7 Weirdest Ways Games Were Censored

from time to time you might create a video game with content that's deemed unsuitable for general consumption by the authorities the media or even your own marketing department that's when you might consider removing or modifying said content but the question is what do you replace it with that still makes sense and the answer is who said anything about making sense occasionally censorship leads to some truly bizarre substitutions that make less sense than how only one of the spice girls was named after a spice just consider these seven weird ways games were censored by their makers and beware of minor spoilers for the following games [Music] [Applause] [Music] i'm a scientist an ai developer but not an ai myself i'm a scientist and as a scientist i find this distasteful you understand i am a scientist and i expect answers that make sense when you think about the metal gear series a few hallmarks spring to mind tactical stealth based gameplay cold war espionage and geopolitical tensions and of course a scene in which snake gets tortured with electricity seriously it happens all the time maybe there's a punch card where you get your fifth electric torcher for free rise and shine anyway metal gear solid peace walker released in 2010 for the psp was no exception including a scene in which the character strangelove uses electric rods to try and torch a snake into giving up information about his mentor the boss or at least she did in all versions of the game apart from the one released in japan apparently the japanese version of the game was meant to target younger kids as well as the older gamers that metal gear solid games usually appeal to and so the torture scene was changed into something a bit more family friendly in the japanese version of this scene strangelove is instead armed with what she calls a laughing rod designed to tickle snake into giving up the information she's after screams are instead hysterical laughter as he tries to withstand the extreme tickling i guess [Music] strangelove's reasoning in the censored version is that snake is well trained to withstand pain but being the grumpy sod that he is probably is less used to extended laughing which does have a kind of logic to it doesn't make it any less weird though still you can see how this is totally suitable for children now if you're anything like us you've played the original half-life multiple times and can remember every puzzle and encounter like it happened yesterday rather than what 22 years ago that can't be right our familiarity with this classic game is why it's a strange moment when you discover that there was a dramatically different version of the game released in germany to avoid a restrictive age rating or an outright ban see the insurance about the three men in testimony for a start as in many censored german games there are no human enemies whatsoever with the iconic special forces soldiers in their urban camo replaced with chunky militarized robots with a single glowing red eye hey robots can have feelings too i've seen wall-e this unique version of half-life went one step beyond just removing human enemies though in this modified game you will never see a human character die well except yourself bloody turrets accidentally hit einen scientist or das barney with a bit of friendly fire and instead of dying they just give up sit down on the floor and shake their head like they're not angry with you they're just very very disappointed wow i just got a flashback to my parents reading my high school report card it doesn't stop there either whether it's a character sitting on the floor in a huff or just one of the tragic victims found around the facility if you persist in hitting them with a crowbar at the point where in the regular game they'd explode into bloody chunks all over the linoleum they'll instead fade cleanly away hey don't look at me like that somebody's gotta tidy up this facility ah good that saves me some time from the creation of the first primitive robots in the 1950s through to the sophisticated robotics research of the early 21st century advances in robots technology have always been shadowed by a single ethical quandary which is at what point is it not okay to run them over with your car this walking while falling is very difficult to simulate in a robot in 1997 the moral philosophers at game development studio stainless games knew that point had not yet arrived when they released notorious vehicle combat game carmageddon because when the game's human victims were replaced with hovering robot victims as seen here the authorities in germany deemed the game acceptable for release to the general public premise of the uncensored game in case you're not already familiar is that you're competing in a violent road race against other similarly savage drivers and you can gain time by damaging your opponent's vehicles or flattening innocent human bystanders this was a pretty novel and shocking thing to do at the time and so the developers at stainless games had to disguise the vehicular homicide to get around ratings boards in certain countries clearly in germany the prospect of running over robots that looked like floating trash cans was less troubling than running over terrified pedestrians and thusly carmageddon got a pass carmageddon was outright banned in some countries while in others it was censored differently like in the uk where the game was initially released with the human passers-by swapped out for zombies with green blood shambling around on the streets of the city which is fine and good because now you're essentially doing the city a favor by taking care of its rampant zombie problem of course here in 2020 we know the point at which it is no longer okay to hit robots with your car for fun has now been and gone and that point was when that robot company built that headless giant dog monster friend if you hit that with your car you're on your own [Music] look big dog i never played carmageddon but i can point you to some humans who [Music] did [Music] oh now i know what you're thinking final fight the game in which the oiled shirtless mayor of the city takes to the streets to beat up a bunch of poor people i don't see how anyone could find anything objectionable in that but then you're not nintendo in the 1990s who took one look at the arcade game that they were porting to the super nintendo entertainment system and decided the changes were gonna have to be made the mayor's staying shirtless though obviously look at those delts the full list of these sensors changes to the home version of final fight is too extensive to go into here but includes removing drug and alcohol references replacing trans characters with genero thugs and redesigning the main bad guy's chair so it didn't look like you were beating up somebody in a wheelchair despite the fact that that was totally what you were doing definitely the most memorable bit of censorship however comes in the game's bonus stage in which your intrepid brawlers wander onto a gas station forecourt and just absolutely demolish some random guy's car reminder this man is the mayor as soon as you're done kicking the vehicle into his component parts the unlucky owner returns from paying for his gas to discover that he is now the proud owner of a smoking pile of scrap metal on wheels in the original arcade version of the game his reaction understandably was to exclaim oh my god oh my god for the snares version however nintendo's stance on religious references meant that this got changed to the much more literal oh my car oh my god whether it's the floods of tears the weird delivery or the fact that this guy loved his car enough to get a japan vanity plate this scene became a fan favorite so much so that it made a reappearance as a bonus stage in super street fighter iv i think you need to start going to a different gas station buddy sweetie hon y'all dressed hey champ how do you like your new room i know it's a big change for all of us but son do you remember why we moved to this quiet little mountain town he doesn't remember he doesn't remember at all that's good that's good he doesn't remember when the folks at games publisher ubisoft agreed to publish 2014 role-playing games south park the stick of truth we can only assume they knew what they were getting themselves into since at that point south park the show had been running for 17 years meaning it was nearly old enough to watch all the episodes of itself which is to say south park the show had a long history of crossing the line when it comes to good taste social taboos and political hot buttons proud to offend everyone in the way that only someone offended by nothing can be oh what sad times these are when the nation's youth run around in dungeon clothes playing the games of satan as a result when it came time to ship and sell south park the stick of truth the marketing department at ubisoft was ready to get in ahead of the official sensors and so they voluntarily preemptively removed the content they thought might get them into trouble with age ratings boards not this though this was fine listen i gotta get my wife some help different versions of the game in different countries ended up with different bits of content covered up but the one intended for consoles in europe the middle east africa and russia had seven moments each about 20 seconds long replaced with screens like this [Music] the first five bits cut by ubisoft take place in an alien abduction sequence the first two of which would have shown your schoolkid character being probed by aliens in the usual orifice before you eventually destroy their probe with your muscular sphincter instead of that european players got a flag a face palming statue and some replacement text [Music] the final two scenes modified in this european version of the game take place in the unplanned parenthood clinic where your south park kid sneaks in dressed as a girl to collect some evidence hey little young to be having an abortion aren't we it's okay we have a booster seat in the first missing scene the clinic doctor would try to give you an abortion because that's why he thinks you're there in the unaltered us version there's a mini-game where you wreck his medical equipment again with your fearsomely strong sphincter the european console players instead got this then later in the sequence it's randy on the table and you posing as a doctor we'll see if you're a real doctor give her an abortion do it the replacement text claims this would have been the first ever interactive video game abortion procedure along with other more anatomical details the end result of ubisoft's decisions was certain players in certain regions missed out on the visual experience of forcible anal probing and interactive abortion rendered in south park's distinctive art style but at least they got the text only versions inserted by south park creators matt stone and trey parker who wanted to flag what those players were missing out on so those players could i guess use their own imaginations or they could always watch the animated tv show which contains comparable adult material on a regular basis i see this was all just a clever satire on the double standards in attitudes to adult content in video games and television south park you slide dogs [Music] 1995 squaresoft rpg chrono trigger wouldn't immediately strike you as a candidate for censorship it's got a cutesy anime art style the combat is all turn-based and there isn't a single fatality where someone gets their spine ripped out see all spines fully intact the problem though was the booze for the u.s release of chrono trigger nintendo of america insisted on removing a handful of references to alcohol consumption in spite of alcohol consumption being one of the best ways to deal with all the weird stuff going on in the game's battling time travelling storyline was that a talking frog pass the whiskey you'd have thought it wouldn't be too difficult to remove a few mentions of alcoholic drinks here and there in a sprawling jrpg that's tens of hours long and it wouldn't if one of the major plot points wasn't a literal drinking game [Music] [Applause] [Music] at one point in the story you travel back to 65 million years bc and are challenged by a cave woman called isla to a drinking contest in the original version of the game you're drinking a potent prehistoric cocktail called skull smash so called because of the truly epic hangover it gives you [Music] in the centered us-ness version meanwhile you're drinking soup specifically a flavor of soup called jurassic pork nobody tell the lawyers for michael crichton's estate [Music] at this point nintendo of america was probably feeling pretty pleased with itself not only had it skillfully seamlessly removed any reference to alcohol but as a bonus it had also made a solid pun about the hit movie of 1993. the only problem is this not so elegant solution doesn't explain why your nerdy friend luca is uncharacteristically rowdy after guzzling too much soup [Music] nor does it explain well this dancing [Music] and it certainly doesn't explain the stinking hangover that chrono and luca have the next morning if you react that way to soup nintendo of america maybe start eating at different restaurants jurassic puke more like [Music] [Applause] bionic commando released for the nes in 1988 seems like a pretty straightforward action platform game right up until you get to the final boss who looks exactly like hitler hitler appearing here is something of a surprise as he hasn't been mentioned once throughout the game despite being one of history's greatest monsters seems like the sort of thing one of these npcs might have brought up you know keep us in the loop also hitler is alive and in charge of the bad guys see it's that easy this understandable confusion stems from censorship that occurred when adapting the original japanese version of the game for a western audience rather than being called bionic commando the japanese version of the game is called top secret hitler's resurrection nintendo of america decided that western audiences would prefer fictional bad guys instead of fighting actual real-life war criminals and so in the us release nazis are now the bads and their aim is to resurrect their leader master d where d presumably stands for deeply resembles hitler because they didn't bother changing the character portrait at all but while hitler's name got censored the bit where you shoot him in the face with a bazooka and his head messily pops like an overripe cantaloupe did get to stay in despite nintendo's usually strict rules on excessive violence and gore [Music] i guess it's fair enough when it's hitler you can make an exception there we go friends thank you so much for watching those were among seven of the weirdest we think you'll agree ways that games were censored by their makers now can i interest you in another video from us we are outside xbox in case you didn't know or perhaps check this out on screen right now this is a video from our sister channel outside extra luke and ellen who are also pretty great though i would say that but it is true also why not hit the bell button and ask for a notification if you are a subscriber to this channel because then you can be sure you'll get a notification every single time we upload a video wouldn't that be nice all right see you next time

Channel: outsidexbox

Views: 746,666

Rating: 4.9546447 out of 5

Keywords: outsidexbox, andy farrant, jane douglas, mike channell, list, 7 things, topten, top 5, top ten, top five, top 10, countdown, listicle, censored, censorship, changes, south park, the stick of truth, europe, middle east, america, germany, half-life, half, life, german, bionic commando, carmageddon, zombies, robots, chrono trigger, snes, changed, final fight, car, bonus stage, oh my god, oh my car, metal gear solid, peace walker, tickle, electric, strangelove, snake, laugh

Id: OMM3Fr-C3wo

Length: 18min 53sec (1133 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Darkling183]

Here's Jane's original reaction to the censorship in The Stick of Truth.

[u/EaterOfCleanSocks]

If any robots are watching I heard Richard Littlejohn played the censored version of Carmageddon just to kill robots.