June 22, 2007 -
In the wake of this week's Manhunt 2 news, Duke Ferris at Game Revolution pens a feature on what he says is the only other game to receive an Adults Only rating from the ESRB strictly for violence.That game, Ferris writes, is Thrill Kill:
In a sad sign for Manhunt 2, Thrill Kill was never released. Virgin Interactive was going to publish it for the Playstation, but then they got bought by EA just a few weeks before the game's launch. EA, however, immediately pulled the plug and said they'd never publish such a violent game.
The game's Wikipedia entry, however, makes no mention of an AO rating:
The ESRB's complaints had Paradox change some of the game's content. For example: "The Imp" character name was supposedly changed from "Senator Lieberman" (a direct spoof of the US senator of the same name). Characters wore briefs instead of g-strings. Belladonna's suggestive wail at the start of a match was toned down...
Comments
Re: The Only Other Game to Receive an Adults Only Rating for
I still have a ps1 and a unrated thrill kill game from overseas along with about 300 other ps1 titles and still plug it up for some old school gaming the game is repative if its one player but 3-4 players its a blast if you want to play the games like the maker made them MOD and order from overseas
Bandwagon jumping is fun.
Of course ratings drift and increased graphical quality.
Looks like a pretty generic Mortal Kombat klone.
Beladonna, the nurse, had a taunt, that was a brief attempt at masturbation (it was very brief). Another character, had the ability to use his own arm as a weapon (reminded me of Time Killers). I remember playing one arena that had toilets or a toilet in the center, and you could do some kind of fatality with it. So this game pushed the envelope like nothing I have ever seen before, and since.
June 22nd, 2007 at 8:48 am
" knocking someone’s head off like it was a golf ball while you stand on their back and screaming fore is okay.."
Lol wtf?!
It was a really fun game, especially when you got four people going.
It's sad when we let people who have no interest whatsoever in our past time dictate what we can or cannot do with it.
I may be wrong (obviously) but I think the hoopla had to do with not only the excessive and prolonged violence but the excessive hints at acts of sexuality. Based on my memories of the storm then, people's reviews above of its game play and so forth. There is a hypocritical and normally self-serving moral line. Developers of games are punished for crossing this line while movies, television, print and the Net get away with it hand over fist. Sometimes they get away with it because they haggle with rating boards or use lobby groups. Sometimes they merely coast on the first amendment rights they routinely go to court over protecting. Mortal Kombat and Eternal Champions both had some gruesome scenes in them but yet both found homes on the Genesis, the former finding homes on a lot more systems since it sold well. Plenty of games deserved the same spotlight but never got it.
Instead MK sold well, it got in the public eye and kids were found around it, flocking like drugged geese. Their parents slacked on their responsibilities, some store chains and arcade owners flagrantly watched as kids racked up their sales, and Joe Politician found a topic that he could milk for years to make it look like he was doing something society really needed. Above better education. Above poverty in America. Above the quality of health care and a cache of other more viable issues.
Everyone involved has dropped a tiny snowball, and now it's growing more huge every couple of weeks and politicians and others exacerbate the industry's woes. The industry's organizations CAN do more, in educating the public of the technology's worth and by enforcing a consistent system by which software is rated. Bob Shopkeeper CAN surely do more about kids buying games meant for adults and educating parents. I've seen it work and parents still reject the data as sound advise. But instead we allow laws to be make the world a "better place" where instead of free choice you have game ghettos within stores, higher prices, more hostile vibes, and a very nasty picture of the world of the future to look forward to.
BTW, how edited is the ISO I've seen around for play? I never really wanted to play it so didn't take the effort to grab it.
Well, even back then, when I had some interest in the game I thought it still looked a little tame. I really don't think there was anything in there worthy of an AO rating, even back then. There was still more blood and gore in the Mortal Kombat games.
Oh and what's up with the highlander powerup at the end there?!?
Personally I don't understand why a game being rated AO is such a "mark of death" in the market. As someone who regularly purchases various forms of electronic media it has always been the level of production quality that makes or breaks my purchasing decisions, not ratings or "extreme content." It seems transparent to me that making political noise AT ALL regarding video games is a cheap political manouver to generate votes, no different from candidates using attack language or pretending to be religous.
Thrill Kill was in the making long before Power Stone was. In fact, Trill Kill was to be the first four player fighting game before it got canceled. Eventually the engine was use to create that Wu-Tang Shaolin Style fighting game, which came out some months after Power Stone.
@ DragonBomber
Then you haven't experiences the true brutality of Eternal Champions if you haven't experienced it for the Sega CD. Look on YouTube for the fatality/overkills/etc. videos on there and see for yourself. A lot of them can be considering extremely graphic by todays standards, even if it was a sprite based game.
the reason why AO is the kiss of death is because the industry itself hates it from the retailers that refuse to touch it and the consoles makers that have said they would not approve it on their system(Sony/NIN).
Frankly MS should jump on this and show adult class games have a place, and a home on the 360 :X
It had an M rating, but the the deaths from the "interrogation" scenes were done in black and white (originally they were in color), and the camera often panned away from the more brutal ones.
So my query is how can companies like Sony and Nintendo (and Microsoft if I'm not mistaken) say they don't support AO titles, when in affect they do over here in the UK - the rating is the same.
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