5th July 2007, 4:15 PM
There are three things that were changed (as far as I can tell). Hard to call it censorship, but I guess it kinda is. The first thing of note is the music in the Fire Temple was changed because previously it had an Islam chant repeating. I myself didn't recognize it as Islam at all, but I know nothing of that particular religion. At any rate whatever they were saying, it sounded awesome and fit the mood of that temple nicely. The replacement had the tune but not the chanting and for me it lost a lot of it's impact. For my part I would have hired voice actors to sing the chanting in the same tone and style but using some imaginary hylian words or something.
Another aspect that was changed was the mirror shield. In the original, it was the image of a moon and a small star above the moon. It looked cool but more than that, it really looked cool seeing that symbol when you were shining light around a room. However, it highly resembles an islamic symbol (perhaps intentionally) and there were some complaints (not sure what's to complain about really, except I guess maybe they thought using that symbol on a shield of ultimate justice was somehow an insult). Anyway, Nintendo replaced it with a rather boring looking symbol (in my opinion). This symbol did get reused in Wind Waker as the pirate's ship symbol though.
The last change is blood color. Let me say right now that I consider altering blood COLOR about as effective a censorship method as blurring out a middle finger on TV. Everyone on the planet, every single kid, knows exactly what you just blurred. Why did you blur it? What aspect of a raised middle finger is really all that obscene, AT ALL? Sure it's an insult in our society, but it's something everyone sees anyway so blurring it is kinda not protecting ANYONE, from ANYTHING. As for blood color, I mean, seriously, what is the lesson here? Violence is okay so long as the creature you are wounding is sufficiently unlike us? Things that have blue or green blood are "okay" to kill? I fear first contact with vulcans if this is the lesson we are teaching our kids. It's bleeding no matter what, it's really no less shocking. On the other hand, when it's NOT censorship but an artistic choice, it's pretty interesting, like Grunts and their cyan blood, bright and shiny. Back to the point, basically anything that previuosly bled red blood was changed to some other color. That means Ganondorf looks more like he's throwing up than coughing up blood. Honestly I really don't know why they bothered changing that from the original. Again, what good does it really do?
Well there ya go. Also in later versions various glitches were removed (though I'm pretty sure they all still have the "once you grow up, you can't get the last deku seed capacity upgrade, giving you a window between getting the ocarina of time and actually playing the ocarina of time at the temple of time to use that mask of truth on that mask judging group and get that upgrade). I still prefer the original gold. I suspect that'll net a pretty penny online.
Another aspect that was changed was the mirror shield. In the original, it was the image of a moon and a small star above the moon. It looked cool but more than that, it really looked cool seeing that symbol when you were shining light around a room. However, it highly resembles an islamic symbol (perhaps intentionally) and there were some complaints (not sure what's to complain about really, except I guess maybe they thought using that symbol on a shield of ultimate justice was somehow an insult). Anyway, Nintendo replaced it with a rather boring looking symbol (in my opinion). This symbol did get reused in Wind Waker as the pirate's ship symbol though.
The last change is blood color. Let me say right now that I consider altering blood COLOR about as effective a censorship method as blurring out a middle finger on TV. Everyone on the planet, every single kid, knows exactly what you just blurred. Why did you blur it? What aspect of a raised middle finger is really all that obscene, AT ALL? Sure it's an insult in our society, but it's something everyone sees anyway so blurring it is kinda not protecting ANYONE, from ANYTHING. As for blood color, I mean, seriously, what is the lesson here? Violence is okay so long as the creature you are wounding is sufficiently unlike us? Things that have blue or green blood are "okay" to kill? I fear first contact with vulcans if this is the lesson we are teaching our kids. It's bleeding no matter what, it's really no less shocking. On the other hand, when it's NOT censorship but an artistic choice, it's pretty interesting, like Grunts and their cyan blood, bright and shiny. Back to the point, basically anything that previuosly bled red blood was changed to some other color. That means Ganondorf looks more like he's throwing up than coughing up blood. Honestly I really don't know why they bothered changing that from the original. Again, what good does it really do?
Well there ya go. Also in later versions various glitches were removed (though I'm pretty sure they all still have the "once you grow up, you can't get the last deku seed capacity upgrade, giving you a window between getting the ocarina of time and actually playing the ocarina of time at the temple of time to use that mask of truth on that mask judging group and get that upgrade). I still prefer the original gold. I suspect that'll net a pretty penny online.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)