As Censored Gaming has spoke about in the past, sometimes censorship is decided not
be rating systems or governments, but the company's behind the platforms that games
are released for.
An example of this can be seen when comparing the Nintendo 64 release of Conker's Bad Fur
Day and its Xbox remake Live and Reloaded.
In the Xbox version, many instances of bad language were removed and replaced with beeped
out dialogue.
What makes this especially notable is how the original Conker set out to push boundaries
with its very adult themes, yet, as Censored Gaming confirmed by speaking to the original
developers, Microsoft personally told the devs to tone the language down for the remake.
This is far from the only example of this sort of thing though and it's something that
all major platform owners have at least some experience in doing.
So, without further ado, here are 5 Video Games Sony Forced To Be Censored.
Number 1, Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time: During the 2000s, Ratchet & Clank was one
of PlayStation's biggest platforming mascots and the series has seen many games released
for various PlayStation systems - such as PS2, PSP and PS3.
The franchise is quite family friendly at heart, but also sometimes likes to add a bit
of innuendo and other adult jokes from time to time for older audiences.
Examples of this can be seen with the game's names, which, whilst at first glance may seem
quite innocent, if you take a closer look you'll realise that most of the game's subtitles
are forms of suggestive innuendos.
Going Commando, Up Your Arsenal, Size Matters, Full Frontal Assault... starting to notice
the trend?
Interestingly most of these names were changed when released for European markets, which
is something Censored Gaming has covered in the past.
It's not known why the most of the innuendo filled names were altered in Europe, however,
what we do know is that for A Crack in Time the name had to be changed worldwide and that
this was under direct orders from Sony.
The info was revealed in a podcast back in 2009, where developers Insomniac explained
how they wanted to call the game "Clock Blockers" instead.
Clock Blockers was chosen as it would have carried on with the tradition of suggestive
titles, whilst also representing the game's time travelling theme.
Insomniac revealed that Sony wouldn't allow them to do this, though, as Sony found it
too rude and so it had to be changed.
Furthermore, whilst perhaps only a coincidence, most of the game released following A Crack
In Time also had much less innuendo-filled names.
But, moving on to number 2, BMX XXX.
Whilst perhaps seeming a little silly now we're in 2017, back in 2002, this game was
very controversial.
The game is quite similar to the Tony Hawk franchise, except it involves BMXs and contains
plenty of nudity and adult humour.
BMX XXX was heavily marketed based upon its sex appeal and generated a lot of publicity
and controversy.
Many US retail chains refused to sell the title and over in Australia it was even completely
banned.
The ESRB, however, saw the game fit for an M rating and not the higher Adults Only classification.
But, despite this, the US branch of Sony announced that they would not be allowing the title
to be released in its original form on their PlayStation 2 system.
Surprisingly though, the European Sony branch didn't have any issues with it, and neither
did Microsoft or Nintendo.
Speaking about the situation to IGN, a Sony representative explained:
"We asked Acclaim to cover the topless females.
We worked with Acclaim on this game, and none of the changes that we asked to be made affected
gameplay.
We didn't feel that the topless nudity fundamentally added to the gameplay experience, and it presented
an issue with regard to our global platform strategy and our guidelines.
And because we have invested so much, and have built in so much equity to our system,
we feel we need to protect that."
So, due to Sony's decision, the US PS2 version has various changes, including removing the
breast size slider from the Rider Editor menu, adding censor bars to any nudity in the strip
club movies, as well as drastically reducing them in length, plus making it no longer possible
to customize your rider's appearance so that they are fully topless.
Next up is number 3, Policenauts.
Similar to BMX XXX, here Sony stepped in and wouldn't allow Policenauts to be released
for their system unless the devs made some changes.
Policenauts is a cult classic visual novel adventure game, created by Metal Gear Solid's
Hideo Kojima.
The game was originally released in 1994 for the NEC PC-98 system and was then later ported
to the 3DO, the PlayStation as well as the Sega Saturn.
Now, as is usually the case with Kojima's titles, Policenauts likes to mix in humour
and other occasional quirkiness with the game's more serious themes.
This approach led to the creation of a 'breast touching' system - where you could, at will,
choose to feel the breasts of many of the female characters within Policenauts' world.
Doing so would lead to a breast bouncing animation and unique dialogue from the characters involved.
None of the other platforms had any issues with this mechanic and there was no controversy
or anything over in Japan because of it.
However, when it came time for Policenauts' PlayStation release, Sony's company president
personally informed Kojima that he will have to tone this down.
The folks at Junker HQ have translated a few quotes from Kojima of him discussing the issue
and Kojima describes them getting into an "intense dispute over the breast touching".
Kojima was not at all happy about this and his response was something like "Oh gimme
a break!"
So, due to Sony stepping in, the PlayStation release not only drastically reduced the amount
of times that you could do this, but it also toned down the breast bounce animation, as
shown here, with the PlayStation version on the left and the Saturn version on the right.
Number 4, Bombing Bastards.
Bombing Bastards is a Bomberman-inspired game released on the Wii U and Steam back in 2014.
As you probably noticed, the game's name is quite eye catching and neither Nintendo or
Valve had any issues with the word Bastards being contained in the game's name.
When it came time for its PS4 and Vita release, though, Sony did and told the developers that
they would need to change the name.
So, due to this, the game had to be renamed to Bombing Busters instead.
You can see the Nintendo store page here, listing the title with the Bombing Bastards
name, as well as the Steam page here.
And finally number 5, Twisted Metal.
The PS3 release of Twisted Metal had various changes over in Europe and developers Eat
Sleep Play have confirmed that this was under orders from Sony - Twisted Metal's publisher,
as well as the platform owner.
Series director, David Jaffe, spoke about the decision over on NeoGAF and didn't hold
back at all when it came to his views on the matter.
To quote: "...come on, you think I wanted to change
content?
FUCK no- for a bunch of reasons 'fuck no'.
But it ain't my game (Sony owns the IP and funded it) and certain countries have- obviously-
much stricter guidelines.
AND since Twisted Metal has never been a big seller outside of America, I guess it didn't
make sense to have a whole bunch of different discs for each country (i.e.
Germany gets disc ver. 3, UK gets disc ver 6, etc.)"
He also later makes it clear that he hates cuts being made to the original versions of
games.
Twisted Metal's changes include cutting to black during quite a few violent moments in
cutscenes, as changes to two of the vehicles' weapons.
In the US version exists a weapon that sees a screaming human on a stretcher being used
as a missile, as well as a similar weapon except it's a screaming human in a coffin.
For both of these, the screaming humans were replaced by corpses instead.
As David mentioned, it is clear that Sony felt it would be more economical to only release
one version of the game over in Europe, rather than multiple versions for different European
territories.
It is likely that a stricter region such as Germany may have needed this censorship for
it to be released and so the whole of Europe ended up being affected.
This is not that common of a practise in regards to handling European censorship and usually
places like Germany will receive their own edited versions.
However, Sony actually has a pretty lengthy history of handling European releases this
way.
One notable case is 2013's The Last Of Us, which toned down the violence during multiplayer
in all European versions and then later made the same changes for the PS4 Remastered release.
Another example is God of War Ascension, which had a few changes made to violent cutscenes,
again, in the whole of Europe.
It's important to stress, though, that Sony are not alone in making decisions like these
and that all major companies have done similar things in the past.
Censored Gaming will undoubtedly make videos in the future looking at past examples from
other companies, such as Microsoft.
And, as always, will also continue to keep you up to date on the latest news and goings
on in the world of censorship.
If that's something that you might be interested in checking out then please make sure to hit
that subscribe button and leave a comment below and, until next time, thank you for
watching.