US/Euro naming convention question.

[AB Positive]

Riddle me this, Batman...

Posting in another thread I remembered that in the UK all the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle" based stuff had to change Ninja to Hero. Some sort of cultural censorship. OK, I get that - I know in China you can't show skeletons or anything like that. Censorship happens...

But around the same time TMNT was popular, there was a great gaming series on the C64 that got popular and I know was popular in Britain... LAST NINJA.

... wtf?


I'm not a fan of censorship but that's not the point here. I'm asking about consistency - how did Last Ninja get away with Ninja in the title but TMNT had to become TMHT?

[TCD]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage...t_Hero_Turtles
Stupid, really I guess Last Ninja had a different 'age rating' then.

[humble worm]

ninja is a naughty word? most interesting...

[TCD]

Violent, not naughty You know, everybody thinks about blood and guts and stuff once they hear Ninja...

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Violent, not naughty You know, everybody thinks about blood and guts and stuff once they hear Ninja...

Not me, I think about pyjamas and breakdancing.

[AB Positive]

Amazing. *shakes head*

Of course if I remember right censorship in the 80's in the UK was amazingly weird and unnecessarily strict. What with horror films being put into almost the same category as hardcore for a consumer.

[antonvaltaz]

I think it was because TMNT was being marketed widespread to kids with TV cartoons, video games, comics, lunchboxes etc.

Computer games were still relatively obscure in the '80s...

[PowerPie5000]

Originally Posted by AB Positive

Amazing. *shakes head*

Of course if I remember right censorship in the 80's in the UK was amazingly weird and unnecessarily strict. What with horror films being put into almost the same category as hardcore for a consumer.

I honestly don't think the UK had any major censorship issues? horror films, and violence have been the norm for probably the last 30 years and i don't think much has changed... if anything the UK has loosened up quite a bit and is probably the country with the least amount of censoring going on

I remember silly little things in games that had to be altered for the US market... Snes games were hit hard in the US at the time! Women in games had to wear more clothes and certain words or expressions had to be removed etc... I never understood the TMNT censoring in the UK/Europe (there is no censorship on that now though )

[Retro-Nerd]

From what i've read the UK censored a lot of movies related to morality in the 80s/90s. Is that true? Can't remember single flicks or details, but some decisions were really weird.

[Qube]

Lots of censorship in the UK, see here an alphabetic list starting with A - http://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/hitsa.htm

Q;

[PowerPie5000]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

From what i've read the UK censored a lot of movies related to morality in the 80s/90s. Is that true? Can't remember single flicks or details, but some decisions were really weird.

I think a few decisions in the UK are weird.... such as road works! Why change something that has been fine for years? To be honest i think the government gets bored and then ruins things that were fine in the first place I suppose each country has it's weird habits, and laws etc...

I've seen many old movies but cannot think of any that have been censored (maybe i never knew they were censored in the first place? ).

[AB Positive]

Originally Posted by PowerPie5000

I honestly don't think the UK had any major censorship issues? horror films, and violence have been the norm for probably the last 30 years and i don't think much has changed... if anything the UK has loosened up quite a bit and is probably the country with the least amount of censoring going on

Oh that's definitely the case and has been for some time. But I remember, I guess it was really more the early 80's and Thatcher's influence on the country - look at the episode "Nasty" from The Young Ones - just getting a couple horror films took some underhanded tactics from Mike because they were deemed too vicious for normal viewers.


Of course now I'd say that is more the case here than in the UK. Violence not so much as sexuality, but hell - a pair of breasts will get a game an AO rating but you can shoot buckets out of some poor soldier and make an M rating easy.


EDIT - ha ha! those are american ratings too. For those that aren't aware:

AO = Adults Only = XXX rating

M = Mature = a movie's "R" rating or "17 and up unless parents supervise"

I'm fascinated by culture and cultural differences... it helps keep me in the state of mind that will motivate me to leave this messed up country as soon as money allows.

[PowerPie5000]

Originally Posted by AB Positive

Oh that's definitely the case and has been for some time. But I remember, I guess it was really more the early 80's and Thatcher's influence on the country

From what i recall, old Maggie Thatcher was as hard as nails! She always looked like she was ready to headbutt someone

[Jonathan Drain]

In later "Hero Turtles" episodes they censored Michaelangelo's nunchuks to some sort of goofy turtle shell on a stick. There was a particular panic at the time over nunchuks, I think due to Bruce Lee.

[dlfrsilver]

we had The original title here Les Tortues Ninja - Les chevalier d'écailles