Like many video game series, the Metal Gear franchise is no stranger to censorship.
Changes have been made to the titles all over the world, however, in today's video we'll
be taking a look at the times this affected only the Japanese region - this being, of
course, the game's home country and home country of series creator, Hideo Kojima.
The Japanese video game industry is highly influenced by the CERO rating system, which
is the rating system in Japan that's comparable to America's ESRB.
CERO can be pretty strict when it comes to, amongst other things, blood and violence.
This is something Kojima tended to be very vocal about whenever it affected one of his
new releases.
The first time that a game had have changes made, only in Japan, was with Metal Gear Solid:
Peace Walker.
This is something Kojima confirmed during development over on his Twitter account.
In his message he explained that leaving the scene in would have pushed the game up to
a 17+ rating, instead of its 15 rating.
He wasn't at all happy about this, stating: "There's tolerance for fantasy games, but
for games where you show war or real violence between people, you apparently can't complain
about anything.
With this, it seems impossible to communicate something through games."
The affected scene wasn't known at the time, but when release day came around it was discovered
to have been the scene which shows Big Boss being tortured with electricity.
How did the Japanese version change this?
By changing it to tickling torture instead...
As you can see here, the Japanese dialogue was also altered to reflect the change.
Stangelove says that the rod is a "laughing rod" and that "the electrical charge that
is emitted will directly stimulate [his] ascending nerve pathways".
"Tickling for answers, how original", Big Boss replies.
The next game to face censorship issues in Japan was 2013's Metal Gear Rising.
Kojima didn't comment on this one, but this could be due to the fact he was much less
involved in the title's development.
The censorship issues were in relation to the hack and slash title's heavy use of red
blood.
This saw the Japanese version on the right replace the blood with white blood instead.
Metal Gear veterans will be familiar with seeing white blood, with this being the colour
of Raiden's blood in Metal Gear Solid 4 worldwide.
In the Metal Gear universe, 'white blood' is a type of artificial blood initially developed
for military use.
However, in Metal Gear canon, white blood had become outdated by the time of the events
of Metal Gear Rising.
As the Metal Gear Wikia explains, Raiden now uses a more advanced blood that's red in colour
and this is also confirmed in-game in a codec conversation with Doktor.
For the Japanese version though, they had to sacrifice this element due to the CERO
rating system.
The next game to have edits was Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes in 2014.
Kojima, again, spoke out against the changes prior to release.
Speaking to the Japanese magazine Famitsu, it was reported that Kojima was very unhappy
about this and he said that CERO "understood nothing of the symbolic meaning of this scene".
The scene in question shows Paz, a young women, having a bomb surgically removed from her
stomach.
The English version is on the left, whereas the Japanese version is on the right and,
as shown, multiple changes were made to the camera angle to hide the bomb being removed
and the large open wound in her stomach.
You can also see various internal organs in the English version on the left and these
were either obscured by the camera angle, or the graphics were changed so that they
no longer appear.
Around this time, Kojima made some other statements regarding video games tackling sensitive subjects,
which could also be seen as pretty relevant.
Here he said: "If we don't cross that line, if we don't
make attempts to express what we really want to express, games will only be games."
"If we don't try to go beyond that, we won't be able to achieve what movies or novels have
achieved.
I didn't want to stay away from these things that could be considered sensitive.
If we don't go that far, games will never be considered as culture."
Unfortunately for Kojima, his next and last game in the Metal Gear series, Metal Gear
Solid V: The Phantom Pain ,would also face issues in Japan.
Kojima didn't speak too much about it though this time, with him only tweeting out to inform
people that only one scene had to be changed in the Japanese version and this was, again,
due to violence.
The censored scene shouldn't be too surprising considering it's very similar in nature to
the altered scene in Ground Zeroes.
In one of Big Boss' hallucinations, Paz is depicted as reliving her experiences with
the bomb in Mother Base's medical bay.
She is shown pulling at the bomb inside of her stomach and in the English version on
the left, you can clearly see intestines coming out of her wound.
The Japanese version didn't remove any blood but the sight of the intestines was what proved
to be too much and so you won't be able to see the internal organs over in Japan.
But, with that is now the last Metal Gear from series creator Hideo Kojiima and, following
the split from Konami, Kojima's Metal Gear is no more.
Konami is set on continuing the franchise though and the new game, Metal Gear Survive,
which is a zombie game with minimal story, has had no censorship changes found.
As mentioned earlier in the video though, it's not just Japan that's had to have changes
made to the series but also other regions around the world.
This is, of course, something that Censored Gaming wants to take a look at one day and
so if this and other censorship-related videos are something that you are interested in,
please consider hitting that subscribe button and, until next time, thank you for watching.