From James D Pollock <xxxxxx@postoffice.worldnet.att.net>
Date
At 12:28 AM 4/23/99 -0400, you wrote:
><< For me, the answer was simple: NOA and SOA both censored games heavily.
> NEC did not. >>
>
>They don't? I can think of tons of games that were censored or changed for
>"American Audiences".
Games were altered, yes. But not by imperial decree from NEC. That's the
difference between censorship and artistry.
>What about JJ and Jeff aka Kato and Ken? What about Splatterhouse? Magical
>Chase? I'm sure there are countless others!
There are other cases of Japanese games being altered for US audiences. For
example, there's Street Fighter's "M. Bison". Originally the hulking black
guy, that apparently American Capcom's lawyers felt might offend certain
boxer's lawyers. So the character's names were shuffled for the US release.
What about Splatterhouse? It wasn't available for either NES or Genesis for
over two years after it was released on TG16! Never made it to the NES at
all.
What about Devil's Crush? No Nintendo version. Renamed for Genesis.
Believe me, I know in extreme detail what Nintendo's content code prohibited
in 1990. The censorship which was done in TG16 releases was done by choice of
the publisher, not by threat from NEC. The hand of Nintendo was very strong
in limiting the games released for NES. No blood. No cruelty to animals.
No racial or ethnic slurs. (OK, I guess). No drug use including smoking
or drinking even by characters "of age". Many other restrictions.
An example: Taito did a game based on "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade".
A V-E-R-Y difficult task, since Nintendo flatly prohibited either religious
imagery or text or references to Nazis or any symbols thereof. A game like
"Doom" or "Quake" would have been flatly impossible to release for the NES.
Another example: Taito released a game "Dungeon & Magic" developed by (I
think) Natsume. In the States, the name was changed to just "Dungeon Magic"
to avoid nasty phone calls from TSR's lawyers. When the game was submitted
to Nintendo of America, they rejected it. Why? Because in one frame of
animation for one monster, a kind of snake with a woman's body on top, the
monster is seen to be a mammal. ONE FRAME of animation for ONE monster, not
even a woman but a half-woman, half-snake, but topless. BOOM! Unacceptable
for America's videogame consumer.
Third example: Maniac Mansion allowed a hamster to be put into a microwave
oven. The Nintendo people missed this. By the time they caught on, there
were already too many sold so no recall. But LucasArts had to remove this
from later production runs of the game. Also note that all the Star Wars
games for NES were done by JVC, and LucasArts didn't do the SNES Star Wars
games, either. I wonder why? In my opinion, LucasArts has the best video
game developers out there after id.