I’m going to change the topic of what I was going to write about this week – I’ll save the article about moving games out of the arcade for another time as I really wanted to detail this story.
Around the new years break of 2001-2002 there was a story going around about ‘pornographic’ games in amusement centres. I think we all know the ones – those silly slider games where you have to cut pieces of a box away to expose the image behind, in this case it was a nude or semi-nude image of a woman. They were really crude bootlegs of official games originating from Taiwan and could only be found in those less than reputable arcades. When I talk about Melbourne, I think you know the ones I am referring to.
What then happened was a flurry of activity that involved us having to display ‘classification’ stickers on our cabinets. It was a really tedious task as most of these games were never submitted for classification (example The Fast and The Furious). We got an exemption if the same game was available on PlayStation or Xbox – we were told we could re-use the same classification level.
It caused a little confusion and of course was open for abuse. For example, back in 1993 Mortal Kombat would have been rated MA, and indeed MK2 was rated MA – but in 2002 the game was no longer considered that violent, and since technically it was never rated in that version I was able to get away with putting an M sticker on the title card. Naomi cartridge Zombies Revenge was rated MA on the Dreamcast, which meant I had to immediately pull it out of circulation – or stick a curtain around the game. If you ever wondered why The House of The Dead had a curtain, this is the reason. It was an MA15 game that had to be shielded from the view of children. Not that it ever stopped them. And before you ask, changing the blood colour to green or purple (which we did on occasion, for a bit of fun) didn’t change the classification level.
Around this time World Combat (Warzaid) – the massive 4-player shooting game from Konami – was released. Zax, the big arcade distributor in Melbourne, knew it would be a big game, and if I remember correctly he was the main distributor for the title in Australia, so it was his responsibility to ensure the game had an appropriate classification sticker. I received a call from him one morning asking me if I would let one of his employees come to the store and record the first 20-minutes of the game to submit it for classification. Reason: we had a big deluxe cabinet and that would be the easiest version to record. We arranged the best time to be a Saturday morning around 10am before it got busy.
Zax’s lackey arrived nice and early, video camera ready, to do what he needed to do. I asked him why we only needed 20 minutes of footage considering that to complete the game it would take, on average, around 35 minutes. He said it was all the OFLC required, and they figured all of the potentially offensive content would be shown within a few minutes. They were right.
For anyone who has never played World Combat, there seems to be a little confusion around its story line. It doesn’t help that Konami never really explained much. If you watch the opening title sequence you will see a modern looking couple sitting on a couch with a baby, and then a still image of a sheep. This juxtaposition always amused us. WTF was up with the sheep, we would ask! Then when the game started, it was CLEAR that it was set in World War 2 – only instead of Nazis (there’s your MA15 right there) it had skeletons. I kid you not – the enemies were all re-animated skeletons with army helmets on and sported some of the worst aiming this side of a bad American action film. To top it off, the final boss was a HUGE skeleton who would swipe at you with his bony hand!
I’m guessing this is why Konami rushed Wartran Troopers, the sequel, onto the market. Improved cel-shaded graphics and set in a ‘training’ environment so they could use representations of real people.
We were all done and dusted by 10.30. For anyone walking passed us, they would have seen a rather large ladder set up in front of the game with a tiny video camera perched in the middle. We had to get the distance just right, as the game had 2 50” monitors, replicating a “super widescreen” experience. To ensure we didn’t block the view of the camera, Zax’s employee took the player on the far right, while I used the player on the far left – ensuring that we stood out of range of the camera. This probably resulted in some terrible shooting from the both of us!
I can’t remember how long it took, perhaps 4 weeks, but we received word that World Combat would need to display a “MATURE” sticker for “Medium Level Animated Violence” – exactly what we were predicting in the first place. The OFLC provides these stickers by the bundle, or you could just print a template off their website and laminate it yourself.
True story: Top Skater has a G8+ rating even though one of the songs in the game has two f-words.
Fast forward to the present and I don’t know if arcades still bother to get their games rated. I can’t say I have noticed stickers on Street Fighter 4 or Initial D 6 cabinets, but I am sure my friends who still work in amusement centres might be able to answer this question for me.
For the next episode I think it might be fun to explore the racing and IC card explosion of the early 2000’s when Initial D and Wangan Midnight Tuned burst onto the scene!
NerdGasm 