At some point, we have all picked up a controller hoping to escape from real life, its twists and turns, its problems, its pains, its obvious mistakes. However, it doesn’t always happen, and sometimes reality seeps through the pixels, forcing changes in stories, moments, and even dialogues so that no one feels hurt: from September 11 to space travel, these are the 6 video games that changed during their development due to that damned and inevitable real life.
6-Little Big Planet
Yes. You are probably wondering why this Sony saga about a rag doll overcoming platform levels could offend someone, but the answer lies in its Safari Balance level, which caused the release to be delayed a couple of weeks because verses from the Quran were playing in the soundtrack.
More specifically, “Kollo nafsin tha’iqatol mawt, kollo man alaiha fan”, or in other words, “Every soul will taste the flavor of death, everything on Earth will perish”. Just the kind of thing you want to see in a game recommended for children like Little Big Planet. The game developers, Media Molecule, had no idea this was happening, and this version never saw the light of day, leaving it exclusively instrumental.
5-Fallout 3
The nuclear bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a disaster for humanity and especially for Japan. They have left a lasting impact on Japanese culture throughout history, from Ghibli films to movies like Godzilla. And for some reason, the Japanese still do not find it amusing when Americans tell the story from their point of view, as in Oppenheimer… or make references like in Fallout 3.
At a certain point in the game, in Bethesda’s game, you have the option to activate a small nuclear weapon that devastates the entire town of Megaton, something normal within the context of the story but that in Japan was seen as clearly insensitive: there, the subplot was completely removed and the person who gives you the device to explode the bomb was renamed “Nuka-Launcher”. And everyone was happy.
4-Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen
You have no idea how far video game producers go to polish the final project. Who would have thought that in the very Pokémon real life would sneak in? Well, it’s true: in the remake of Red/Blue we find a small change compared to the original games in the Science Museum of Pewter City.
In the original, when reading one of the texts you could read “Space Shuttle Columbia”. However, in 2003, Columbia disintegrated during reentry into the atmosphere, killing its seven crew members and causing trauma to an entire generation of American children. Game Freak then decided to make a small change and remove the word “Columbia” from the description. Better safe than sorry.
3-Overwatch
In 2016, Overwatch was launched with a great team of competitors, including a cowboy voiced by none other than Matthew Mercer (from Critical Role), and it quickly gained fame. His name, Jesse McCree, was actually a tribute to one of Blizzard’s developers who had the same name, and everyone thought it was the perfect name for a gunslinger.
However, the real-life Jesse McCree did more than just have a gunslinger name: in 2021 he was accused of discrimination and harassment against his co-workers and was fired. And, for whatever reason, no one felt comfortable with the character in Overwatch anymore. For a while, they simply called him “the cowboy” before definitively changing his name to Cole Cassidy. Dodged bullet, literally.
2-Spider-man 2: Enter Electro
Note: do not confuse with the legendary Spider-man 2 for PS2. This was a game for PS1 made by a small team within Vicarious Visions and it was a simple sequel to the original Spider-man that many considered worse. Partly because they had to change their final battle at the last minute, which was going to take place on top of the World Trade Center. Can you guess when the game was going to be released? That’s right: September 18, 2001.
Finally, it was delayed until a month later (in the United States, for some reason, September 2001 was not the time for Spider-man games) and they replaced the Twin Towers with, simply, a pair of generic towers with a bridge between them, erasing any visual recognition. Additionally, they changed the titles of some levels like Starry Flight! or The Top of the World, for obvious reasons.
1-Football Manager 2005
Yes, read that title again: it’s not FIFA, nor PES, not even Mario Strikers: Football Manager is a saga that basically consists of an Excel where you can see results and strategically change your team for more success. The problem is that in its 2005 edition, this saga angered China in a somewhat absurd way: it included Tibet in its list of territories, which the country claims as its own territory and much of the world sees as free.
However, the Asian giant saw it as an insult to its territory and it was decided that not a single copy would ever be sold there. Sega, quickly, released a special edition for China with Tibet and Taiwan being part of the country, which did not prevent the “Free Tibet” edition from being sold throughout the country in a pirated way. Here, if you don’t run, you fly.
