12th January 2003, 10:46 PM
I thought it was pretty clear that I was referring to Austrailia as not being in Europe, but being in the same bad situation games-wise as Europe is... PAL and government censorship makes for a bad combonation.
German game censorship is kinda strange... blood is almost totally not allowed... as is killing humans. So many games make the enemies zombies (Carmageddon), turn the blood green, or just don't release in Germany. Nudity? Not really an issue... of course here its the opposite, with violence and gore being fine but nudity (re: BMX XXX... not the game itsself, but the media reaction...) isn't ok.
I don't know as much about Australias, except that GTA3 had trouble getting accepted for release there, and I think they had to tone down some stuff to let Australia's government let them release it there.
It would be awful to have stuff like that here... sure, the game companies themselves kill most ideas that would push the boundaries, but we do get some games that in places like those we'd never see... not in the same form, anyway...
Oh, and yeah, I'll be intrested to see how well Metroid Prime sells in Japan... not that well, I expect. As for Zelda here, it should do pretty well, but those graphics will certainly reduce sales from what they could have been otherwise.
German game censorship is kinda strange... blood is almost totally not allowed... as is killing humans. So many games make the enemies zombies (Carmageddon), turn the blood green, or just don't release in Germany. Nudity? Not really an issue... of course here its the opposite, with violence and gore being fine but nudity (re: BMX XXX... not the game itsself, but the media reaction...) isn't ok.
I don't know as much about Australias, except that GTA3 had trouble getting accepted for release there, and I think they had to tone down some stuff to let Australia's government let them release it there.
It would be awful to have stuff like that here... sure, the game companies themselves kill most ideas that would push the boundaries, but we do get some games that in places like those we'd never see... not in the same form, anyway...
Oh, and yeah, I'll be intrested to see how well Metroid Prime sells in Japan... not that well, I expect. As for Zelda here, it should do pretty well, but those graphics will certainly reduce sales from what they could have been otherwise.