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Like we recently reported, the latest game in the Tomb Raider series, Shadow Of The Tomb
Raider, had to have some changes to the Japanese version to tone down scenes of violence.
The reason for this was that, despite the game receiving the max Z rating in Japan,
meaning 18 years and over, the Japanese rating system still has various rules about what
you can and can't show in games.
This isn't the only time the series has seen changes around the world though and today
we'll be taking a look at some of the different ways Tomb Raider has been changed in different
countries.
Shadow Of The Tomb Raider isn't the first time that censorship has been made to the
Japanese version.
The game was published in Japan by Square Enix and Square will normally notify Japanese
gamers of any censorship related changes prior to a game's release over on their blog.
They did this with Shadow Of The Tomb Raider but also Tomb Raider (2013) - where they informed
buyers that some human corpses as well as animal corpses of deer had to be toned down.
The Japanese version of the Tomb Raider games have actually had a number of changes over
the years though.
For many years, all Tomb Raider games were made drastically easier for the Japanese market,
with changes including enemies being made weaker, medipacks healing much more health
and some traps being removed.
There's never been any explanation for why this was, but it's possible that this was
due to feeling that Japanese gamers may be less used to the 3D action games that were
starting to become popular when Tomb Raider originally debuted.
This reasoning has seen other 3D games from around this time, such as Spyro The Dragon,
also being made much easier for the Japanese market, which is something Censored Gaming
has previously made a video on.
In fact, for the third game in the series, Tomb Raider III, Japanese gamers received
a very unique version of the game containing 2 discs rather than just 1.
The first disc was the usual Japanese localization with all of the difficulty changes to make
the game easier.
The second disc however was based around the version of the game released in the rest of
the world containing much harder difficulty.
It's possible that the 2nd disc wasn't very popular however, as this approach wouldn't
be repeated in any of the later games, which just contained the Japanese easy versions.
There's also been some interesting differences in the Japanese titles.
The first game for instance was called Tomb "Raiders" rather than Tomb "Raider".
This may have been a mistake however, as none of the later games contained this discrepancy.
The sixth game, Angel Of Darkness, also had a curious naming change with it being called
Tomb Raider: Utsukushiki Tōbōsha, which translates into Tomb Raider: The Beautiful
Fugitive.
As hinted by this, Tomb Raider was heavily marketed in Japan based on Lara's physical
attractiveness, like in Western countries.
Back to the series censorship, the German versions of some games also had to have censorship
changes made, due to the stricter limits of the German USK rating system.
As reported by the German website, Schnittberichte, both Tomb Raider III and Tomb Raider: The
Angel Of Darkness had to have edits to the games' bloodshed and were rated ages 16+ and
12+ respectively.
For Tomb Raider III, all of the game's uses of blood - both for enemies, as well as Lara
herself, were changed to a purple colour, rather than the usual red.
For the Angel of Darkness, on the other hand, all blood was completely removed from the
game.
The Arabic localization of Rise Of The Tomb Raider also had a censorship-related change
due to stances on religion in some of this region's countries.
Multiple gamers have reported on various platforms that the dialogue in Rise Of The Tomb Raider
was heavily edited to remove the term "prophet".
This reportedly saw things like the voice acting cutting out in places and the term
"prophet" being replaced by the term "leader" in the subtitles.
Needless to say, lots of other countries' localizations of the Tomb Raider games have
come with their own language's voice acting over the years.
For instance, as well as the English and Arabic dubs, there have been dubs into Portuguese,
Spanish, Russian, Polish, Italian, French and more.
And also, as we've already gone into the German and Japanese versions - here's a brief comparison
of Lara's voice acting in these regions.
First up is the English version...
And then the German...
And then the Japanese release...
What do think about these changes made to the Tomb Raider games in other countries?
Please let us know your thoughts in the comments below and consider subscribing to the channel
to see more videos on how video games and other media are changed around the world.
Until next time, thank you for watching!