at all, I think, would make someone playing it more prone to violence. Right, Japan?
7 A Siren’s Calling
Does anybody remember Siren: Blood Curse? If you don’t there’s no need to feel ashamed. It’s a pretty obscure franchise from Japan that was more about running away from enemies than it was about fighting them. Siren: Blood Curse was one of the first big PSN games that offered players the ability to download the game in chapter segments at a reduced price.
I’m cursed to play this terrible game.
Well in order to get to a mature rating in North America the gore had to be extremely edited. There was a pretty awful scene that wasn’t removed, but the camera shakes profusely. There’s also a scene where a character tries to off himself … That was also removed.
6 A Bomb In The Oven
In Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, which was essentially a glorified demo, Big Boss is tasked with rescuing a girl named Paz from an enemy camp. It seemed too easy to be true and it was. Paz realizes she has a bomb inside of her in the ending cutscene. It was a trap all along! Where is this bomb? To be coy let’s just say it’s in a place the sun doesn’t shine. Yeah, I know. That’s pretty messed up. Not only does a girl to go, she has to explode via her nether regions? Well even though this game came from Japan, a place with more of a history with this kind of bizarre plot convention, this implication was censored over there. Go figure.
