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Black Ops Censored for Japanese, But Wait! Celebrities!

Posted on Thursday, November 4 @ 18:04:56 Eastern by Daniel Bischoff

So you live in Japan and you're excited about Call of Duty: Black Ops. Time for outrage!

No, not really though. I don't know, maybe you'll be outraged. Maybe you'll be delighted by the video at the bottom.

Square Enix, the Japanese publisher responsible for Call of Duty's localization has announced that in addition to "all scenes of dismemberment" and "expressions of brutality," Nazi swastika symbols will also be removed from certain editions of Black Ops.

Never-mind all of the other heinous material in Japanese pop culture, censorship of American games is being enforced by the CERO ratings board. If they're worried about violence, did they miss Fist of the North Star?

According to Square Enix, all versions of the game will have dismemberment and "expressions of brutality removed from the game. Only dubbed console and subbed PC versions of the game will have an affected zombie mode.

Kotaku postulated that this change could be a result of possible confusion based on the similarity between the swastika and its reversal called a "manji," usually used to denote Buddhist sites on maps and the fact that subbed voices would suggest players were mowing down countless undead buddhists. Check out the image below:

Or it could all go back to WWII.

Anyways, here's the latest commercial for Black Ops featuring Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel.

I'm loving the weapon customization in this commercial. Check out Kobe naming his noob tube "MAMBA." How about "proud n00b" for Kimmel RPG?

Kobe's appearance here is some serious Activision marketing money at work.

Tags: Call of Duty, Xbox 360, ps3, PC

Comments

De-Ting
Joined: Nov 2006

Posted: Nov 4th, 2010 at 10:09 pm
WTF?

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Profits
Joined: Jan 2007

Posted: Nov 4th, 2010 at 10:55 pm
Uh... Japanese don't know wtf a swastika was used for? -.-

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cyberjim2000
Joined: Feb 2010

Posted: Nov 5th, 2010 at 12:07 am
Germans banned the use of swastikas too. So... what's the big deal?

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nishrit
Joined: Nov 2006

Posted: Nov 5th, 2010 at 9:43 am
Well actually the swastika was taken from an Indian and later Buddhist symbol, so the fact that it got corrupted to what the nazis made it, would prob still cause some problems for them.

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UpAndAtThem
Joined: Mar 2009

Posted: Nov 5th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Strange reversal. Way back in the NES days, the Japanese version of Bionic Commando (named Top Secret) had swastikas in it, but the North American version had them censored out.

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