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there is a PlayStation 2, Xbox and PlayStation Portable (PSP) game World Trade Center video game being made http://www.defunctgames.com/shows.php?id=scrapbook -40

aslo check out this flash game http://weeklies.sordeo.com/games/wtcdefender.html

The following was excerpted from the NIMF Video Game Report Card:

Using data generated by PSVratings, a content-based ratings system measuring actual levels of profanity, sex, and violence, we found that games in 2004 were on average more violent, contained more sexual content and had more profane language when compared to games from the late '90s. In the '90s only 16% of the M-rated games contained any profanity at all and only 33% contained sexual content. By 2004 all (100%) of the M-rated games contained some level of profanity and sexual content. The actual figures shot through the roof. The games we analyzed from last year were 30 times more likely to contain profanity than those from the '90s, and the average prevalence of sexual content increased a whopping 800%. Kids are six times more likely to see nude or partially nude figures in M-rated video games today than they were in the late 1990s. Yet the ratings haven't changed. -- PSVratings Provides Crucial Data for NIMF's 10th Annual Video Game Report Card: Ratings Accuracy Plummets from 'B-' in 2004 to 'F' in 2005

This isn't loony Jack Thompson here, these are the people who are actually behind the current legislation. Why are they upset?

Well, here's what I believe happened. In the original crisis, the one that created the rating system, the two games that drove the rating system were Night Trap a pretty mild probably PG-rated vaguely interactive B-Horror movie and Mortal Kombat a game where poorly animated cartoon characters killed each other in humorously gruesome ways. (I can't give more info on how bad Night Trap actually is because even though I was one of 5 people in the US with a SegaCD, I didn't buy it. I'm going by the footage they showed during the hearings to damn it. Oh, and someone will probably argue that the characters in Mortal Kombat aren't cartoon characters. Well, then when Monty Python made cartoons using cutouts of photographs, those weren't cartoons either.) Huge amounts of hyperbole about these video games came out of Washington, and the games industry basically allowed Washington to get away with it (indeed the game industry itself was divided, with Nintendo being one of the causes of the crises trying to harm their competitor, SEGA. Nintendo sent the video tape to their friends in Congress that precipitated the whole thing.)

Well, those two games became the top of the ratings, the M-Rated games, but they were milder than what kids could see in an episode of Beavis and Butthead or indeed The Simpson's (really there is some gruesome stuff on The Simpson's remember the fog that turns people inside out?).

So, the games industry came out with a rating system, and I guess they figured they didn't need to try to license the movie rating system, so they created their own. While the system was roughly analogous to the movie rating system, the truth was that at least on the top end, an R-Rated movie could be much more graphic than an M-Rated game. Oh, and the wonderful full-motion video thing that people tried to foist on the game playing public collapsed, so you ended up with years of poorly animated cartoony games especially when polygons became big. (Really, go back and look at some of those old 3-D Playstation games. They didn't exactly have realistic imagery, did they?) Oh and no nudity or real profanity in the games at all.

So, people got used to defacto censorship in video games. Nothing really worse than Mortal Kombat was allowed. Really the 90's were a kind of golden age for the pro-videogame censorship people.

Its not a circle, its a exponential progression towards absolute zero quality. Take, for example, the result of a Game based on a Movie based on a Game.

Sexy as hell? Looks more like a demented Robby the Robot from the old Nintendo Entertainment System. This is one of the foulest examples of product design since ... since ... I'm not sure; there are so many to choose from.

Ooo.. ooo.. How about "Custer's Revenge 2000"?

Seriously, if the ps2dev.org community pulls together enough resources to develop and publish a game, I bet they'll get a serious response, alright... from Sony's lawyers. I'm guessing the guys at/nee ps2dev.org don't exercise "clean room" procedures, if you know what I mean.

I think they(Sony) only barely tolerate Datel (the GameShark guys) because of all the bad luck Nintendo had against the Game Genie. (Perhaps it is telling that the CD Pressing company Datel uses is a subsidiary named "Thin Ice Media.")

2c., etc.,

- Superliminal

For a full updated list of sites pulling april fools jokes see here

Some of the latest enteries:
livejournal.com - on userinfo pages, "Friend"/"Friend Of" -> "Stalking"/"Stalked By"
www.gpf-comics.com - Comic mirrored.
smh.com.au - Yum-cha trolleys with "L" plates
www.clutchfans.com - Patrick Ewing returning to NBA
www.freeciv.org - Freeciv ANSI client
www.rav4world.com - Closed? Should have announced that TOMORROW!
www.retrocrush.com - Nude pics of Jaclyn Smith
westcoaster.net - Roller coaster site turned into teen girl site
www.meowpawjects.com - Sock people forced webmaster to take website down.
miceage.com - Disney merges with Walmart
www.badgerbadgerbadger.com - Badgers replaces with zombies
skepdic.com - Skeptic's Dictionary closing
fool.com - Buffett buys Krispy Cream
launch.com - Britney Spears & Jason Alexander To Renew Wedding Vows
MetaFilter.com - Turned in to a Wiki for the day
www.ddrkc.com - owner sold site to a user that is unpopular
brownpau.com - March for Web Standards
www.beyondunreal.com - ut2k4 production suspended
globetechnology.com - Microsoft Solitaire
www.modernwiccan.com - Randomized Color Scheme
bbs.fuckedcompany.com - Site shutting down
www.diary-x.com - looks like diaryland!
theprp.com - Music site to "Previously Ridden Ponies"
mpx200.org - Pocket PC with 2Gb system memory/Smart Drunk Pocket PC application
www.macosxhints.com - triple G5 Powermacs
www.slyfx.com - AOL buys slyfx
palminfocenter.com - Palms for toddlers.
www.carniola.org - fake news story
eikenes.alvestrand.no - Considering porn spam to be in a separate dialect to everything else
defunctgames.com - Pimps At Sea fox xbox

For a full updated list of sites pulling april fools jokes see here

Some highlites:
livejournal.com - on userinfo pages, "Friend"/"Friend Of" -> "Stalking"/"Stalked By"
www.gpf-comics.com - Comic mirrored.
smh.com.au - Yum-cha trolleys with "L" plates
www.clutchfans.com - Patrick Ewing returning to NBA
www.freeciv.org - Freeciv ANSI client
www.rav4world.com - Closed? Should have announced that TOMORROW!
www.retrocrush.com - Nude pics of Jaclyn Smith
westcoaster.net - Roller coaster site turned into teen girl site
www.meowpawjects.com - Sock people forced webmaster to take website down.
miceage.com - Disney merges with Walmart
www.badgerbadgerbadger.com - Badgers replaces with zombies
skepdic.com - Skeptic's Dictionary closing
fool.com - Buffett buys Krispy Cream
launch.com - Britney Spears & Jason Alexander To Renew Wedding Vows
MetaFilter.com - Turned in to a Wiki for the day
www.ddrkc.com - owner sold site to a user that is unpopular
brownpau.com - March for Web Standards
www.beyondunreal.com - ut2k4 production suspended
globetechnology.com - Microsoft Solitaire
www.modernwiccan.com - Randomized Color Scheme
bbs.fuckedcompany.com - Site shutting down
www.diary-x.com - looks like diaryland!
theprp.com - Music site to "Previously Ridden Ponies"
mpx200.org - Pocket PC with 2Gb system memory/Smart Drunk Pocket PC application
www.macosxhints.com - triple G5 Powermacs
www.slyfx.com - AOL buys slyfx
palminfocenter.com - Palms for toddlers.
www.carniola.org - fake news story
eikenes.alvestrand.no - Considering porn spam to be in a separate dialect to everything else
defunctgames.com - Pimps At Sea fox xbox

What's the point in buying a PS2 when in 72 years afterwards at the most, PS9 will hit the stands?

BTW, that's a reference to this PS2 commercial (Quicktime .mov - have fun with codecs). If anyone can find it in .mpg format, reply ASAP!

Mod parent up!

Nobody ever seems to acknowledge this. The first two (three?) Hudson's Adventure Island games were direct Wonder Boy rip-offs.

I just found this which has a brief comparison of the two.

Does anybody know why there wasn't a lawsuit, or was there?

At least its not as big as the GBA Fighter Stick Advance, or even the Light Gun (on the same page).

"You are looking down a deep chute, falling towards an irregular field of colored squares ...."

Is 3D Block for NES, 3D Tetris for Virtual Boy, or Geom Cube for PS1 close enough to what you want?

PS9. Here's hoping for the future.

...all those Choose Your Adventure books you used to read as a kid? You know the kind, "If you want to venture into the right cave, go to page 87; If you want to trust him, go to page 92" and so on.

It also looks strikingly like those really awful FMV games that came out when the hottest CD-ROMs were spinning at 2x and needed the CD to be loaded into a case and then slid into the drive (remember those infernal things?). There were a few good ones, my fav being The Seventh Guest, but the rest were dreadful point-click-choose-a-scenario games.

But more than anything, it reminded me of Night Trap, the game-movie that had some panties and violence and caused a ruckus back in the early 90's. Sure the game was awful and the "movie" was so bad it set new standards. But it had the same premise, to be "interactive entertainment" with "actors."

You can go so far to say that RPG's are interactive television shows or films. Basically you control characters who have emotions and relationships and whose decisions change the situation around them.

Wow, this is truly revolutionary gaming fun.