Let's post about Videogame Censorship!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Games > Let's post about Videogame Censorship!

WeedlordGoku69: Feb 12, 2015; by Cyrano4747

Scalding Coffee posted:

When Sony moved to California, it brought back the old censorship for a new decade. With their new guidelines, the PS4 versions of games are going to be censored in some way and the Xbox/Switch will show what Sonydon't.

Aren't they literally just censoring rape/sexual assault and pedophilia?

# ¿ Jan 18, 2020 22:12

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:37

WeedlordGoku69: Feb 12, 2015; by Cyrano4747

kirbysuperstar posted:

Well Nichegamer is a goobergraper site so I'm not going to click that poo poo

From the stuff you quoted - Criminal Girls and Mugen Souls did have stuff changed but they're also abysmal games with gross poo poo content and never should have been made or localised so there's no loss there unless you really feel the need to see pictures of small girls being "punished".

No idea on Danganronpa stuff, Disgaea's had some changes but most of those bled back through to re-releases for Japan anyway (mostly thinking of the torture horse in D4), NISA only did Neptunia 1 and I don't know what changed there, Witch and The Hundred Knight still had the witch turning her mother into a rat and having a horde of male rats go after her so I doubt much else changed there (it's also a poo poo game that shouldn't have seen the light of day).

yeah this is basically what I thought

they're only censoring stuff because they're 95% on Sony consoles and Sony America decided to go hard on censoring rapey and pedo-y nonsense, and everything that isn't along those lines (and even some stuff that is) is remaining untouched

so, in other words, nothing of value was lost

# ¿ Jan 24, 2020 19:33

WeedlordGoku69: Feb 12, 2015; by Cyrano4747

...! posted:

Even as adult content gets more and more violent, the Looney Tunes cartoons I grew up watching on Saturday mornings can barely be found anywhere other than DVD/blu-ray because they're now considered to be much too violent for children. The fact that they're now considered to be adult content means that almost no one is willing to air them anymore.

This is one of those situations that's actually a lot more complicated than it looks. It's not the violence that's keeping them off the air.

Firstly, to my understanding, only one channel (or network of channels) can actually have the rights to air them at any given time. For almost as long as I've been alive, this has been Turner, which meant that you could find them relatively easily on Cartoon Network (and later Boomerang) but nowhere else.

Secondly, from a technical perspective they're... not appealing. As a result of being old as hell, they're all 4:3 aspect ratio and only a fraction of them are available in HD (with transfer quality varying wildly across the remaining ones). Boomerang, of course, gives no fucks about this, because their entire reason for existence is to show classic cartoons that Turner has in their library, but there's more or less no way in hell Cartoon Network, which currently only runs HD material, will ever run them unless there's a large-scale restoration and remastering project for them.

Thirdly, I just went and looked up specific edits that have been made to the cartoons over the years, because there's a page that lists them all in exhaustive detail. As it turns out, the vast, vast majority of the violence edits were done by syndication networks in the early 90s, with Cartoon Network showing nearly all of the affected cartoons uncut (aside from some edits to jokes surrounding suicide, which tended to stay). However, CN made some of their own edits, and while they aren't for violence, well... I'll just quote some of them, and you'll probably get the picture.

quote:

"Ain't That Ducky" (Freleng; 1945):

CN: The scene in which Victor Moore fires his rifle at Daffy, causing bows to appear in Daffy's hair and giving to him the hairstyle of a stereotypical black girl, has been eliminated.

quote:

"Ali Baba Bound" (Clampett; 1940):

CN: Cartoon Network initially ran this short unedited. After the September 11 attacks, however, the scene referring to one of Ali Baba's men (who has a bomb strapped to his head) as a member of the "suicide squad" was omitted.

quote:

"Doggone Cats" (Davis; 1947):

CN: Removed from this cartoon is the part where a trash can cover lands on Wellington's head and Wellington does an impression of a Chinaman.

quote:

"I Like Mountain Music" (Harman and Ising; 1933):

CN: A short scene in which Zulu natives are seen flapping their oversized lips in tune with the music is gone.

quote:

"Porky's Baseball Broadcast" (Freleng; 1940):

CN: Just after Porky says, "The tickets are selling like hotcakes," and one sees the accompanying gag, there is another gag wherein he says, "The scalpers are havin' a big day." Coincident to this was a scene of Native Americans howling and chasing game-goers around with tomahawks. When first aired on Cartoon Network, this cartoon ran entirely unedited with the latter gag intact. Beginning around 2001, however, the "scalpers" gag was edited from the short.

quote:

"Southern Fried Rabbit" (Freleng; 1953):

CN: This scene is gone: To pass the Mason-Dixon Line guarded by Yosemite Sam, Bugs disguises himself as a black man playing a banjo and singing a sombre song. Sam allows him to pass into the South ("One of our boys"), until Bugs starts a rendition of "Yankee Doodle" and his "cover" is blown. Bugs then acts like a poor slave ("Please don't beat me, massa! Don't beat this tired old body!") and places a whip in Sam's hands, before then appearing as Abraham Lincoln to scold Sam ("What's this I hear about you whippin' slaves?"). The first instance of Yosemite Sam yelling, "Charge!" has now been removed, probably because of the Confederate flag which is seen at that point in the cartoon when it is watched uncut.

They're... a little racist. And by a little racist, I mean holy loving poo poo they're racist. Other than this, the only edits CN retained (or made themselves) were to suicide jokes and references to tobacco and alcohol, which are generally way more minor.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2020 06:57

WeedlordGoku69: Feb 12, 2015; by Cyrano4747

It's one more instance of Japan being the Bizarro US, basically. They had one or two high-profile murder cases around that time, and immediately responded by pretty much making gore in anything a hard no (aside from DVD/BD releases of anime and foreign movies).

Also, parent-teacher associations there have a WEIRD amount of power over anything that might even slightly be targeted at kids.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2020 05:20

WeedlordGoku69: Feb 12, 2015; by Cyrano4747

AnotherGamer posted:

At this point it's basically confirmed that they're doing it entirely on purpose: the next game in the series involves a case revolving entirely around rakugo, with the difference between various kinds of ramen noodles being a major plot point. You can read about the details yourself here, although there's some overall spoilers for the game, so take note if you haven't played the games yourself: http://www.capcom-unity.com/zeroobjections/blog/2016/10/01/one-grand-finale-weddings-rakugo-and-succession

I mean, realistically speaking, this doesn't seem like evidence they're doing it to gently caress with the localizers; they're just writing for a Japanese audience, who would be fairly familiar (if not necessarily intimately so) with rakugo and would understand the ramen thing, and probably just aren't considering at all that it's a bastard to translate.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2020 05:04

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Games > Let's post about Videogame Censorship!