Seal of Censorship

Nintendo are famous for being touchy about game content and have become renowned for being family friendly and innocent, or soft and cuddly depending on your point of view. Buying a Nintendo game meant that you were buying a fun game that was suitable for everyone to play and that's an image that Nintendo are struggling to shake to this day.

The Nintendo Seal of Quality was created to uphold this innocent aura and it was applied to all NES and SNES games during the 80’s and 90’s guaranteeing that Nintendo had vetted the games before they hit the shelves and that all content they thought inappropriate had been removed. With the quality of a lot of games being substandard calling the Seal "The Seal of Censorship" would certainly have been a more appropriate. Wouldn't have sold as many games though. Or would it...

Probably the most famous of Nintendo censorship was the removal of all the blood from Mortal Kombat replacing it with grey sweat. This mad decision cost Nintendo a lot of revenue as their fans defected to the gore filled Mega Drive version.

A few years earlier and it was a NES game that caused Nintendo to get all hot and bothered. The fabulous Lucas Arts adventure Maniac Mansion had been converted from the Amiga and was submitted to be stamped with the Seal by Jaleco. Nintendo however didn’t like quite a few things, no sense of humour, and made demands that changes be made. One thing that had to go was the ability for Dave, the main character, to put a hamster in the microwave and watch it explode. Ok, so that’s a bit cruel but it’s funny!

When the cartoon boxing game Punch Out was converted from arcade to NES there were race issues that caused Nintendo to sweat. The Russian boxer known as Vodka Drunkenski in the arcades had to be renamed, they chose Soda Popinski, in an effort to avoid racial stereotyping. Again Nintendo fail to spot the humour.

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