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Censoring Maniac Mansion for the NES
Via Destructoid, an article at the personal site of Douglas Crockford, a gent who worked with LucasArts during the NES days. He takes a look at the silly amount of content censored to get the game Maniac Mansion acceptable for Nintendo and the Nintendo Entertainment System. "'Well, Mommy, I'm worried! He hasn't eaten in 5 years. / YEAH, SO!!! / and he's been bringing those bodies, and he carries those bodies to the basement at night.' [sic] This was from Weird Ed's dialogue with his mother, Nurse Edna, in which Ed tries to get his mother to recognize the terrible things that have happened to his father over the past 20 years. What was Nintendo's problem with the dialogue? ... In fact, Nintendo's interpretation of the speech was that Dr. Fred was a cannibal, that he was eating the bodies. That was never our intention, so we changed Ed's speech to 'He hasn't slept in 5 years,' which helps to explain why Dr. Fred is never seen in his bedroom. But even if we had intended that Dr. Fred was a cannibal, what's the harm? He would have been one under the influence of the evil purple meteor. The game recognizes that it is bad, and your mission is to rescue him from this unhappy state. Who would be offended?"
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
So they chose to imply he was sleeping with the bodies? Sickos.
Dude. You may be the first person on the internet in the last 2 years that I have seen using the word 'lose' in the correct context and spelled correctly - congratulations!
which is totally what she said
I worked on SNES games back in the 90's and had to abide by NOA's restrictions. I wish I'd kept the document they gave us, because it was hilarious.
You couldn't have characters drinking alcohol. If a character went into a bar, they weren't allowed to drink alcohol or order alcoholic drinks.
Characters couldn't pray. They had to 'meditate'. Churches weren't allowed, but 'Temples' were.
You couldn't tell a player to 'kill' anything. Assassinate, terminate, destroy, and defeat were all ok, but not 'kill'.
You couldn't show blood splats. One game I worked on had tiny characters that when they fought had little tiny red clouds near them to show them fighting. We had to change it to yellow dust clouds. Of course when Street Fighter came out that had blood splats, but they were allowed to, while we weren't.
Nintendo has gone to absurd lengths to clean up their games, but honestly I think they're free to do as they please. Nintendo is a private company and if they decide they don't want offensive content available on their console its their prerogative. If, as a consumer, I have a problem with that practice, I'll buy a system from a company that doesn't put such restrictions on games. It's not like Nintendo was engaging in thought control or propaganda.
What I do have a problem with, however, is when the government starts deciding what should be censored. It's like the Fairness Doctrine. A lot of people are pushing it in an attempt to control conservative talk radio. That's all well and good, but the irony is that the doctrine came about originally during the anti-communist movement and then actually used against liberal talk shows. So this cuts both ways. You can't say you're for free speech provided it only suits your own opinions and desires. The last thing we need is more government control.
I have the right to dictate what I'm exposed to in my own house in the same way Nintendo can dictate the content for their consoles. Even if I agree that the extent to which Nintendo of America went to clean up their games was absolutely ridiculous. Although, I can't really say it business.