Games that couldn't be made today / video game things that wouldn't be acceptable today

[Stasi]

The TimeSplitters games

 

[The Jumping Dwarf]

About half the characters in ClayFighter, including a Jamaican-accented shaman carrying a rubber chicken, a buck-toothed chink in a gi, and a trio of cannibalistic pygmies.

They just don't make 'em like they used to.

 

[Hongourable Madisha]

View attachment 1935802
Shenmue's npc designs may not fly by western standards oh herro

In a similar vein, Um Bongo from Simon the Sorcerer 2. He subverted a lot of racist stereotypes and Simon was always the butt of the joke as the ignorant white British kid rather than him, but just the concept of a black guy in a loincloth with huge red lips called Um Bongo wouldn't fly in the first place.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Goldeneye or any movie tie in that's actually good.

Wrestlemania 2000 or any other wrestling game that's actually good.

Turok.

Nothing in the game was objectionable, and that's the problem. If it was made today, you know it'd have to have a bunch of modern political bullshit in it, or else woke Twitter would try to cancel it for being culturally insensitive. I didn't even know the main character was "native american" until recent years where it became "problematic" to have a native american main character who wasn't a Johnny-Depp-from-The-Lone-Ranger walking stereotype.

On the other side of the same coin. Turok 3 unceremoniously killed off the main character in the intro so a new female character and a child we had never heard of before could take his place. Again, nothing objectionable about that at the time, but can you imagine the shitstorm if they did that today? The game would be boycotted as woke pandering and pissing on the legacy of the character.

 

[The Valeyard]

In today’s post #MeToo world? Leisure Suit Larry.

 

[Bluey]

Also, IRC in Streets of Rage 3 the first mini-boss of the first level was a flamboyant homo with a leather cap and leather stockings, who would slap you instead of punching and cry after defeat. Then I watch DSP playing it and instead of him you fight two suits with extra health. But that's a real example.

Otherwise I choose the entirety of God Hand.

Yeah, his name was Ash. He was only in the Japanese version. He was kind of a funny boss tbh.

Reminds me of the orginal Breath of Fire 3 had a horse boss that had an Ultraman colour scheme and even struck the same pose in his attacks. PSP version recoloured him brown. I assume to avoid copyrights but it was a neat homage.

The original Friends of Mineral Town had an apple seller who looked like a stereotypical Chinese man with a Fu Man Chu mustache. He changed for the remake to look less sterotypical.

 

[Fagnacious D]

Leisure Suit Larry 3: One of the deaths is getting raped by a pig.

TBH: anything in the LSL series.

 

[Face Of A Ghost]

Resident Evil 5. Yes, the whole game.

Kinda garbage but coop i had serious fun with friends. 6 i didn't even touch it.

 

[Detrogen]

Off the top of my head

- every female character design in the Jak series. It’s all big booba and exposed midriffs

- the old-school Ratchet & Clank games would probably get some kind of flak for “glorifying gun culture” or some other gay shit

- the entire Duke Nukem franchise. Although my favorite example would be “Time to Kill” where Duke freaks out after the timeline is changed and he finds his favorite strip joint has become a gay club

- The classic “Samus in a bikini” ending for the OG Metroid would have been banned for haram

- the scene in Arkham Knight where Batman carries Harley kicking and screaming to a jail cell, complete with the opportunity for gratuitous close-ups of her giant ass

 

[augment]

Metroid. Samus is a BLONDE woman!

 

[The Valeyard]

Metroid. Samus is a BLONDE woman!

Blondes are okay (eg. Captain Marvel), but if Samus was a redhead she'd be turned into a sassy black woman if a Western developer got their hands on her.

 

[Neet Tokusatsu]

Just played Psychonauts for the very first time, and man, that game couldn't be made today without a lot of backslash. You see Psychonauts is a very standard 3d platformer, what sets it apart from your typical "bang bang wahoo" platformer is the writhing and overall tone of the game, and that's the thing, there is a lot of dark humor in the game, involving jokes about suicide, mental illness, racial stereotypes, parental neglect, hell the last stage sure as hell would trigger a lot of vegans.

Let's see how the sequel turns out, but i'm not holding my hopes up...

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Red Dead Redemption 2, a game where you could torture, rape and kill feminists. Never played the game, just read the Jezebel article.

 

[Mimic]

Any Fatal Fury team ending from King of Fighters. Terry and Andy always get the ladies... Joe gets the "okama". Hilarious, but obviously won't fly anymore.

 

[Face Of A Ghost]

Red Dead Redemption 2, a game where you could torture, rape and kill feminists. Never played the game, just read the Jezebel article.

I immediately put 75 bullets in her to shut her up when I came across. Around the same time the videos started showing up and it gained traction, I was hollering lmao.

 

[McAfee'sCorpse]

Postal 2. Enough said.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Forget video games themselves, try reading any video game magazine from the 2000s and you will be utterly flabbergasted by the amount of stuff that wouldn't fly today, we're talking dick jokes, sexist comments, T&A photos, throwing around words like "trannies" or "shemale" and the endless assumption that you, the reader, are male, why wouldn't you be? Complete with endless "how to get your GIRLFRIEND to play games!" articles, pick any random issue of any random magazine from about 2007 and below and you are guaranteed to find something that's politically incorrect today.

To say the cultural climate surrounding video games used to be very different is to make an understatement on the level of "the sun is kind of warm"

The thing is the peak dudebro era of games journalism was already over by the end of the 2000s, if for no other reason than so many magazines had folded by that point, whatever magazines were left or changed into different forms adopted a more neutral tone, before they decided to get into blatant haranguing around the time of 2012.

- the scene in Arkham Knight where Batman carries Harley kicking and screaming to a jail cell, complete with the opportunity for gratuitous close-ups of her giant ass

What's ironic is Arkham Knight was already a bit toned from from Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, you can no longer see Ivy's ass for example, as things were already getting pretty Woke in 2015, but it was also a transitionary period, so Arkham Knight still had a pretty sexy Catwoman and Harley.

While the Batmobile stuff can get tedious I really like Arkham Knight and think it's underrated because for one thing it's one of the last AAA games developed in the west to still have sexy women in it.

 

[Massively Strong Greed]

Mario as a character
Characters like Princess Peach
Having a Pokémon named Porygon
Jynx was fully censored by the early 2000s, I’m surprised some idiot has never tried to claim that Whimsicott is racist
Sex appeal woman characters in general

 

[M3xus]

Deus Ex really wouldn't fly nowadays, whether its the terrible accents, or the plot hitting far too close to home.

Barring Disney nonsense, I don't think Jedi Outcast or Jedi Academy would fly if they were made today. JO has Kyle sparing a villain after she confesses she's too afraid to die, and then said villain turns around and winds up being the Big Bad for JA with a much sexier outfit. That and it portrays the original cast as badasses (Luke only loses to Jedi Outcast's villain because of plot nonsense), and we certainly can't have that nowadays.

 

[Syaoran Li]

Aside from the obvious things everyone's mentioned like Samus in a bikini, Rumble Roses, Duke Nukem, or Leisure Suit Larry, there's two other games I know wouldn't fly today and both are favorites of mine.

GUN has you play as a cowboy, has sympathetic Confederates helping said main character and villainous Apaches opposing him. Yeah, there is also the fact that Blackfeet Indians are on the side of the good guys and the main villain was also a Confederate officer as well, but when has that ever stopped the Woke Left?

The other is CarnEvil, my favorite arcade game of all time.

Blood, guts, crude humor, one of the earliest examples of "jiggle physics" (the Evil Marie boss fight), a blonde girl in a skimpy outfit typical of a late 90's college girl, and there's even evil Mexican imps with stereotypical Spanish accents in the Big Top and gay BDSM-themed enemies in the second half of the Freak Show (nevermind that they're meant as a shout-out to Hellraiser)