In the German version of Carmageddon, the pedestrians a player ran down for points were robots. PC Player explained why in its review in September 1997: the change was made “for sales reasons”. “Better to give offence with a lifeless tin pal than with the BPjS,” it wrote, “thought the publisher SCI.” The BPjS was the German federal office that could put a game on an index of works harmful to young people, and an indexed game could not be advertised or put on display. No authority had ordered the robots. The publisher had changed its own game to avoid a ruling that might never have come.
Most regional changes worked like that. They were made by publishers and console makers, ahead of time, to protect sales in a market with its own laws or its own sensitivities. The result was that players in different countries often bought noticeably different versions of the same game.
Fast facts
- Who made the changes: usually the publisher or the console maker, before release; rarely a court or government.
- Nintendo of America: content guidelines for licensees from the NES era, which ruled out excessive blood and, at first, religious symbols.
- Germany: the federal review office, the BPjS (from 1954), could index games; it became the BPjM in 2003 and the Bundeszentrale für Kinder- und Jugendmedienschutz (BzKJ) in 2021.
- Typical changes: blood recoloured or removed, people replaced by robots, cyborgs or monsters, religious symbols removed or redrawn.
- Ratings: age-rating systems arrived country by country from the late 1980s; the Game Ratings entry tells that story.
Nintendo’s rules
The best-known changes were made in America, by Nintendo. Andy Eddy’s chapters in the 1999 edition of David Sheff’s Game Over describe the internal code that Nintendo’s licensees had to follow from the NES years, which prohibited “such taboos as swearing, bloodshed and religious symbols”. Japanese games were changed to fit it on their way west. GamePro recalled in 1997 that the American version of Super Castlevania IV “was censored by Nintendo of America, who removed the blood and religious symbols.” The most public case was Mortal Kombat in 1993, when Nintendo had the arcade game’s blood turned into grey “sweat” for the Super NES version and Sega’s Mega Drive version outsold it; the Mortal Kombat Controversy entry tells that story.
The rules relaxed over time. In 1999 the British magazine Arcade obtained Nintendo’s and Sony’s content guidelines and printed their main points. Nintendo would not approve games with “gratuitous or excessive blood or violence”, sexually explicit content, or “an unnecessary beer or cigarette advertisement anywhere in a product”, though “Sherlock Holmes smoking a pipe would be acceptable as it fits the theme of the game”. On religion it had moved: “religious symbols such as crosses will be acceptable when fitting into the theme of a game and not promoting a specific religious denomination.” Arcade concluded that “there are, in fact, very few instances of outside forces censoring games. Instead, the industry is shaped by a multi-layered network of checks and measures that amount to a strict system of self-censorship.”
Some changes came from a different reading of the same symbol. In Konami’s Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon for the Nintendo 64, 64 Magazine noted in 1998, the Japanese version’s square boxes carried a swastika design, “nothing to do with Nazis but an ancient religious symbol, though most Westerners didn’t know that”. The Western version replaced it with a star.
Germany: changing the game to stay on sale
Germany had a legal mechanism that other countries lacked. Under a law first passed in 1953, the federal review office, the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften (BPjS), could put works it judged harmful to young people on an index. Its first review session was held in 1954. An indexed game could not be advertised or displayed, and could be sold only where minors were not allowed, so indexing restricted sales. The office was renamed the BPjM, for Medien (media) rather than Schriften (writings), in 2003, when a new youth protection law took effect; by 2004, PC Games reported, the index held more than 5,300 games, films and other media. In 2021 it became the Bundeszentrale für Kinder- und Jugendmedienschutz (BzKJ), the Federal Agency for Child and Youth Protection in the Media.
The index even shaped what magazines could print. In 2000 a reader asked PC Player to list each month what the office had just indexed. The magazine replied that such information “could be interpreted as advertising for the indexed titles”, and told him he would do better to subscribe to the office’s own bulletin.
Publishers responded by changing their games before release. “The fear is going round among the games makers,” PC Player wrote in September 1995, “because an indexing automatically means restricted sales. That is why it has become the fashion to tone down a program before publication: where in the original tanks roll over soldiers, in the German version ‘alien monsters’ are the victims.” Virgin’s German Command & Conquer had toned-down graphics, shortened cut scenes, changed sound effects and infantry that were now cyborgs, and the magazine’s editor Jörg Langer debated it in print with Christian Weikert, Virgin’s marketing manager. Weikert said the German market was “special” and “oversensitive” about violence, and that many young children would get hold of the game: “they should not have to kill people, even if they are only pixel figures.” He preferred to call the result “revised” rather than censored, comparing it to dubbing a film for another country. Langer replied that Virgin was looking hard at its sales figures and simply feared selling far fewer copies if the game were indexed. Many fans, the magazine noted, were angry about such changes: they wanted to buy the software “in its original form”, not as a censored version.
By the 2000s green blood and robot soldiers were familiar German edits. When Valve confirmed in 2004 that Half-Life 2, like Doom 3, would appear in Germany without cuts, PC Games gave those two, “green blood, robot soldiers”, as examples of what it would be spared.
The same pressures produced a ratings body. The publishers’ voluntary Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (USK) began rating games in 1994, and its ratings gained legal force in 2003; the Game Ratings entry covers it, and Australia’s refusal to classify adult games until 2013.
Buying the original
Changes made for one country left players who wanted the original version looking elsewhere. Amiga Joker suspected in 1995 that German publishers welcomed the USK’s age stickers partly as “a wonderful means of pressure” against the direct importers who sold games without them. For players who bought from abroad for other reasons, such as Japanese games that arrived late or never, see Import Gaming.
Sources
- PC Player (Germany), September 1997, p. 126: review of Carmageddon (robots in the German version, the BPjS, SCI).
- David Sheff, Game Over: Press Start to Continue (GamePress, 1999), with new chapters by Andy Eddy, chapter 2: Nintendo’s code for licensees (swearing, bloodshed, religious symbols).
- GamePro issue 108, September 1997: Super Castlevania IV “censored by Nintendo of America”.
- Arcade issue 4, March 1999, p. 83: Nintendo’s and Sony’s content guidelines; “a strict system of self-censorship”.
- 64 Magazine issue 11, March 1998: Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (the boxes’ design changed for the Western release).
- Bundeszentrale für Kinder- und Jugendmedienschutz, “General Information” (web, secondary): the BPjS (1954), the BPjM (2003) and the BzKJ (from 1 May 2021). https://www.bzkj.de/bzkj/meta/en
- PC Games (Germany), September 2004: the BPjM’s fiftieth anniversary of its first review session, and the index’s more than 5,300 entries. November 2004, p. 15: Half-Life 2 in Germany without “grünes Blut, Robotersoldaten”.
- PC Player (Germany), July 2000: letters (BPjS information as advertising; the office’s bulletin).
- PC Player (Germany), September 1995, pp. 20–21: Jörg Langer and Christian Weikert on the German Command & Conquer; the fashion for toning down games before release.
- Amiga Joker (Germany), April 1995, p. 3, editorial: the USK’s stickers and the direct importers.
- The 1953 law and the effects of indexing: see the reviewed Game Ratings entry and its source, Computer Gaming World issue 41, November 1987, p. 18.