Game Localization & Nintendo of America’s Content Policies in the 1990s

In my articles and books, I’m always mentioning how Nintendo of America didn’t allow certain types of content in games during the 1990s – things like death, religious content, and stuff like that. The topic comes up often enough that I thought it’d be nice to take an actual look at those policies in detail.

Background

In the 1990s, parents and politicians grew outraged over violent and inappropriate content in video games. The game industry responded by establishing a ratings system, and individual companies updated their internal content policies. These companies then shared their official policies with the public.

Conveniently for us, the 1994 book Parent’s Guide to Video Games compiled some of these content policies into one place. So although we’ll be looking at Nintendo of America’s policies this time, maybe we’ll look at Sega’s policies in a different article someday. For now, here’s how the authors sum up the situation in 1994:

Let’s consider an analogy. Periodically, we’ll hear on the news that a child has fallen into a well. Although it doesn’t happen often, this can have dire consequences for a child.

If Nintendo were to handle the situation, they might alter all the wells so that none was more than two feet deep. Sega would leave the wells as they found them, but post a conspicuous warning sign on any one that posed a danger to small children.

Indeed, Nintendo’s content policies in the 1990s meant that many games had to abide by strict rules before being published. And since many of the big-name games at the time were coming from Japan, many Japanese games had to be altered during the game localization process.

Official Policies

This was Nintendo of America’s official policy notice around 1994:

Nintendo of America’s priority is to deliver high quality video game entertainment for our customers. When those customers are children, parental involvement in their game playing is recommended. Nintendo is concerned that our products do not contain material that society as a whole deems unacceptable.

Consequently, since 1988 we have consistently tested the content of all games developed for Nintendo systems against our evolving game standards. As our business has matured, we have adapted our guidelines to meet the concerns of the members of our target age group and their parents. Although we realize that definitions of social, cultural and political values are highly subjective, we will continue to provide consumers with entertainment that reflects the acceptable norms of society.

The following Game Content Guidelines are presented for assistance in the development of authorized game paks (i.e., both Nintendo and licensee game paks) by defining the type of content and themes inconsistent with Nintendo’s corporate and marketing philosophy. Although exceptions may be made to preserve the context of a game, Nintendo will not approve games for the NES, Game Boy, or Super NES systems (i.e., audio-visual work, packaging, and instruction manuals) which:

• include sexually suggestive or explicit content including rape and/or nudity;
• contain language or depictions which specifically denigrates members of either sex;
• depict random, gratuitous, and/or excessive violence;
• depict graphic illustration of death;
• depict domestic violence and/or abuse;
• depict excessive force in a sports game beyond what is inherent in actual contact sports;
• reflect ethnic, racial, religious, nationalistic, or sexual stereotypes of language; this includes symbols that are related to any racial, religious, nationalistic, or ethnic group, such as crosses, pentagrams, God, Gods (Roman mythological gods are acceptable), Satan, hell, Buddha;
• use profanity or obscenity in any form or incorporate language or gestures that could be offensive by prevailing public standards and tastes;
• incorporate or encourage the use of illegal drugs, smoking materials, and/or alcohol (Nintendo does not allow a beer or cigarette ad
  to be placed on an arena, stadium or playing field wall, or fence in a sports game);
• include subliminal political messages or overt political statements.

Examples of Policy-Based Localization Changes

It’s common knowledge that games like Mortal Kombat got tamed down due to Nintendo of America’s content policy at the time:

But as a translator/localizer, I’m personally more interested in how these policies affected Japanese games that were localized into English. So I gathered a handful of old localization changes to see how they fit into the big checklist above.

Sexually Suggestive or Explicit Content

The English localization of Final Fantasy VI adds clothing and other obstructions to cover up exposed skin in places:

Similarly, the English localization of MOTHER 2 puts clothes on Ness when he visits the world within his mind. It’s common for Japanese entertainment to strip characters of everything when they enter mental realms or weird dimensions as a way to indicate that they’re in their rawest, purest, or most vulnerable form:

During a side quest in Chrono Trigger, Ayla originally talks about nursing babies and breasts. This was rephrased with “leave the nest” to avoid the specific topic:

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Sexist Content

In the Japanese version of Lufia II, the big casino is full of women dressed in sexy bunny outfits. They were replaced in the English localization with women who dress more modestly:

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Random, Gratuitous, or Excessive Violence

The Super Famicom version of The Combatribes portrayed bad guys covered in blood after being defeated. These graphics were altered and toned down in the English localization, even though the core gameplay is still about violence and physical assault.

Some of the depictions of violence in Final Fight were marginally toned down during the localization process. For example, blood graphics were replaced with cartoon-like impact graphics:

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Graphic Illustration of Death

I’m not sure if any localized games ever depicted anything that fits this category. The only thing that comes to mind at the moment is when Celes attempts suicide in the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VI by throwing herself off a cliff. She still jumps off the cliff in the localized version, but all the text before it was rewritten to reframe the jump as a nice way for Celes to “perk up” after feeling sad:

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Domestic Violence

The only examples of domestic violence changes that come to mind right now are from MOTHER 2/EarthBound. There are several examples, but one early one includes Pokey’s mention of “getting spanked/paddled 100 times” being changed to “I’m gonna get it”:

Shortly after, Pokey and his brother do get punished by their father, but the depiction of the punishment changed in the localization. The off-screen sound effect was changed from heavy pounding to a cartoon-like angry sound:

After getting punished, Pokey mentions that his butt hurts in Japanese. This was changed in the localization, so he now says he “gets no dessert for the rest of the decade”:

Not too many Nintendo games had scenes involving modern domestic situations, so I don’t know if any other games underwent similar localization changes during the 1990s. If you know of any others, let me know.

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Excessive Force in a Sports Game

I’m not sure if this category ever came into play when a 1990s game was localized into Japanese for Nintendo consoles. I’m not a sports gamer in general, so if anyone out there has more info, let me know!

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Ethnic, Racial, Religious, Nationalistic, or Sexual Stereotypes

It turns out Final Fight underwent lots of policy-related changes during the localization process. In this case, some enemies had their dark skin lightened, presumably to avoid backlash against violence toward specific races:

In the second generation of Pokémon games, Jynx was changed from a black-colored Pokémon into a purple-colored Pokémon. This was done after Jynx’s initial appearance caused some controversy outside of Japan.

In the original Final Fantasy game, you had to revive fallen party members by visiting a church. This was changed into a “clinic” in the localized release. The building’s appearance was changed on the outside, and the priest on the inside was changed into a generic, non-religious character. The associated text was changed as well – even the text about reviving a fallen character’s soul was changed:

In the Japanese version of Actraiser, you’re God and you have to fight Satan. In the English localization, you’re “The Master” and you have to fight “Tanzra”:

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Profanity, Obscenities, or Offensive Gestures

In the Japanese version of Super Mario RPG, Bowser does a gesture with his arms after winning a battle. It’s a common, positive gesture seen in Japanese entertainment (example 1, example 2), but it’s considered rude in some places outside of Japan, so Bowser’s gesture was changed for the English release:

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Illegal Drugs, Smoking Materials, or Alcohol

The Japanese version of Super Mario Kart shows Bowser drinking a bunch of celebratory champagne after he wins a race circuit. Nintendo of America altered this for the localized version:

There’s a good amount of alcohol-related content in MOTHER 2, so when it was localized into English as EarthBound it was all replaced with coffee-related content. Even the bars became cafes:

In Tecmo’s Secret of the Stars, the original Japanese version has a town called “Drunkards” that’s full of alcohol-related stuff, including bars. For the localization, the town was renamed “Sleepers” and everyone now relies on coffee to get through the day. Naturally, the bars are now coffee shops, complete with newly drawn signs:

In the original Japanese Pokémon games, a drunk guy blocks the path early in the story. In the localized versions, he’s just an old guy who really loves coffee:

In the Japanese version of Final Fantasy Legend II, one part of the story revolves around opium and opium smugglers. All of these opium references were replaced with bananas in the English localization:

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Subliminal Political Messages or Overt Political Statements

As far as I know, there aren’t many examples of this sort of change. The only two I can think of at the moment are from MOTHER 2/EarthBound, and even then they kind of overlap with some previous policy rules.

First, the cultists in Happy Happy Village were given a graphical makeover for the English localization to avoid comparisons with the Ku Klux Klan:

The town of “Threek” was renamed “Threed” for the English localization too. The reason baffled fans for years, until it was revealed that the localization team realized “Threek” could be read as “Three K”, or “KKK” – another coincidental connection with the Ku Klux Klan.

Publisher Concerns

Many of the games listed above were made or published by Nintendo of America, but third parties also had to abide by Nintendo of America’s policies. If a third party company failed to meet the content guidelines, they would have to make more changes and resubmit the game for approval. This would result in costly delays.

As an actual example, the “Holy” spell in Final Fantasy VI wound up getting renamed as “Pearl” in the English localization, due to the concern that it might run afoul of NOA’s religious content policy.

The head localizer explained the decision in an interview a decade later:

I mean, Holy and Pearl, obviously there wouldn’t be an issue there. I think that was obviously just the word Holy and just trying to avoid being dinged by Nintendo. Any time you submitted a game to Nintendo you had to take the entire screen text, which for Final Fantasy was 50 or 60 hours of having one of your testers do that for you. Then you had to submit the print out, the entire screen text, the ROMs and do all that stuff and give it to them and they’d spend time going through it. If you had something like that, that stopped the submission you were in trouble. It was very expensive and you could miss your deadline to ship.

A lot of companies just decided to err on the safe side, which is probably unfortunate but just to strip out as much as they could in advance just to reduce the time to market.

In short, third party companies sometimes altered more content during the localization process than necessary, just to be safe. These excessive changes stemmed from internal business decisions.

Summary

We’ve taken a brief look at Nintendo of America’s old content policies and how they affected specific game localizations. Nintendo has changed and evolved since the 1990s, so many these policies are no longer in place. Still, some of the localization changes made during this era became iconic and even laid the foundation for later game localizations. So I’m glad to finally know more about the details that shaped video game localization in the 1990s.

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There are many more examples than what I’ve listed above, so if you can think of any other big or notable additions, let me know. I’d like to create big, dedicated gallery pages for specific categories or specific games sometime. I think they’d be lots of fun to build up over time and browse through!

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Also, if you enjoyed this article, check out this classic article about NOA's content policies!