CERO is a new one to me though, since I don't pay attention to the Japanese scene all that much. If you have any examples of their meddling you're willing to share on this topic, I'd be interested in looking into it further.
@Creepypasta Mario one of the examples of CERO
@DickoTheClown mentioned was that apparently Masahiro Sakurai clashed a lot because of the design of Palutena being “too sexual”. And overall CERO is just the ESRB but ten times worse.
CERO is the ESRB's puritanical and tyrannical Japanese cousin. They are responsible for a lot of the censorship of Japanese games, as well as the censorship of foreign games that want to be released in Japan. Worse yet, CERO only seems to become more and more puritanical and overreaching as it goes on.
As garbage of a game as it was, The Last of Us 2 was censored in Japan (you might say they were spared, but censorship is censorship), and it was forced to take a Z rating on top of that. Say what you will about TLoU2, but devs having to waste time and resources to censor their games for CERO is a net negative. Censorship of any kind for a game meant for adults is just retarded and bad.
The Callisto Protocol also never released in Japan (its release was cancelled) because CERO demanded that the violence be scaled back if the game wanted a CERO rating at all, and the dev refused to compromise the integrity of the game just for a retarded ratings board.
Dragon Quest 3's devs complained extensively about CERO and having to comply with their weird puritanical views in a 90-minute interview that has unfortunately been taken down. Those outfits that everyone was complaining about being censored? Long-time DQ fans (not tourists who suddenly claimed to have always loved DQ) fully saw it coming. CERO is the reason why it happened before it even released in Japan (so no, buying the Japanese version will only rid you of localization, it won't give you uncensored outfits). In fact, CERO's censorship of the same or similar outfits can be seen even in Japan-only releases of games in the Dragon Quest series. The only reason the original DQ3 wasn't censored like that is that it released in 1988, 14 years before CERO even started.
A two-minute clip of that interview made its rounds in the anti-woke circles featuring what has now been determined to be mistranslated subtitles, construing that Western Wokeness is why the games were censored. Of course, pedophiles Grummz and Rev says Desu, infuriated by the fact that a teenager's ass and tits were now covered by skintight pieces of cloth, shouted to the heavens that this was a plot by Western Blue-Haired Wokies.
Had Grummz been an actual fan of the DQ series and not just a gaming tourist, or if he even had an iota of integrity or research skills, he would know these things. But he's just a pedo who wants to goon to anime children.
