video games are known for pushing the boundaries but sometimes the developers they they go a little
too far tons of games have actually been quietly censored during development be it because the
team didn't want to offend people or because they were trying to get a lower rating from the esrb
and in this video we are going to take a look at some of the most popular games that you probably
had no idea had to be edited some of these are going to be pretty major changes while others will
be tiny little minuscule things that you probably never noticed at all so let me know if you've
actually played any of these drop a like make sure you're subscribed to the channel welcome everybody
and we start off with dance dance revolution no i'm not kidding here ddrs one of the most
inoffensive games ever made and just about every person to ever live has probably played it the
soundtracks in these games are pretty over the top and energetic which is perfect for the colorful
goofy tone they're going for but did you know the original ddr actually had to be censored for its
original north american release the developers obviously wanted the game to be rated e for
everyone in order to reach the broadest possible audience but there was two songs that actually
had to have all their lyrics removed in order to achieve this the songs were after the game of love
and injection of love they were seen as too raunchy for a family-friendly game and had to
be turned into instrumentals in order to maintain that low rating and interestingly enough this
isn't the only game on the list that had to be censored because of its soundtrack metroid prime
the trilogy now the first three metroid primes they were smash hits they were despite not having
much violence or adult content i mean imagine that however when the metroid prime trilogy collection
was released on the wii in 2009 nintendo actually required a few tweaks in order to make it
family friendly which is kind of weird choices the games are already t for team but i digress the
only edits i can find take place in metroid prime 3 and the sections were for admiral dane says
a bad word which wasn't really a bad word but whatever the trilogy collection version replaces
it with the word no honestly i'm not entirely sure what nintendo why they thought it was necessary
like i said all three games were rated t for teen and it's not like that word is a super bad word by
modern standards but i mean whatever if you played metroid prime 3 via the trilogy collection some of
the dialogue is actually censored even though i'm willing to bet you never even noticed that word in
the original kingdom hearts 2 yes i'm serious you probably didn't expect to see a disney-based game
on this list but this one actually got in some trouble with the esrb when it was originally
submitted for review as most of you know kh2 was released with e for everyone as their rating but
that almost wasn't the case because in the original version of the game during the pirates
of the caribbean section there was a recreation of the scene where will turner threatens to kill
himself which would doom the members of the black pearl to live with their curse forever
now in the movie will holds a pistol to his head but in kingdom hearts 2 the developers were forced
to move the pistol to his side in order to avoid that t rating the hercules section of
the game also had to be pretty heavily censored as the original version featured a lot more blood
during the fight with hydra now square enix was eventually able to edit the game back down to e
for everyone but part of me wishes there was a director's cut of kingdom hearts 2 with all the
original elements intact i mean disney got away with blood and hercules and that movie was rated g
so i don't really see what the problem is legend of zelda link's awakening the remake now the
original was a super underrated entry in the franchise so naturally nintendo remade it in 2019.
the new version of this classic zelda title it featured a very unique 3d art style and somewhat
overhaul gameplay but it stuck pretty close to the originals roots in most regards however
one thing that had to be changed from the original to this one was a certain quest involving a
mermaid in the original japanese version there is a part of the game where a mermaid asks you to
help her find her bra and if you dive underwater nearby her she'll yell at you for being a pervert
now this interaction was actually censored in the international version of the original game
when it came time to make remake or remake it nintendo just changed this part all together
they replaced the brawl with a necklace and they adjusted the dialogue so now that you know that
link's awakening originally had a topless mermaid for some reason you you're better off i don't know
the last of us post-apocalyptic game featured extreme violence and pretty
frequent dismemberment which isn't really anything new in the world of video games but
you'd probably be shocked at how much had to be cut down from this brutal experience depending
on where you bought this game different levels of censorship had to be employed in order to get the
game on the store shelves in europe the game's multiplayer mode was censored as to not include
dismemberment or decapitation as this would have been seen as too violent for interactions between
real people similarly in the japanese version of the game dismemberment isn't possible at all in
multiplayer or story mode and there are certain cutscenes where the camera angle was cropped so
you couldn't see the graphic stuff going on i mean the last of us is a pretty brutal game
but now you know the north american version is actually way more brutal than some of the others
super mario rpg developed by square and released by supernatural before the super nintendo back in
96 it was a strange change of pace for the famous plumber but it worked the game is actually fun it
holds up compared to other rpgs as well that time but there's actually a key difference between the
original japanese version and the international like many rpgs the winning squad will do some
victory poses after a combat encounter and bowser well they had him doing what appeared to be a fist
pump however the gesture was very similar to the up yours gesture that was considered super
offensive in certain western cultures back in the 90s way more offensive than it is today and after
it was pointed out well nintendo edited bowser's victory pose for international release but if you
look up the footage of the original japanese version you could get yourself a pretty funny
screenshot of the koopa king fire emblem awakening released in japan in 2012 and internationally the
following year it was seen as many by to be the best in that franchise and it currently holds
the highest metacritic rating of any game in the series now granted metacritic doesn't mean
a lot these days but it's a fantastic game even if the north american version was censored
during the summer scramble story a character named tharha in the changing room and well
it is in a changing room and a north american version she's covered by a curtain however in
the original japanese release the curtain isn't there you can see her the edit was made for the
north american release but interestingly the pal version is completely unedited which is bizarre
when it comes to violence and gore the japanese and european versions of games are usually toned
down from their north american counterparts but in this case it was the other way around
uncharted drake's fortune we already talked about naughty dog well one game from naughty dog here's
this one's more puzzling uncharted has never been a super graphic game in fact it's never been rated
higher than t for teen in the united states but the original game had to be heavily censored for
release in japan it was because of the violence which probably has you scratching your head
if you played uncharted 1 on the japanese region playstation 3 console there's zero blood you could
choose somebody point blank 50 times and they'll never show a single sign of bleeding i'm honestly
not sure why this change was made because it's not like uncharted 1 was a super bloody game anyway
and there's countless japanese games that are way more violent didn't have to be censored but
i guess the ratings boards had their reasons perhaps because uncharted is more realistic or
maybe they thought the game was glorifying violence i have no idea that's a confusing one
call of duty black ops now black ops was a pretty dark game featured a lot of blood and
a lot of gore so it might be surprising to hear that it was actually originally going to be worse
in the multiplayer mode there's a perk called second chance in which your character drops to
the ground before dying and uses their pistol while waiting for a teammate to revive them
if nobody comes to rescue that player they'll just die and respawn but you could hold the x
button automatically die and start over but in the older builds of the game holding the
x button would actually cause your character to take their pistol and shoot themselves now
because of the esrb strict guidelines regarding uh things like that in video games this actually
would have gotten black ops 1 an adults only rating which would have put a serious dent in the
sales due to the fact that most major retailers refused to sell anything higher than rated m
treyarch removed that animation in order to get it down in m rating but if you dig around the game
files you can actually see it dave miura freestyle bmx if you grew up in the 90s or the early 2000s
you probably played a lot of action sports games starring tony hawk and dave meera these
games usually had great soundtracks with tons of popular rock and rap songs and since the tony
hawk games were rated t for teen soundtracks were almost entirely unedited but dave mira freestyle
he was trying to reach a broader audience by shooting for a lower rating and because of this
there was one song in the game that actually had to be edited in order to maintain the e rating
i'll give you guys a minute i'll give you five seconds to guess here we go did you guess it's
what i've got by sublime now because you if you guessed that well you're correct it features
one f-bomb that was bizarrely not edited out of the game in the first place and that forced of
course them to edit out that and the e-rating was restored after that but i have to ask did the esrb
ever listen to the song like many other sublime songs what i've got features plenty of swearing
and drug references but the only one that had to be cut was that one f-bomb and the e-rating
was restored kind of weird shadow the hedgehog now this is probably the edgiest game of all time but
did you guys know it was originally going to be even edgier this bizarre third person shooter was
it was a hedgehog running around killing aliens and humans in an attempt to figure out his true
past and depending on the decisions you make throughout the game the story actually changes
pretty drastically now originally sega wanted the game to be rated t for teen featured quite a bit
of realistic blood effects but in the mid-2000s dsrb introduced a new rating in between e and t
sega realized shadow the hedgehog would probably be better off with that rating instead in order
the blood effects to be toned down in a few cut scenes to be cut out entirely in order to keep
it from getting too dark the release version of shadow the hedgehog it featured some crappy
looking blood effects and the alien enemies now have bright green and yellow blood instead of
red and this was enough to get to their desired e10 rating part of me wishes it was possible to
see the original version of the game because i would get a weird kick out of playing a sonic
game with tons of blood in it i mean crank up the edgy factor to 11. tony hawk's pro skater
now i said the pro skater games usually don't censor their lyrics because they're rated t
that wasn't always the case in this entry it's kind of strange the original tony hawk's pro
skater was rated e for everyone but in order to achieve that the developers had to cut out
the blood and make some of the songs instrumentals in order to avoid naughty language i mean perhaps
the weirdest case of the censorship is the song superman by scott punk band uh goldfinger now
i'm sure you've heard the song it's good but the version you heard in pro skater 1 is actually
censored why i don't know there's no swear words in the song and honestly i don't think there's
anything even remotely inappropriate so why did it get the the band or the sensor was there a secret
version of the song that had swear words was this a personal dig at the members of goldfinger is it
all the giant conspiracy no it's not but i don't i don't know it doesn't make sense earthbound
one of the most underrated rpgs of all time earthbound or mother 2 if you're playing in japan
was released in japan in 94. north america 95 both for the super nintendo
the game features young children going around doing quests and the stories mature features
some pretty dark subject matter and in order to get the game to the widest possible audience
nintendo decided to heavily censor the north american version removing all references to
death or corporal punishment and altering the dialogue and they successfully got the t14 rating
down to a ka rating that's almost exclusively used for educational games which okay but you
guys know what's a little ironic when earthbound was re-released on the wii u virtual console in
2013 the rating was bumped back up to t14 despite all the censorship still being there so no idea
how the esrb justified that one and then again they don't really explain what they do so yeah
street fighter 5 did you know street fighter 5 was almost rated m seriously and the reason
probably isn't what you thought street fighter has never been a super inappropriate franchise
and i'm pretty sure it's never even had blood during the gameplay but one thing that it has
is skimpy outfits i'm not saying there's anything wrong with it whatever it is it's all over the
top over exaggerated but according to the esrb it went too far according to the records the
original version of the game had an animation where the character rainbow mika would slap her
own butt now for one reason or another esrb said absolutely not it forced capcom to remove this
animation from the north american version of the game or else it would be slap with an m for mature
rating everything else out the game completely fine for the t for teen i guess but mika had to
be toned down that's where the line was drawn in the last one today super smash bros melee let's
close out the video with one of the most bizarre and pointless edits that i could find super smash
bros dropped in 2001 on the gamecube it was rated t for teen okay all good but interestingly enough
nintendo actually sends her the iconic dk rap in order to make it more appropriate despite the fact
the game was rated t for teen and despite the fact that the uncensored version of the dk rap
originated from donkey kong 64 which was a game that was ready to eat there's a part in the song
where you can hear the word help like i said this one singular word was perfectly fine in donkey
kong 64 however nintendo insisted on removing the word replacing it with the word heck when
the song was brought back for super smash bros melee despite the fact that melee was rated for
teen meaning this censorship literally did nothing i wouldn't think of a joke to close the video out
but honestly i'm just too confused to make one so there you go those are games that got censored
that you probably didn't even know it happened if you guys enjoyed drop a like and i'll see you soon
you