I'm surprised FE4 got away with this stuff SPOILERS

[Erik_Twice]

I GUESS THIS IS A SPOILER SO YEAH, DON'T READ THIS IF YOU ARE PLAYING THE GAME BECAUSE IT'S FUN.

Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War is a first party Nintendo game and it was released in 1996, when censorship was still common so it surprised me to see it had children hunts as a plot point. Well, more than just "plot point", the children physically appear on the map and enemies do try to kill them. Geez!

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I just thought that was very unusual. Is it?

[BoneSnapDeez]

It's important to remember that this game was never released in the US. If it had it would have been severely edited. That screenshot is from a fan translation.

[MrPopo]

Amusingly, I think the child murder isn't the worst thing in the game from a NoA censorship standpoint.

[Erik_Twice]

It's important to remember that this game was never released in the US. If it had it would have been severely edited. That screenshot is from a fan translation.

Yeah, but still, it's a lot for the Nintendo of the time. I can think of games with religious references, with murder and some blood but nothing quite to this level. Perhaps you guys know more about this stuff, but it surprised me

Amusingly, I think the child murder isn't the worst thing in the game from a NoA censorship standpoint.

Yeah, I mean. Have you seen those churches? One thing is child murder and incest but uncensored churches would have been too much for NoA.

[MrPopo]

I was thinking of the brainwashed incest as being worse than the child murder. But the Shin Megami Tensei games also were on the SFC and were pretty dark as well; the basically start off with the world literally going to hell complete with the downfall of society and go up from there.

[Sarge]

Yeah, I'd say the SMT games are far more problematic, especially from a US standpoint. I mean, I know it's a Japanese staple by now, but you literally kill the Hebrew / Christian God, and Lucifer is portrayed in an extremely sympathetic light. The portrayal of YHWH / YHVH in the games is typically extremely negative.

As a Christian, I can certainly handle it, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. There's no question it would have caused a major uproar back in the day, and I'd have been sympathetic to those concerns.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Yeah, but still, it's a lot for the Nintendo of the time

Fair point. This is actually a "Nintendo game" not just a game on a Nintendo console.

Looking back, some crazy stuff stayed in Japan. Hell there were even eroge games ported from computer to console with just some minimal censoring.

[Exhuminator]

December 1988.

Never forget.

[Sarge]

That whole end-game sequence blew my mind. Cursing? Heads exploding? Wowzers.

[Exhuminator]

Wowzers.

The poor play testers just never made it that far.