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Different Country, Different Game Content

Posted by simoniker on from the paddington-bears-added-for-peru? dept.

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.

6 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder... by Monkeylaser · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I wonder what violent sex scenes they are referring to that have been taken out of Japanese video games? I heard that in D2 (no, not diablo 2, the dreamcast D2) there was some tentacle rape or something taken out. (I used to work in game retail before graduating college and becoming a cubicle-bound minion of the state government.)

    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.)

    1. Re:I wonder... by Dreaded+Tuesday · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I dont think I've played a game edited for the American market. However, all of the children in the European version of Fallout 2 were removed (but none of the puzzles/quests involving them, leading to annoyingly unfinishable tasks...) because (apparently) you are not allowed to be able to harm children in games. On which note, it suddenly occurs to me that a badly aimed shotgun shell in Deus Ex killed a kid while I was playing yesterday. Maybe the laws have changed..?

      --

      "Ask a stupid person, get a stupid answer"

    2. Re:I wonder... by Iainuki · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This link probably contains more detail than you ever wanted to know about how Xenosaga was censored: The 'Ethos' Sanctuary.

  2. Foiled by Copy Protection by fuzzybunny · · Score: 3, Interesting


    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
  3. Would that explain? by noitalever · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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...

  4. Old news by someguy456 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.