Dee Yun: (contact-deleteme[at]-deleteme-direman [dot] com) 2008-12-05 05:09:34

I Can't Believe This Game Isn't Rated AO

I found this while browsing JRPG Engrishy goodness for inspiration. The localization team for Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia had WAAY too much fun. The ESRB dropped the ball in not rating this "Adults Only":

On Monday, I chose to enjoy the vomitous fevered aching chills of the flu instead of blogging about pirates. Real ones. Only instead of drinking grog and belching AHRRRR, they use speedboats and attack with AK-47s and RPGs. I've been following these stories with increasing astonishment all fall.

Somalia's been without a functioning government since 1991. If you're not shaking your head sadly and saying "tut tut" or "tsk tsk" with me, it's that place depicted in the film Black Hawk Down. Well, that fertile anarchy has now yielded pirates.

On September 25th, they nabbed a boatload of heavy weapons and tanks. You'd think that if you were shipping grenade launchers and TANKS you'd also have security sufficient to fight off some speedboats. On November 17th, they secured an oil tanker carrying $100,000,000.00 worth of oil. One hundred million dollars! And now they're plundering game shipments. They're pirating videogames! IRL!

They then hold the booty for ransom! The corporations who own the vessels must then hire mercenaries to deliver the payments. They're racking in millions. And they're apparently honorable in abiding by the terms of negotiated releases of the captured ships. And polite. And even share some of the proceeds with (well, bribe) the United States-backed peeps that are trying to become the government. WTF?

It's gotten so bad that companies are debating the merit of changing shipping routes to go AROUND AFRICA. These pirates aren't cute, they're fucking blockading the Suez Canal. With speedboats, and AKs. Pirates win, because they're real.

Zombies are a close second. Left 4 Dead is a rockin' multiplayer game everyone should be playing this fall season. Someone found a way to make this game AO as well. I also love this news story: the MKR group (representing the interests of classic zombie filmmaker George Romero) sued Capcom for copyright violations (over their zombies in a mall game, Dead Rising). The judge's deliberation was awesome, "the few similarities MKR has alleged are driven by the wholly unprotectable concept of humans battling zombies in a mall during a zombie outbreak." He said the words "zombie outbreak" while court was in session. YES.

Sorry ninjas. Maybe next time, if I can find an awesome clip of you guys in action. There was this one movie where this kung fu dude was walking alone in a field, with no idea that there was an army of ninjas above him, fluttering on kites. Awesomeness like that would get you pretty close to pirates. (For the love of shuriken, does anyone know what movie I'm talking about?)

Robots and monkeys? Get your shit together, because you aren't even close.