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Ninja Gaiden Censored For European Release

Posted by simoniker on from the reptilian-royal-family's-fault dept.

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."

3 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not altogether scandalous by Krandor3 · · Score: 5, Informative

    If I am reading the article correctly, it sounds like they were not forced to remove stuff, but that they would have just gotten a higher rating if they didn't remove it. If they had a choice to release the game with all the material in and just have gotten a higher rating, then it is not censorship. They decided to remove it to get a 16 rating. At least that is how ie reads to me.

  2. Re:Not altogether scandalous by Fred+Or+Alive · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yep, there's an 18+ PEGI rating (the voluntary game ratings system used in Europe, replacing the ELSPA ones in the UK.) However individual countries laws can go overrule this, such as the UK's Video Recordings Act (and associated laws), and Germany's laws, where they really don't like gore and so on. They might only want to prepare one PAL version of the game (rather than a rest-of-Europe and a German version), so bow to the German censorship requirements across Europe, or they just want a lower rating for sales reasons.

    --
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  3. Re:Not the first time, won't be the last by buffer-overflowed · · Score: 5, Funny

    Europe: Violence bad. Nudity/Sex ok.
    USA: Violence good. Nudity/Sex bad.
    Japan: Violence ok. Nudity/Sex good. Tentacle rape better!

    Different cultures/different attitudes.

    --
    The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."