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Different Country, Different Game Content
Thanks to EvilAvatar for finding a registration-not-required (via NPR) version of a LA Times article about changing game content for different cultures. As the article describes, "Red blood in a game sold in the United States turns green in Australia. A topless character in a European title acquires a bikini in the U.S. Human enemies in a U.S. game morph into robots in Germany. Violent sex scenes in a Japanese game disappear in the American version." There's also discussion of localizing for cultural reasons, citing Animal Crossing, which has added "..folding lawn chairs, inflatable wading pools, tiki torches and pink flamingos" for the US version.
Uhm, not really. I had no idea it and other items were added to the US version.
Speed Demos Archive - Lots of speed runs!
I wonder how the Wolfenstein games were altered for Germany? Take away the nazis and the blood and you don't have much of a game
Totally Life!
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Americans are overly violent, while Europeans are oversexed. That's it; I'm moving to Europe!
The way the German command and conquer games work is kind of funny. It reminds me of the old super nintendo mortal Kombat game, where they took out the blood and people stayed away in droves, going for the Blood coded genesis version.
One of the amusing things to note is how much of an uproar American otaku will cause whenever anything at all is taken out of a Japanese game which makes it to the US. Mind you, a lot of these fanboys probably are looking for the prurient detail, but I can understand if it was a major plot point. I rather pity anime fans every time certain companies (read funimation) picks up an anime, because it ends up edited to the point where it's no longer recognizeable.
A question to all the other /.ers out there, have you ever played a game which was notably edited for American market? I think the most obvious example of this was Xenosaga, although Metal Gear Solid 2 after 9/11 also got a number of cinema scenes axed. (A rather unfortunate thing in my mind, while the game was ridiculous, it was very pretty.)
What's too bad about this is that, if I feel like playing a certain game, I can't go out and buy the unaltered version.
Used to be the case that I'd run to the store to pick up what's basically a license key, with fancy packaging and a CD-ROM included, then download an ISO and burn it from somewhere outside the country.
Now, some newer anti-piracy technology doesn't let me burn CDs, so in effect I have to wait for my game to arrive in the mail from some overseas distributor, at a substantial markup.
Terrible, terrible. Woe is me. Oh well, it's a nice day outside
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
I'm missing something here...I understand all of the other corrolations, but why does red blood in America turn green in Australia? Have our neighbors down under become infested with Klingons?
--trb
Why sometimes things look "almost" right, but still really weird, when it comes to scenery and phrases used in some games that came over from Japan? I get a kick out of designers that grab some eccentric part of american "life" and assume that everyone uses it. Like pink flamingoes for example. They are funny, but I don't know a single person that actually owns one. There are other examples i'm sure...
Well, perhaps someone didn't notice the kid character models or something. Censors aren't all-knowing, after all. Human like everyone else. Even if we want to get a little Tommy Vercetti on their asses from time to time for messing up our cool games.
It reminds me of the old super nintendo mortal Kombat game, where they took out the blood and people stayed away in droves, going for the Blood coded genesis version.
Having owned both of these versions, I actually preferred the Super Nintendo Mortal Kombat. I thought the fatalities were a lot more creative. And I feel the gameplay was little better.
----
kid: I think Mortal Kombat for Sega Genesis is the best game ever.
Billy Madison: Although Mortal Kombat is a very good game, I think Donkey Kong is the best game ever.
kid: Donkey Kong sucks!
Billy Madison: Yeah, well you suck!
the cosmos in 20 words or less: thumbuki.com
Anyone else remember seeing games like Samurai Showdown spurt white blood from characters that got hit? It looked like you just cut open a milk carton or something! I'm glad people are gradually becoming less uptight so that we don't have children thinking milk is in their veins.
I think the NeoGeo hardware had a switch that let you choose what color the blood would be though, so I guess it was up to the arcade owner.
But I don't see much point in making the blood green... I'd rather see no blood at all than green blood, at least it would make more sense.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
And I do pity you, as well as myself when something bad happens to an anime. I still twitch with revulsion at what's done to some series, but you have to admit, the half-literate rantings I see exploding on some newsgroups expose the teenagers for the iconoclastic ignoramuses they are.
Sure, it's logical for us hard-core fans to want something that hasn't been hacked up but... frankly, children are suckers to some degree. At least according to the corpies that buy up anime and sell it to the american population seem to think. Unfortunately they're backed by wrong-headed groups of parents who think any objectionable material in a cartoon is bad. It comes down to lazy parenting vs. good storytelling. Lazy parents win. Because they control the money, and have a decent amount of clout with other suckers of like mind.
Maybe it turns out the translations aren't actually bad at all... certain parts were just edited out for content! Turns out the Japanese enjoy censoring random verbs and nouns in order to protect our fragile North American minds.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
I am an immigrant, why should game company treats me as a second class gamer just because I have a different background? Isn't that illegal to discriminate against people based on nationality and race?
1. I agree with this person for one now my beef with this shi7. 2. lets keep this real they have a ratings board lets see um nude rated M um blood rated lets see oh just on cutting someone head off um 13. 3. All I'm saying is now is the time to make a stand I want to play the game the way it was meant to be played and see what the author or director or programmer wants me to see in his mind no to have nothing blocked or changed I'm telling you this is what wrong with the world and people smoke crack cause nothing real no more you expect to see blood and you get green gook you expect to see some beheading's and you get nothing this world needs to wake up we have a ratings board use it and enforce it like all the other stupid laws in this world I'm from the USA and I want to see what a real Japan game looks like without it being altered in anyway or form.
I wonder if we continue to let the world tell us what is good for us to see sure there are kids but that's what the parents are for to montior them when they play games or anything all I want to say is that this shit needz to stop cause I'm a big game fan period end of story but I would love to play the game the way it was meant for me to see and play not because of what the world or government thinks thank you for hearing me on this good day
To all who had witness let me give this upon you in one of my favorite terms "PH34R MY M4D SKILLZ!!!"
with some games theres codes to get the orginal scenes back in mostly with SEGA systems. ie Mortal kombat: DULLARD down up left left a right down. or Snatcher: entered Konami as your name in the computer and you got the uncut japanese version including the shower scene.
Of all countries, Germany is one of the trickiest to tackle, publishers say. The country has spent five decades developing one of the world's strictest decency standards for virtually all media, from books and comics to music and games.
Yet they produce some of the world's raunchiest pr0n.
This had 2 forms of censorship in the original release which was extremly annoying yet subtle. Blood was green in the US release. Easy, they released a patch for that. The female chick wore a dang bra. Easy to fix, delete some file and it was all better. Even though 90% of the time you saw her from behind. Who the heck could play that game multiplayer with all the network issues?
Even the furniture got a makeover. ``We had a series of furniture that resembled a Japanese farmhouse from the 1800s that we took out because no one in the U.S. would recognize it,'' said Bill Trinen, an associate producer at Nintendo. ``We also took out the public baths that you see in Japan but not here. But we added folding lawn chairs, inflatable wading pools, tiki torches and pink flamingos for the U.S. game.''
Damn it! They took out all the cool cultural reference stuff! Now i'm going to need to get a japanese copy of the game!
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Back in the old days, Nintendo did something like this (not for any kind of censorship however).
After Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros 2 was released in Japan, with similar gameplay to SMB 1, only different levels (like a mod). The American Super Mario Bros. 2 was only a hacked version of some other Arabian game or something like that. That's why it's so different from SMB 1 & 3.
The American SMB 2 was released in Japan as Super Mario USA.
The Japananese SMB 2 was released in the US later, on the SNES Super Mario All-Stars cartridge as the Lost Levels.
Don't believe me? Google it.
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
On the bright side, modifications aren't always a decrease in quality.
What might otherwise be boring and pointless dialog in Japan can turn into an uproarious web phenomenon in the US :)
use it and enforce it like punctuation and don't give us all a hard time reading your "wordstream" it is so hard to comprehend i really don't want to whine but this is just to much... ;-)
the computer is online
i am not at it
what a waste of ressources
Wolfenstein 3D and Kz-manager are NOT INDEXED!
,a non govermental institution, that tests games, and gives out age recommendations ranging from "educational/no age limit" to "not below 18".
read on...
The indexing practice here in germany actually is a bit more fine grained than they discribed in that article.
At first, there are two institutions. The USK (Unterhaltungssoftwareselbstkontrolle/Voluntary gamesself control) USK
The second institute is the "Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefÃhrdende schriften/ federal control comission of Youth endangering media" or BPJS, the federal organ.
The functioning of these 2 institutions have been changed a bit recently. Before, the USK was allowed to test any game they saw fit, but was only able to issue recommendations, while the BPJS was able to index or ban games (more on that later), but was only allowed to test games when an official complaint has been filed with them.
The new law basically says, that every game, that is not tested and rated by the USK has to be treated like it has an USK18 (not below 18) tag.
The rest of the system still stands.
The BPJS need to get an complaint about the contents of a certain game (which requires that game to be sold in Germany first), then test it for some weeks (in which the game still is beeing sold) and then decides it the game is left alone as USK18, gets indexed, or gets "eingezogen".
To clear up the terms.
USK18 means, the game may not be sold to minors, but can be displayed and advertised.
Indexed means, it may not be shown in public or be advertised, but still can be sold to adults. (in effect, its even possible to display and offer the game, but only in the classical "smut corner" that is inacessible to minors, most stores shun that. Big retailers won't sell these games, gameshops usually have a small stack behind the counter where so you have to ask to get them.
Eingezogen is in effect banned.
Ownership in general is still allowed, but any form of distribution, even in private, is forbidden. This usually only applies to heavy Racial/Nazi content. (Mein kampf, Kzmanager and Wolfenstein3D all are Banned and NOT indexed).
Hope that clears it up.. i stopped counting just how often i wrote this in various threads on god-know-how-many newspages, since i yet have to come about one single american article about the german jugendschutz (youth protection) that atlest gets the basic facts right.
As an American in Germany I find it difficult to find a significant number of games that I would like to play (mostly the 3D action type). This is really annoying. As Amazon and other internet shops no longer ship U.S. games to Europe I have no good source for such games if I want to play them.
;-) So some titles really do over do it and that has caused the German government to crack down and over react.
Somebody mentioned that Castle Wolfenstein 3D, was not on the index. While this may be true; the trouble is that most over-18 titles are not carried by stores. They want to avoid the extra costs of an over-18 only area and the of chance of mistakenly carrying indexed software. This results in low availability of all shooters.
The situation also fosters piracy in Germany. While I go on a buying spree when I get to the states, a lot of locals have no legal access to interesting shooter-type titles.
As far as the violence issue is concerned, I have mixed feeling on this issue. If find the German government is a bit extreme in "indexing" a lot of games that show violence and blood and therefore, basically, take some very good games from the market (eg: ID games). This is bad for me and other players.
On the other hand I believe it to be acceptable to have the opponent _just_ get red blood on him and die; it is not really necessary to see the hacked limbs spraying blood and spinning away from the corpse! This does not add realism either, as that sort of behavior would not normally happen when you hack/shoot your opponent. Yeah it may be kind of cool to see the first time but it makes it difficult for me to explain to my wife why I enjoy playing such games when she looks over my shoulder
Cheers, Duncan