Culturally Censored Games

It's a rare but troublesome side-effect of gaming's global appeal
that sometimes they'll bump up against a certain culture's values,
accidentally bringing content that prickles morals that weren't even on
the radar when the game was being made. Who worries about Australia's
distaste for decapitation when you're making a game in Seattle? When
those problems are serious enough to address, the game needs altering:
graphics changed, quests chopped, countries renamed. The game you play
might have some startling differences elsewhere. Here are ten games that
had to change before they were allowed on sale, and what the developers
had to do to them.



Ice Climber vs America





You're probably only aware of Ice Climber through the star characters'
later appearances in the Super Smash Bros. series, but they first
appeared in their own platform game in 1984. In it, you scale a series
of mountain levels, fighting off monsters. Those terrifying enemies
include seals, basically a cross between a baby and a kitten, and as
such Nintendo of America found the seal-clubbing to be as distasteful
for American audiences as a blubber kebab. The response was to remove
the vicious, cute-looking killers and replace them with the gentle yeti,
who now suffers a split skull on the seal's behalf.


Carmageddon vs Great Britain

Carmageddon is a violent car combat game. It's most famous feature was
civilians that exploded in red gloop when the car mowed on through them.
Publishers SCi celebrated the controversy it created, and submitted it
to the British Board of Film Classification in the hope that it would
gain an 18 certificate that they could play up. The plan backfired and
the game was refused classification unless the gore was removed, which
is a beautiful irony. The game was released with the civilian casualties
replaced with green-blooded zombies and oil-spurting robots. Humans
were eventually reinstated in a patch.


Fallout 3 vs Japan


Japan is unsurprisingly sensitive to nuclear issues. Bethesda's
post-apoclayptic RPG Fallout 3's caused the censor's Geiger counter to
spike with the Megaton quest line. You're given the opportunity to
re-arm a nuclear weapon sat at centre of a town, with the further option
of detonating it, destroying the town and leaving an irradiated hole
behind. It's one of the game's most spectacular set-pieces and was
completely removed before it was allowed to be published in Japan. Also,
the personal nuke launcher, the Fat Man, was renamed. Its original
moniker mimics the name of the nuclear device that the USA detonated
over Nagasaki in WW2


Team Fortress 2 vs Germany


Valve and the German censors have butted up against each other so many
times that when it turned out a German teenager was responsible for the
Half-Life 2 source code theft, you had to wonder... Even Valve's cartoon
multiplayer shooter, Team Fortress 2, has a level of violence the
German Government are uncomfortable with; stabbings, rocket deaths,
head-loppings. Valve being Valve, they dealt with it in a cheeky way
that still retained the cartoonishness of TF2's world: they replaced the
gibs strewn across the screen when killed with random toys, presents,
even springs.


Left 4 Dead 2 vs Everywhere



Valve's gory zombie shooter series fell afoul of twitchy censors on
opposite sides of the world. In the UK it was the cover image that
caused most consternation. The problem wasn't the fingers torn from the
hand (though that was covered up in Germany), but the fact that the
design had the damaged hand visually demonstrating the "2" of the title
with what's colloquially known as "the vicky" - which is about as
offensive in the UK as flipping the bird. Valve turned the slaughtered
hand around in the UK so that it's pulling an ironic peace sign.
Australia's ratings system, meanwhile, doesn't include an adult rating
for games, and the censors there felt there was insufficient difference
between normal humans and the game's "Infected". In order to get it
released there, Valve had to cut most of the violence, neutering the
zombie mayhem with vanishing, bloodless bodies.


Command & Conquer: Generals vs Germany



Electronic Arts' RTS series has never been sparklingly realistic, but
even it has had to acquiesce to the German censors. Command &
Conquer: Generals' expansion pack, Zero Hour, had controversial civilian
casualties and suicide bombers that needed removal. They were replaced
with robots and a bomb on wheels. The portraits of real people as the
Generals appearing as still shots between missions were also changed: EA
took the photos and applied an ugly, remarkably cheap looking robotic
overlay. It's almost a mockery of the law that they could get around it
with such a terrible effect.


Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas vs America






Hot Coffee should have been a storm in a teacup. It was the unofficial
name of a scene in GTA: SA where the player was in control of
intercourse mini game, directing the lead character as he switched
sexual positions with his girlfriend. It never existed in the released
game, just in some code that required a mod to unlock. But GTA is
something of a magnet for controversy: it didn't matter that it needed a
mod, people Like Jack Thompson and his ilk still responded negatively
to the content. The American ratings board, the ESRB, investigated the
newly discovered scene and re-rated the game, taking it from an M
(mature) to an AO (Adults Only). In response Rockstar Games had to
release a patch that removed a part of the game that 99.9% of its
players would never have seen.


Homefront vs Japan and Korea



THQ's modern day FPS had terrifying world superpower North Korea invade
the tiny island of the United States of America (wait, is that right?),
with the player taking control of members of the American resistance. To
keep this wholly unrealistic prospect from spinning out of control, the
developers included a real-world dictatorial dynasty, with Korean
leader Kim-Jong-un being the instigator of a resurgent Korea. But in
order to pass the Japanese ratings board's guidelines about the
portrayal of existing people and places, the identity of the aggressor
had to be entirely removed, with all mentions of the country replaced
with the brilliantly sniffy "A certain country to the North".


SimAnt vs America


Will Wright's simulation of an ant colony suffered the ire of Nintendo
of America when it landed on the SNES. Was it the death sequences, where
other ants come along and rip your ant's limbs off, leaving you in
pieces? Nope. Those scenes are still in the American cartridge. The
censors were fine with the death; they were more concerned with the
little animation that played when your ants were sharing food, where it
appeared one ant was vomiting masticated matter into another's welcoming
pincers. It's a tiny change, as the scene lasts a fraction of a second,
but nonetheless the puke provisions were removed.



Football Manager 2005 vs China





You probably couldn't come up with a more inoffensive game series than
Football Manager. It presents you with all the minutiae of the
beautiful, but with none of the colourful vocabulary from its sideline
shouters. But it managed to offend the Chinese state by including Tibet.
In doing so, according to the Ministry of Culture, it would "pose harm
to the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity". (This is a
situation that's been brewing since the 13th century; native Tibetans
have presumably been waiting all this time for a football management sim
to champion their cause for independence.) In order for the game to be
properly released in China, Tibet was annexed into China - but only in
the game.