A Survey of Nintendo's Game Censorship Policies
ccnull writes "Found a page which offers a survey of Nintendo's policies on censorship, paying particular attention to how U.S. games differ from their Japanese counterparts. It's not just blood splatters, the author has interesting comparative screen grabs showing "clothed" statues and de-Nazified Hitlers."
Now, if Nintendo tried to sell some of those games in Germany, for example, it would be forced to get rid of some of the offending material by the country's law, not by the marketplace.
Yep, it has to be newer than that. I've seen it in the Metroid Prime 2: Echos demo disc and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. It's even featured on the Nintendo DS boot screen now :-/
The fatality moves were included, but so were several non-violent finishing moves, such as the "friendship" moves in which instead of executing your opponent you could give him a present or do a little dance.
Anyone who's played MK2 in the arcade knows that friendships were in the arcade version; they were NOT added by Nintendo to make the game "nicer".