Nintendo has had a history of censoring their games. From turning blood to sweat in the original Mortal Kombat to removing religious symbols from The Legend of Zelda. Nintendo went a little crazy with their censorship rules.

As was the case of the Capcom classic "Bionic Commando". Its original name, in Japan, was "Hittorā no Fukkatsu: Toppu Shīkuretto" roughly translated too "Top Secret: The Resurrection of Hitler". Outside of Japan, the game was heavily censored. The references to Nazi Germany were removed. The antagonists were rename to "The Badds" and the final boss, Hitler himself, was renamed to "Master-D". 

Religious themes were also huge on Nintendo's list of things to censor. "Super Castlevania IV" had crosses removed from tombstones all through out the game. 

The biggest religious censorship was probably one of their own games. The Legend of Zelda had a lot of religious themes and symbols removed when released out side of Japan. The title for the Super NES game, "Link to the Past" was actually called "Triforce of the Gods" in Japan. Most notable was in "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time" were one of the dungeons, the Fire Temple, had Islamic chanting in the background. One line in particular was translated to "I bear witness that there is no God but Allah.”. Unfortunately, or fortunately, this made it into the original release of the cart as the mistake wasn't caught until after the game was released. Every release after the first had this all removed. 

Walking around in "Link's Awakening" you will stumble upon a village called "Animal Village". Like its namesake, this village is filled with animals just going about their business. Walk into one of the many buildings and you may stumble upon a hippo mid undress. 

I wonder if this is going to be in the remake? 

I could on and on with Zelda. Link to the Past got hit very hard with the "Big Stick of Nintendo Censorship" just because they felt the Western audience couldn't held a game with overly religious themes. 

This line of censorship came straight from Nintendo them self, as they were the leaders of the video game market. If you wanted your game released, regardless of region, you had to abide by their rules. Nintendo wanted to be seen as the "family friendly" content creators. They wanted family's to play their games therefore they felt the censorship was justified. A lot of people criticized their censorship policies, since most of it was inconsistent at best. As seen with the Capcom game DuckTales and with the original Castlevania release on the NES. 

The US version of Ducktales had to remove the crosses from the coffins, while the US version of Castlevania kept them intact. It was stuff like this that caused a lot of heat on Nintendo with their own inconsistent following of their own rules. 

Fast forward to the future and Nintendo has been 'laxed on their censorship policies. They have had M rated games released on such consoles as the Nintendo Wii - their most "family friendly" console to date. All the while they have continued to censor some of their own - like Fire Emblem (Which has had a ton of censorship in the US that I could do an entire article on just that).

Lets talk about today. With Sony clamping down on their own censorship policies and with MS staying out of the conversation altogether. That leaves us with Nintendo.

What is Nintendo - the once "censor it until its completely different" - company saying about censorship? 

This is from Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa at this years Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. Furukawa went on to say that censoring titles "inhibits diversity and fairness in game software.”. 

Wow. This has to be the twilight zone. Nintendo is not going to censor games but Sony is. A complete 180 from their previous self.

We have already been seeing their stance in action. Dead or Alive Xtreme 3: Scarlet was released for both the PS4 and the Nintendo Switch back in March of this year. The PS4 version is heavily censored, while the Nintendo Switch version is not. The Switch's eShop is now loaded with a lot racier titles than on any previous Nintendo platform to date. 

It seems as though Nintendo has grown up. Lets hope they stay this way.  

What are your thoughts on this subject? Should company's force developers to censor their games? Or should parents be a little more hands on with that their child is playing? Let us know in the comments below. 

And as always, this is James with Game Fix. Game on everybody!