Censorship in Neo Geo Games and Uni-Bios

[mastershmiddy]

I'm still trying to figure this out exactly.

So if I put a Japanese or American Samurai Shodown cart in a Japanese AES, and I switch the region to English with Uni-Bios, will the game play in English and be uncensored, or does the region/language need to be Japanese for it to be uncensored?

[sneth]

I can tell you how it works on my AES and CD.

If my CD player is in Jap mode, i get blood. If it is in English, i get white blood. Regardless of the game region. Region's are selected by jumper settings on the system.

This is the same on the cart for the most part. The games usually contain the Full Jp and USA versions on the cart. If you set the region for the game to Jp, it will have blood.

A Jp cart on a USA system that is playing Jp mode will have blood.
A USA cart on a USA system with bios set to Jp and the game playing in Jp, will most likely have blood.

There are even some games that let you select language in the options menu. And this will turn on blood if it is in Jp mode.

Obviously there are some outliers that break this rule, but it holds true for the most part.

[mastershmiddy]

Ah, thanks. So does that mean it's impossible to play a game in English and uncensored (I'm not aware of any developer's bios edit in Uni Bios)? I know you said some games offer a language setting, but is there nothing consistent I can depend on to have both circumstances?

[sneth]

now that is a tough question...

UNibios v2 does have this type of capability for some games. For instance, SSV has several versions: with Fatalities, and patched w/o, and patch with fatalities. Unibios v2 allowed to enable fatalities in most of these versions even if the fatalities were diasabled.

So in some games you can disable censorship. The metal slugs are the easiest ones to test this feature.

As always, some games break this rule. If you want to be sure for certain games, I would ask about them specifically.

[mastershmiddy]

Yeah good point. Only problem is, I'm a newb to all this, so I don't know which ones to ask about haha. Hopefully none of the really important ones break this rule.

I guess getting a consolized MVS would remedy all this anyway. MVS games will always be uncensored.

[sneth]

Even if you could not disable any kind of censoring, it doesnt take that much away from the game.

Metal Slug plays exactly the same, but the blood animations are white. Not a big deal.

The big one, Samurai Showdown, is easily removed.