Censoring Maniac Mansion for the NES

Via Destructoid, an article at the personal site of Douglas Crockford, a gent who worked with LucasArts during the NES days. He takes a look at the silly amount of content censored to get the game Maniac Mansion acceptable for Nintendo and the Nintendo Entertainment System. "'Well, Mommy, I'm worried! He hasn't eaten in 5 years. / YEAH, SO!!! / and he's been bringing those bodies, and he carries those bodies to the basement at night.' [sic] This was from Weird Ed's dialogue with his mother, Nurse Edna, in which Ed tries to get his mother to recognize the terrible things that have happened to his father over the past 20 years. What was Nintendo's problem with the dialogue? ... In fact, Nintendo's interpretation of the speech was that Dr. Fred was a cannibal, that he was eating the bodies. That was never our intention, so we changed Ed's speech to 'He hasn't slept in 5 years,' which helps to explain why Dr. Fred is never seen in his bedroom. But even if we had intended that Dr. Fred was a cannibal, what's the harm? He would have been one under the influence of the evil purple meteor. The game recognizes that it is bad, and your mission is to rescue him from this unhappy state. Who would be offended?"

Great read.

[cromar]

I read this a year or two ago - it's really funny and nostalgic. OTOH, it shows to what length Nintendo of America would go to back then to project the image of the "Family Computer." Way farther than taking blood sprites out of Mortal Kombat.

Prime example

[techpawn]

Of a game ahead of it's time. Now we're accepting of sleeping with hookers, running them over, and taking our money back in games. But in the early days of Nintendo they seem to of had pretty tight Standards & Practices to get a cartridge licensed.

But times have changed and now you can strangle people with a choking acting thanks to them!

Old news

[zdude255]

Well in that day and age video games were a new and much smaller market. The NES came out and saved us from the video game crash. As a new product in a market that had just crashed, they had a lot more to lose. Video games were getting enough flak from politicians as it was, they didn't even want to risk something like cannibalism being inferred. (This predates the ESRB and whatnot) Nowadays the market is much more mature and more graphic things are being tolerated.

Re:Great read.

[cromar]

I was going to reply, but then I realized there was no way you could have RTFA and come to that conclusion.

Re:Important thing to note, Nintendo AMERICA

[Creepy]

remember, Japan and Europe are much more liberal than America in some respects. Both find topless women non-offensive (at least non-sexually), and some things that are abhorrent in the US are perfectly acceptable in Japan - take, for instance, the children's cartoon with 'possum that blows up his testicles and whack baddies with them. Disney woulda been crucified, beaten, stoned, burned at the stake and sexually mutilated by the President himself if he tried to make children's TV or movies with material like that.

Nintendo's prerogative.

[MaWeiTao]

Nintendo has gone to absurd lengths to clean up their games, but honestly I think they're free to do as they please. Nintendo is a private company and if they decide they don't want offensive content available on their console its their prerogative. If, as a consumer, I have a problem with that practice, I'll buy a system from a company that doesn't put such restrictions on games. It's not like Nintendo was engaging in thought control or propaganda.

What I do have a problem with, however, is when the government starts deciding what should be censored. It's like the Fairness Doctrine. A lot of people are pushing it in an attempt to control conservative talk radio. That's all well and good, but the irony is that the doctrine came about originally during the anti-communist movement and then actually used against liberal talk shows. So this cuts both ways. You can't say you're for free speech provided it only suits your own opinions and desires. The last thing we need is more government control.

I have the right to dictate what I'm exposed to in my own house in the same way Nintendo can dictate the content for their consoles. Even if I agree that the extent to which Nintendo of America went to clean up their games was absolutely ridiculous. Although, I can't really say it business.