Post subject: Interesting essay about the making of NES Maniac Mansion
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The making of the NES conversion of Maniac Mansion vs. Nintendo's censorship policies: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/nintendo.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=
Post subject: Re: Interesting essay about the making of NES Maniac Mansion
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nesrocks
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That guy is playing dumb. I mean, "NES Scumm" how come he didn't get it? Nintendo was trying to make products that don't contain bad things, it's a valid policy when you're talking about something for kids.
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Well you must look at the time period. mortal combat arcade was considered super violent and graphic. (heh) of course nintendo wanted to cover their asses. Though some things that they censored did not make any sense.
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Nintendo was so odd with it's censorship. "Holy Water" had to become "Fire Bomb" in Castlevania, and yet a rather graphic head asploding in Bionic Commando comes soon after the mention of a "naughty word"; how both escaped Nintendo's censors is beyond me.
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Ferret Warlord wrote:
a rather graphic head asploding in Bionic Commando comes soon after the mention of a "naughty word"
That naughty word being cockpit? As far as I know, that is perfectly normal naval vocabulary. Right about the head though.
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I think he's talking about "You Damn Fool!"
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Interesting there is no mention of nuking the hampster. I would have thought that would have had some backlash on the development team at some point.
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ledauphinbenoit wrote:
Interesting there is no mention of nuking the hampster.
There is, in the article.
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Nintendo had weird censorship policies in the old days. The strangest was the removal of religious references. Then came ActRaiser, which the sole point of the game IS religion! So you're not God, you're "The Master". You're not fighting Satan, you're fighting Tanzara. But yes, even with all that, the overall theme is still there...and the game is so saturated that the censorship almost comes off as funny. ActRaiser 2 is just as bad, since it's based off of the 7 great sins, and if I recall correctly, is based off of the book Paradise Lost (which for those that don't know, Paradise Lost is a religious story about the great war between God and Satan). BTW, this is also why Final Fantasy doesn't have the spell Holy - it's While or Pearl. Censorship sucks. Really.
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FODA wrote:
Nintendo was trying to make products that don't contain bad things, it's a valid policy when you're talking about something for kids.
Yeah. Exploding heads are ok, but if they see a bare tit... Oh my gosh!
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I read this article a while ago at Douglas Crockford's site (http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/maniac.html). There's a few more "naughty"-ish quotes mentioned at the end, that are quite amusing (particularly Nurse Edna).