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Ninja Gaiden Censored For European Release
Thanks to GamesIndustry.Biz for its article confirming that Tecmo's Xbox title Ninja Gaiden has been censored for European release, seemingly "to remove certain violent aspects such as decapitations." According to the piece, these changes "have been removed apparently at the request of European censors, and the final PAL code for the game has been granted a 16 rating by pan-European ratings body PEGI, which rates games for a wide range of European countries (including the notoriously censorious German market)." However, it seems "the actual impact of the change to the game is minor... and does little to detract from the well-received game - which was the best selling single-platform title in the USA last month." Update: 04/22 14:42 GMT by S : Simon Vivien explains what commenters also mention: "Germany still uses USK, which is another rating board dedicated to their market.
The rest of Europe indeeds use PEGI. A 16+ PEGI rating doesn't especially mean a 16+ USK rating - as was witnessed in our latest shooter, Painkiller, who received a 16+ PEGI rating but was banned in Germany."
This game is a great game, fun, well though out, well planned, there is almost nothing wrong with this game... almost. The front of the game box says "Online Enabled", I spent $50 on the game to go play some Ninja Gaiden online (in any form) only to find out when I got home that the whole "online tournament" didn't start until E3 (the middle of May). Very misleading.
I'm f#$king magic!
1) The Euro version of Contra was called "Probotectors" and featured robots. Because obviously a bunch of robots killing aliens is much less violent than two Rambo clones.
2) Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. They're definitely not ninjas.
There's actually a suprisingly lack of these kinds of people in Europe.
Germany truely is simply the exception to the rule really, a large majority of violent games can be released in the rest of Europe, and few people will bat an eyelid.
I believe they even banned Quake 2 in Germany for the longest time, whereas I don't think such a thing was even suggested elsewhere.
The general view here is that violent games usually have an 18 age rating, and it is enforced, anyone who even looks under 18 will nopt be abler to buy the game without some form of identification (I myself get refused sale of a game sometimes, dispite being over 18)...so kids shouldn't be playing the game anyway. If they are, someone's messed up along the lines... but certainly not the company. All but a few obsessive mothers recognise that, generally.
One exception to this however would be the game Hooligans, which caused a fair bit of controversy here in the UK, but that was largely because England has a pretty bad reputation for football hooliganism.
I've been living in Germany for the past 9 months and you see lots of this on TV. They have no problems with showing sex in movies, or liquid soap commercials with a naked chick showering in a waterfall, or Britney's Toxic video, but they have major issues with censoring what would be considered virtual violence. I think our 'puritianistic' American society, which is run by the hypocritical bible-bound asses of politicians, should be a little bit more stringent about violent content on normal TV.
Too many parents rely on the TV as a babysitter. Maybe if we had better parenting in our society censorship wouldn't be as much as a problem!
I'll step down from my soapbox and put my two cents back into my pocket.