True Lies (SNES): a funny example of 90's Germany's censorship

[bizzgeburt]

Hello fellow gamers and collectors,

I'd like to discuss a funny issue, which accured to me while talking w. another collector about Germany's version of the game "True Lies" for the SNES.
A few of you might know, that many games that were free to purchase and play in most parts of europe, were censored in Germany, or completely put on the so called "Index" ... which actually is a list of games/movies/music, that are considered not suitable for younger audiences. A good example for such a game is GoldenEye64, which was retaken from this index just about a year ago.

When it comes to True Lies for SNES, me and my brothers remember to have owned a copy with green blood! 
After asking around in discord servers, we found out, that most of the copies of this game were sold with original red blood in it, even here in Germany, where I live. Almost nobody knows of those versions with green blood in it, but they exist.
Our theory about this is the following: After the first production batch of the game was sold, censorship got aware of the bloodiness of the game and forced the publishers to change the color of blood for further versions to be sold. It seems as if me and my brothers were some of the few people that got their hands on this latter - obviously more scarce - version of True Lies.

Did anybody of you know about this green-blood-version?
I'd like to hear your thoughts on that!

[sworddude]

Pretty interesting never heard of it personally. and tbh if I where to play the game with green blood it would probably not bother me to much for me to notice unless I played both. and even than.

The big censorships that do have some influence in the 2d realm are imo contra how the human characters are replaced by robots and the big one, Castlevania bloodlines on sega. Anything blood related is gone in the megadrive version. They also just straight up removed some background details. That being said even in the case of castlevania it's not that much of a pain to miss although I'd love to own both versions someday which I already suceeded in with contra. The differences are notable enough to favor the og over the altered european versions.

That being said, are games like wolfenstein banned in germany? or are they just more rare than everywhere else.

[bizzgeburt]

That being said, are games like wolfenstein banned in germany? or are they just more rare than everywhere else.

Early releases of the Wolfenstein franchise were actually banned as far as I know. Later Releases came with swastikas replaced with iron crosses, which was commonly used up until a few years ago when censorship in games became slightly less strict. Another example of this method was MoH Frontline on PS2. We actually bought the Netherlands Version in which germans speak German and Americans speak english w. swastikas and stuff in it. Nowadays there are many ways for german gamers to outmaneuver the censorship... by simply buying austrian PEGI versions.

Earlier Wolfenstein games are in fact quite rare in terms of them being purchased by a smaller group of PC gamers back in the days. But it's forbidden status gave it its cult status. Releases from PS3 onwards are quite common to find and low to medium priced. That's as far as Germany goes. I can't speak for other european markets although a mass of game libraries were mostly the same.

I actually own a copy of Castlevania Bloodlines for PAL MegaDrive. I didn.'t know that it was bloodier on Genesis. What I DO know, is that Landstalker in europe lacks a specific sidequest type of cutscene with the female villain being surprised while takin a bath xD they replaced it with some rubbish senseless badly translated conversation during blackscreen

[undertakerprime]

I lived in Germany for a few years in the late 80’s. I can’t speak about the censorship of German SNES games since we moved back to the US in 1990, and my NES was NTSC anyway so it couldn’t play German releases, but I am familiar with some of the rules there at the time. Arcade games were off limits to minors because they were considered “gambling” machines, which is ridiculous. Fortunately the bowling alley we went to allowed kids to play their arcade games (one time they got raided by police because of it, but they only stopped letting us play them for a few weeks).

And toys had changes due to censorship. I bought M.A.S.K. toys there that had bombs and weapons removed because of restrictions.

[bizzgeburt]

And toys had changes due to censorship. I bought M.A.S.K. toys there that had bombs and weapons removed because of restrictions.

Nowadays you can buy electrified mag fed full auto nerf guns for your kids here

were you stationed in Germany at that time? I was born in '88 so I kind of missed out on the arcade era unfortunately...

[undertakerprime]

And toys had changes due to censorship. I bought M.A.S.K. toys there that had bombs and weapons removed because of restrictions.

Nowadays you can buy electrified mag fed full auto nerf guns for your kids here

were you stationed in Germany at that time? I was born in '88 so I kind of missed out on the arcade era unfortunately...

Haha, everyone asks that. I lived there between the ages of 10-13 but I was not an Army brat. My dad worked for UPS and was transferred there. I attended F.I.S. (Frankfurt International School) located in Oberursel.

It was the son of another UPS worker who introduced me to the NES while I lived there. A Dutch friend from school introduced me to a number of PC games (Battle Chess, Defender of the Crown, and Sierra’s adventure series like King’s Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, etc.) and I also played his Sega Master System (Hang On, Time Soldiers, Shinobi, Rocky, etc)

[leonefamily]

Similar story from my childhood. Grand Theft Auto III was heavily censored in France and Germany. Being a french speaker, I would use the website jeuxvideo.com to get my cheat codes. There was one cheat code that claims to unlock the "uncensored mode". For probably 10 years I always wondered what the hell this cheat code does because it straight up doesn't work in my game. Turns out that being from Québec, I was actually playing the north-american version of the game, which is already not censored. I hate the europeans ever since  jk

[bizzgeburt]

Similar story from my childhood. Grand Theft Auto III was heavily censored in France and Germany. Being a french speaker, I would use the website jeuxvideo.com to get my cheat codes. There was one cheat code that claims to unlock the "uncensored mode". For probably 10 years I always wondered what the hell this cheat code does because it straight up doesn't work in my game. Turns out that being from Québec, I was actually playing the north-american version of the game, which is already not censored. I hate the europeans ever since  jk

Well actually, Germany's PS2-Versions of GTA III and Vice City contained blood and such, as soon as you switched the consoles language to englisch. 

[leonefamily]

Similar story from my childhood. Grand Theft Auto III was heavily censored in France and Germany. Being a french speaker, I would use the website jeuxvideo.com to get my cheat codes. There was one cheat code that claims to unlock the "uncensored mode". For probably 10 years I always wondered what the hell this cheat code does because it straight up doesn't work in my game. Turns out that being from Québec, I was actually playing the north-american version of the game, which is already not censored. I hate the europeans ever since  jk

Well actually, Germany's PS2-Versions of GTA III and Vice City contained blood and such, as soon as you switched the consoles language to englisch. 

Yes exactly. The cheat codes instructions mentionned setting the game to english in the "language menu in-game" prior to entering the cheat code, and I was like "WHAT LANGUANGE MENU???"

[bizzgeburt]

[quote author=leonefamily link=topic=12368.msg201313#msg201313 date=1685602572
Yes exactly. The cheat codes instructions mentionned setting the game to english in the "language menu in-game" prior to entering the cheat code, and I was like "WHAT LANGUANGE MENU???"
[/quote]

When playing the german version w. default settings, it wasn't even possible to kick NPCs to death when they were lying on the ground. Killed NPCs also didn't drop money, so it was mandatory for my GTA financial plans to use this method in order to bring back the original circumstances ^^' otherwise you was forced to gamble, drive taxi or "do a mission" to earn any money oO but honestly, who ever did that? xD

[sworddude]

When playing the german version w. default settings, it wasn't even possible to kick NPCs to death when they were lying on the ground. Killed NPCs also didn't drop money, so it was mandatory for my GTA financial plans to use this method in order to bring back the original circumstances ^^' otherwise you was forced to gamble, drive taxi or "do a mission" to earn any money oO but honestly, who ever did that? xD

if you messed around long enough you'll eventually start doing the missions and finish the game. Was the scenario for me and my friends back in the day

That being said those censorships seem comical in a GTA game never experienced those.

[bizzgeburt]

When playing the german version w. default settings, it wasn't even possible to kick NPCs to death when they were lying on the ground. Killed NPCs also didn't drop money, so it was mandatory for my GTA financial plans to use this method in order to bring back the original circumstances ^^' otherwise you was forced to gamble, drive taxi or "do a mission" to earn any money oO but honestly, who ever did that? xD

if you messed around long enough you'll eventually start doing the missions and finish the game. Was the scenario for me and my friends back in the day

That being said those censorships seem comical in a GTA game never experienced those.

As I mentioned above, GoldenEye64 was debanned about a year ago in germany. German censorship was always far from practical ... or plausible ^^