La Pucelle Tactics Publisher Explains Alleged U.S. Censorship

Thanks to 1UP for its interview with La Pucelle: Tactics publisher Bill Swartz regarding alleged censorship to the PlayStation 2 SRPG from the developers of Disgaea, after an eToychest interview with the game's Japanese producer revealed: "We did take out a very few things we felt would cause problems in North America." Following sustained noises of discontent on the GameFAQs messageboards, it's explained: "Alloute wore cross earrings a few times and we took them out. We also removed a few other cross accessories and changed a handful of devices that looked like crosses (unless you looked carefully) to devices that looked a little less like crosses." Swartz laments: "There are well organized forces that work hard to punish software makers and sellers for what they consider religious transgressions", and clarifies the changes were "...not things that either carried meaning to the game's original audience or were in any way part of the substance of the game."

Comments

Re:explain please

[0x0d0a]

Because people were wearing them decoratively in the game, and hard-core Christians can be incredibly mule-headed about forcing their views on other people when it comes to casual use of religious symbols. What if the bad guy likes to wear clothing with a cross on it, wears a full-black outfit (not uncommon for a Japanese game) and looks like a priest? C'mon, this is the nation that had Christian fundamentalists banning Harry Potter from school libraries because it contained "witchcraft".

I wonder how feasible it would be to make this switchable. We currently have "Kid mode" switches in many games. I wonder how feasible it would be to have a "Christian mode" to disable the display of content that Christians might be offended by.

<rant>Man, I wish that people could practice their religions in peace, and not force their religious views on other people (like stuff like this and banning of abortions).</rant>

Nintendo Censorship

[RotJ]

Nintendo's been known to remove crosses from a game no matter what the context. I'm surprised they let games use the letter "t". For example, in Earthbound they removed a red cross from a hospital. Actually, Mother 2/Earthbound went through a lot of changes from Japan to North America. Here are some other instances of Nintendo's game changes and censorship. And This page (Google cache) shows Nintendo of America's old video game content guidelines, along with examples of games that were changed to meet each of those guidelines.

I didn't know Sony Playstation had these problems, considering they released Xenogears, which depicted the crucifixion of furry critters.