I was reading this article last week.

Nintendo of America had pretty strict guidelines at that time about what was allowed in games.

It actually started to ruin their company image after awhile(giving them a kid oriented image).

Another thing was that it ruin their sales when it came to the first Mortal Kombat game(their's being heavily censored).

Does anyone know of any other examples of video game censorship?

That's a good observation. While I remember lots of different-aged people who enjoyed playing Nintendo games in the late '80s and early '90s, I think it was viewed as a more "safe"/family-oriented thing. Even the games with violence was indirect and cartoonish (i.e. Mario stomping on a Goomba, lol).

Mortal Kombat may have sort of been the way grunge was to rock and roll c. 1991, in that it saved it from being irrelevant in a sense.

After the ratings board started up, they slowly started laxing the guidelines.

What's even funnier is that there were a small number of games that slipped past their censors. Which I read awhile on another site.

Yeah, I've heard about this before. You have to remember that from about 1987 until around 1992 Nintendo was the unopposed leader of the video game industry. Unlike today, with fierce competition between 3 consoles, the only real competition Nintendo had was from Sega. This allowed them to pretty much impose there own rules on the entire industry for most of the late '80s and early '90s.

In addition to the censorship you mentioned, they also put restrictions on how many games a particular publisher could make in one year, created a lockout chip so that companies couldn't make unauthorized games for the NES, and even went so far as to orchestrate NES shortages to make system demand seem higher than it was by not sending enough consoles to major retailers.

Nintendo had more than enough power to do all this though, in 1988 Toys 'R Us attributed 17 percent of its sales and 22 percent of its profits to the NES and its games. :o

I know they got in trouble for price fixing.

I read on encyclopedia obscura about some stuff they missed on certain.

Here's a few of them from there as well as some others I read elsewhere and a couple I noticed.

Monster Party: This NES(not a particularly good game, but better than some others I played) game was originally going to be released in Japan before hand, but only got released here in the US. There are three things in here that were somehow left in.

1. The last half of the first stage still has bloodly imagery in it.
2. The picture that shows the stage your about to go to is a pool of blood with skeletons in it(skeletons are not a problem for Nintendo, but I'm surprised at the blood).
3. The ending which the main character starts to rot into a skeleton, although not bloody, doesn't sound like something that Nintendo would allow.

Ring King: This NES game which doesn't have anything violence based in it, but the image between rounds kinda looks alittle like a sexually suggestive activity.

Bionic Commando: This game is originally about the Resurrection of Hitler. This, of course was changed. But he still looks like Hitler(They just changed his name to Master D). But surprisingly what was left in is where you have to shoot a rocket in the helicopter pit before he gets away. His head violently exploding into a bloody mess wasn't censored.

Maniac Mansion: The first set of copies of this game have a part where you can put a dead hamster in the microwave, Nintendo caught this afterward and had it removed from all later copies.

Secret of Mana: This SNES game has a book enemy in it that occasionally flips to reveal what likes a nude woman(well a pixel version of a nude woman), in the Japanese version of the game, it was called "Porno Book" (Page about it here). The reason why it was probably left in was because of the fact that the page of the nude girl pops up rarely on the book, so the censors didn't see it or know of it.

Kid Icarus: This game which is published by Nintendo, has two things that I'm amazed were left in when brought over here.

1. Red crosses in the fortress levels of the game(like the Red Cross logo), these are found in the rooms where a nurse will appear if you get afflicted with the Eggplant Wizard's curse. This is odd because Nintendo had a rule against religious imagery, they've even removed the Red Crosses from Hospitals in Earthbound(even though those types of crosses have no reference to religion), but they left the red crosses in Kid Icarus?

2. In the instruction booklet, there is a picture of an enemy that is a topless bird woman called a "Siren". Regardless of the fact that this is a drawing, it's amazing that Nintendo left this in the booklet. I remember seeing this when I was 12 years old(a friend of mine had this game and the book).

This also happened a lot with Final Fantasy. FF2 is a good example although I don't remember much about it any more. I think there was cursing and a pornobook in it. I played the orginal 16bits as a teenager and then rented the PS1 remake of FF2 once which is when I saw the difference. However I really noticed the difference when I switched over to the Playstation and played FF7.


Hell, there were edits in FF2/4 that made no sense, like removing Cecil's Dark wave attack as well as most of the other extra abilities that alot of other characters had. Changing Holy to White, Death to Fatal.

Yeah, there was alot of cussing in the Final Fantasy series too, the porn book just played music, kinda of silly to remove that extra room in the game, they could have changed the name of the book. Dragon Warrior/Quest was abit similiar too, until the 4th game on the NES, they censored the Puff Puff references(and kept it really vague in the 4th game).

I remember seeing that for the first time in the 4th game and had no idea what it was.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nintendo+censorship

There are some vids on Nintendo censorship on youtube as well, I'm about to check them out.

Another thing was that it ruin their sales when it came to the first Mortal Kombat game(their's being heavily censored).



Come to think of it, I remember this now. If i remember right, Sega and Nintendo both came out with a port for Mortal Kombat for there home consoles(at that time the Genesis and SNES), and the one for the SNES didn't have any blood or gore in it, but the Genesis version was an exact port of the arcade version.

Come to think of it, I remember this now. If i remember right, Sega and Nintendo both came out with a port for Mortal Kombat for there home consoles(at that time the Genesis and SNES), and the one for the SNES didn't have any blood or gore in it, but the Genesis version was an exact port of the arcade version.


Yep, Nintendo's version ended up flopping(I played both versions, Nintendo's did have fatalities. They just asked Acclaim to change the most violent ones). Nintendo's version does play well, but the censorship did damage the appeal of what made the game fun to alot of people.

Yep, Nintendo's version ended up flopping(I played both versions, Nintendo's did have fatalities. They just asked Acclaim to change the most violent ones). Nintendo's version does play well, but the censorship did damage the appeal of what made the game fun to alot of people.



Yeah, I remember this now. Sega was trying to cultivate the image of being a cooler, hipper alternative to Nintendo so they could appeal to older kids and teenagers. Then when MK came out for both systems, the majority of the gamers bought it for the Genesis since it was considered to be the 'true' port of the game. When you think about it Nintendo really shot itself in the foot censoring all these games over the years. They couldn't really compete in the last console generation due to the lack of mature themed games for the Gamecube.

Yeah, I remember this now. Sega was trying to cultivate the image of being a cooler, hipper alternative to Nintendo so they could appeal to older kids and teenagers. Then when MK came out for both systems, the majority of the gamers bought it for the Genesis since it was considered to be the 'true' port of the game. When you think about it Nintendo really shot itself in the foot censoring all these games over the years. They couldn't really compete in the last console generation due to the lack of mature themed games for the Gamecube.


I remember Gameinformer interviewing the creators of Mortal Kombat, they said that they told Nintendo that they were just going to increase the sales of the Genesis port if it were SNES version were censored. Nintendo didn't back down from their decision despite this. But Nintendo changed it mind by the time Mortal Kombat 2 was being made for the consoles, they allowed it be uncensored. They didn't want that to happen again. When the creators of the Mortal Kombat series found out that Nintendo was going to allow the blood and fatalities to remain intact, it took them by surprise(I'm trying to remember which creator they were interviewing, but I know he said that after finding that out that Nintendo was going to censor it, he said he was so surprised by it that you could have knocked him down with a pillow).

Nintendo doesn't censor anything now, unless it involves a first party game(their still far more relaxed than they used to be). Nintendo just hasn't had much third party support lately, which is why there haven't been many games with Mature or Teen ratings on theirs systems. Heck, I read that the Wii is suppose to be getting a release of a sequel to Manhunter, which is a extremely violent game series.

While Sega was more relaxed when it came to violence, they still had other guidelines. Early on, before Boogerman came out, they censored farts out of most of their games.

DJ Boy was one example, this port of the arcade is one example. I remember playing the arcade version and the first stage was a sort of slum area(This was changed as well). The first boss was a big black woman that would release flatulence as one of her attacks. The American port of the console game(not the arcade) censored the first boss's fart attack(changing it to her throwing donuts) and more understandably changed her ethnic race(although I think this country is alittle too sensitve about this sort of thing). A couple of other changes included removing the intro scene that starts the story(where DJ's girlfriend is seen being kidnapped) and removing the ending's showing him reuniting with her(which wasn't obscene or anything, you only see text in the ending). Something involving a cat was censored too(I'll have to look it up, I don't remember at the moment).

The funny thing is even the arcade version of DJ Boy was censored in the American release. The original arcade version has the same story of DJ Boy's girlfriend being kidnapped, but the American version was changed to where his boombox radio was stolen and he goes to get it back. I felt that was a stupid change, mainly because of the fact that there have been other games that had kidnapping plots in the story.

I have images saved of DJ Boy's intro and ending, which I'll post here in my next post. I'll also look up the Cat thing on the DJ Boy game.

DJ Boy's:

Intro

Ending 1

Ending 2

Ending 3

I can't find the example with the cat, I'll keep looking though.

Edit: I can't find it.... I'll log in to Gamefaqs and see if anyone knows about it.(I'll make sure if it's posted on first though)

I still haven't found out.

http://www.nesplayer.com/features/doki/doki.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yume_K%C5%8Dj%C5%8D:_Doki_Doki_Panic

http://www.themushroomkingdom.net/smb2_ddp.shtml

http://www.themushroomkingdom.net/smb2_madness.shtml

http://nintendo.about.com/library/mariochanges/blmariodifferences2.htm

http://nintendo.about.com/od/gamereviews/fr/mario2.htm

http://progressiveboink.com/archive/dokidokipanic.html

I know they got in trouble for price fixing.

I read on encyclopedia obscura about some stuff they missed on certain.

Here's a few of them from there as well as some others I read elsewhere and a couple I noticed.

Monster Party: This NES(not a particularly good game, but better than some others I played) game was originally going to be released in Japan before hand, but only got released here in the US. There are three things in here that were somehow left in.

1. The last half of the first stage still has bloodly imagery in it.
2. The picture that shows the stage your about to go to is a pool of blood with skeletons in it(skeletons are not a problem for Nintendo, but I'm surprised at the blood).
3. The ending which the main character starts to rot into a skeleton, although not bloody, doesn't sound like something that Nintendo would allow.

Ring King: This NES game which doesn't have anything violence based in it, but the image between rounds kinda looks alittle like a sexually suggestive activity.

Bionic Commando: This game is originally about the Resurrection of Hitler. This, of course was changed. But he still looks like Hitler(They just changed his name to Master D). But surprisingly what was left in is where you have to shoot a rocket in the helicopter pit before he gets away. His head violently exploding into a bloody mess wasn't censored.

Maniac Mansion: The first set of copies of this game have a part where you can put a dead hamster in the microwave, Nintendo caught this afterward and had it removed from all later copies.

Secret of Mana: This SNES game has a book enemy in it that occasionally flips to reveal what likes a nude woman(well a pixel version of a nude woman), in the Japanese version of the game, it was called "Porno Book" (Page about it here). The reason why it was probably left in was because of the fact that the page of the nude girl pops up rarely on the book, so the censors didn't see it or know of it.

Kid Icarus: This game which is published by Nintendo, has two things that I'm amazed were left in when brought over here.

1. Red crosses in the fortress levels of the game(like the Red Cross logo), these are found in the rooms where a nurse will appear if you get afflicted with the Eggplant Wizard's curse. This is odd because Nintendo had a rule against religious imagery, they've even removed the Red Crosses from Hospitals in Earthbound(even though those types of crosses have no reference to religion), but they left the red crosses in Kid Icarus?

2. In the instruction booklet, there is a picture of an enemy that is a topless bird woman called a "Siren". Regardless of the fact that this is a drawing, it's amazing that Nintendo left this in the booklet. I remember seeing this when I was 12 years old(a friend of mine had this game and the book).



Nintendo also didn't remove the crosses on world 2-3 in Kid Icarus...

On this article, a caption on an image most of the way down on the page:

http://www.flyingomelette.com/kidicarus/kidicaruslevel2.html

I was reading this article last week.

Nintendo of America had pretty strict guidelines at that time about what was allowed in games.

It actually started to ruin their company image after awhile(giving them a kid oriented image).

Another thing was that it ruin their sales when it came to the first Mortal Kombat game(their's being heavily censored).

Does anyone know of any other examples of video game censorship?


yeah, the nintendo port of mortal combat was exactly the same... except... there was no er... blood.

yeah, the nintendo port of mortal combat was exactly the same... except... there was no er... blood.


They let the blood stay in the second game though... They learned their lesson from that one.

Funny thing is they also had a rule against religious imagery, but in Kid Icarus there were crosses.

Oddly they had Doom on NES.  ::)

Oddly they had Doom on NES.  ::)


I just looked on google, it said SNES... (although it wouldn't surprise me if they had it on the NES, or if it's a pirated game)

Edit: It came out later than I thought it did. So the blood was in it.

They let the blood stay in the second game though... They learned their lesson from that one.

Funny thing is they also had a rule against religious imagery, but in Kid Icarus there were crosses.


yeah, nintendo really isn't strict at all any more. there aren't any first party games that are violent, but they were ready to let manhunt be on the wii if it got a mature rating (as oposed to the Adults Only rating it recieved) but even sony doesn't license AO rated games.

There was the odd violent game that slipped through, the one that best comes to mind being 'NARC'

Originally an arcade game in 1988, the object was to control a NARC officer through the city streets, violently shooting and killing drug dealers without warning.  When it came to the NES in 1990, all the violence was still there, but the graphics weren't near as good enough as the arcade, thus making it seem less gory

yeah, nintendo really isn't strict at all any more. there aren't any first party games that are violent, but they were ready to let manhunt be on the wii if it got a mature rating (as oposed to the Adults Only rating it recieved) but even sony doesn't license AO rated games.


It was originally gonna get the AO rating?

I noticed that that rating is very rarely used.

There was the odd violent game that slipped through, the one that best comes to mind being 'NARC'

Originally an arcade game in 1988, the object was to control a NARC officer through the city streets, violently shooting and killing drug dealers without warning.  When it came to the NES in 1990, all the violence was still there, but the graphics weren't near as good enough as the arcade, thus making it seem less gory


I don't think the blood was in it, however.

They also changed the part with the dogs, they turned into puppies when they got hit(if I remember correctly).

I'll find the article on it.

It was originally gonna get the AO rating?

I noticed that that rating is very rarely used.


no. it was expected to get M, and and nintendo and sony were going to license it.

no. it was expected to get M, and and nintendo and sony were going to license it.


The way you worded it confused me abit... (I never heard of a violent game getting AO, mainly because attitudes toward violence in this country are different than toward sex)

I was reading Gameinformer in one issue(I think it was about the ESRB or something like that).... Someone felt that the first Manhunt game should have had a AO rating instead of a M rating, due to how brutal alot of the violence was.

You can bet that the GTA series will never be on Nintendo.

You can bet that the GTA series will never be on Nintendo.


only because of the controversy it generates, not nececarily the level of violence. and honestly, i think the next gta, seeing as rockstar is putting so much effort into actually making realistic graphics, won't be as "just kill people for fun" as the others. the storyline seems to be much more intricate and serious, which should reflect on the gameplay. i wouldn't expect the ability to fly around in a jetpack in the next installment AKA gta 4.


The way you worded it confused me abit... (I never heard of a violent game getting AO, mainly because attitudes toward violence in this country are different than toward sex)

I was reading Gameinformer in one issue(I think it was about the ESRB or something like that).... Someone felt that the first Manhunt game should have had a AO rating instead of a M rating, due to how brutal alot of the violence was.


i think i heard about a scene where they walk by a porno theatre and you get a nice peek at the screen. and yes, i'm sure the sheer brutality of the murders in the game contributed a good deal to the given rating.

Yeah, I remember some of the ratings for the game(ratings based on how good it was).

From what I saw, you could suffocate someone with a plastic bag and gouge their eyes out with a shard of glass(just two of the ways to kill in the game).

In one review(EGM, I think), someone mention that some of the kills were maybe abit too brutal(he said, to where someone would most likely look at you like you just throw a baby against the wall... I think that's how he worded it).