Virtual On 1 fully emulated in Yakuza Kiwami 2. How I played it.
About the censorship of games in Germany. It was only throwaway reference but let´s set the record straight. Part of my Bachelor's Thesis was on this.
The most censored game ever is
Soldier of Fortune II from 2002. It´s localized the story into a sci-fi tales about robots set in a parallel universe.
The blood/dismemberment was also removed but the game still got an 18+. Legendary! This version came out one month after the
society stopping Erfurt school massacre and the violence debate cooked up again for the final time in 2006 due to the Emsdetten school shooting.
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
There was the 3rd and final school shooting of this Millenium, namely the Winnenden school shooting in 2009, but games stopped being the whippy boy of politicians by then and Dead Space 1 released 100% uncut the year before.
2008 was also the year
games were officially recognized as art by the government.
This 2008 double whammy tactically dismembered nearly all the pent up nonsense of the last 1,5 decades in one swoop. EA had to appeal the maximum amount of 3 times to get that 18+ but they got it. The 2008 games as art decision is also how the Swastika debate got solved about 2 years ago and that one only took that long as no publisher was willing to crusade for Nazi symbols as that would lead to international attention. The government mostly stepped it to reform the USK submission process. All Wolfenstein reboot games now have Nazis, the Swastika, SS runes and so on in the new German versions. Technically the US versions with German subtitles but all have the USK 18+ stamp and even the older censored versions of The New Order, The Old Blood and The New Colossus had zero gore cuts.
The German version of
The New Colossus accidentally denied the holocaust but that was for the best in the end as the dubbed and de-nazified version that lacked any Jewish and death camp references ended up being torn apart by the media, actual newspapers covered this fuck up, which forced the government to step in as mentioned. That shit show of localization will be the last heavily changed for Germany version that can come out as the Nazi (pro-fascism use of Nazi symbols is still strictly banned in all media) and violence questions have all been answered. Swearing, smoking/drugs and graphic sex were never an issue.
Loot boxes are a ? but Geman Fifa games had to pull a gambling company from the shirts in some of the games for at least 3 iterations to get a 0+ rating. That´s how serious that topic is taken but gambling itself is legal. 18+ but legal.
Stuff like Soldier of Fortune II, the infamous censorship of Contra, Half Life 1 and C&C 1 to C&C Generals seen below are thus 2 decades in the past.
The Nazi stuff was its own complex odyssey and the USK has been MUCH more lenient than the ESRB for the last decade. Dying Light is the only high profile game this gen (shit like Hatred doesn't count) that missed getting an 18+ but the sequel is 99% confirmed for release which would easily grandfather in the original if the publisher is interested in appealing the original rating. Or the lack of it. Dying Light wasn´t even banned aka "
Beschlagnahmt". It only landed on the
Index on List A. List B is for games that are suggested to be banned by the USK. The government bans games in a separate court case if that has to happen but that was rare even back in the 80s to the early 00s. Dying Light 1 thus got our equivalent of an Adults Only rating.
In conclusion: There is a reason why GamesCon is in Germany. Videos games became a fixture of everyday life as much as the TV somewhere during the 00s.
And never kill a fellow human. Kill robots instead. Skynet must be stopped!
