Criticism
Many video game reviewers and consumers saw the introduction of the Videogame Rating Council as a sign that Sega of America was no longer going to censor the content of video games sold for a Sega home console. While Sega had tolerated blood and graphic violence in video games pre-V.R.C., nudity, profanity, and homosexuality had remained prohibited themes and were often removed before an original computer game or a role-playing game was released for the English speaking Sega market.
In addition, Sega of America never released brochures to the public or explained the qualifications for a game getting a particular rating and thus there seemed to be inconsistencies. For example, the Sega CD editions of two computer games; Rise of the Dragon and Snatcher both got the MA-17 label and it was assumed that it was because of the violence, profanity, and sexual innuendos that existed, but Sega never explained. Another example, would be the fact that the Sega Genesis version of Mortal Kombat was given a MA-13 label, while the Sega CD version of the game was given a MA-17 label, with the only major content difference between the two games was that you needed to enter in a secret code in order for all the blood and graphic violence to be seen in the Sega Genesis edition. In the Sega CD edition the player had to enter in a secret code which would actually tone down the blood and graphic violence.
The game Castlevania: Bloodlines was rated GA despite scenes of blood and gore (zombies being cut in half, or having their upper torsos burst into bloody messes, and Harpies that can be decapitated with the wounds gushing blood), not to mention the dripping blood in the intro sequence of the game.
The game Mega Man: The Wily Wars was rated MA-13 despite there being no blood or graphic violence.
Further complicating the situation was that games sold for the Sega home console systems were still being censored. Despite the MA-17 label, both Rise of the Dragon and Snatcher had some of the mature images edited. Even Sega of America did not seem to be taking its own rating system seriously as it radically altered Streets of Rage 3 before it was sold outside of Japan, including the removal of a playable homosexual character. One game Corpse Killer received a MA-17 for "Zombie and Voodoo themes" though there was very little blood in the game.
Read more about this topic: Videogame Rating Council
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It’s the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)