Flying Shark / Hishou Zame no longer banned in Germany

[WelshMegalodon]

I see the new year is off to a wonderful start.

[atheistgod1999]

In my experience, things that have a bad start actually end up really well. And often vice-versa.

And where I live, it was still 2016 when I posted that rant that's been in my system for over three years, and finally had a topic where I could release it. I guess you could call the responses that were actually in 2017 in my time zone fallout from last year

[maximo310]

Which rant? I've lost count by now.

Anyways, I'm glad that they finally got it off the censorship list considering how many other "war" games are still on it.

[Satan]

False advertising; there are no actual flying sharks.

Lying Shark

[CIT]

Does anyone know how it ended up on there in the first place?

It was actually the C64 port that was initially "banned", and as usual, other versions of the same game were later added to the list. The reasoning back then was, that the game glorifies violence because "the graphics look so realistic."

However, it was not outright banned, but what's called "indexed", which means it's OK to own and play, but you may not openly advertise
the game and may not sell it to minors for 25 years. After that it automatically gets removed from the index and can't be re-indexed.

Some stuff that will generally get your game into trouble in Germany is:
- If the only point of the game is to kill and it looks super realistic (so tongue-in-cheek "cartoony violence" is OK)
- If it has lots of Nazi symbols
- It denies or glorifies the Holocaust
- It includes content designed to undermine the constitution

If it includes sex, everything's OK tho.

What this looks like in practice is that you can go into a game shop in Germany and ask "hey, you got any of those indexed games?" and the clerk will most likely pull a huge drawer out from under the counter with all the gory shit.

In general, regulation of video games and films has become a lot more lenient over the years, though some idiosyncrasies remain.

[gameoverDude]

It's kind of a huge WTF when you consider a Japanese game company (Capcom) made 1942.
Japanese companies making you play as Allied fighters is a very strange thing.

I remember a 2001 EGM interview with a Capcom staffer, who mentioned there actually was some controversy about that in Japan. He compared it to a theoretical US-made Vietnam War game, where players "beat the hell out of the Americans" as Viet Cong. Might explain why the Famicom version of 1943 dropped "Midway Kaisen" for "The Battle of Valhalla."

Oh, that's a relief! Now I can FINALLY import that FM Towns Marty version without fear of it getting confiscated. And I'm not even joking.

If I'll ever find it for a half-decent price, that is.

I was considering the Towns port too, but quickly gave up on it. In case you've not tried it out - they cropped the viewable screen area, but didn't bother to reduce the active playfield. So you're forever exchanging fire with enemies in the phantom space above your monitor, often killing stuff without ever actually seeing it. Felt really chintzy - if not for that I'd probably have gone ahead and got a copy, it seemed pretty solid otherwise. It's basically what would've become of VING's later, excellent Saturn Rayforce had that port not included TATE.

I have Truxton II on the FMT Marty, and it's a similar case. I wouldn't have minded the graphics being downscaled so everything could remain visible. That would mean dropping the vertical resolution from 320 to 240 (the Sprite Layer's res is 256 x 240). Visual sharpness would take a hit, but the gameplay would probably be smoother with less slowdown.

The PC port of RayForce is very poor, and I could see an FM Towns version being that way if one came to be. Most or all of the visual FX from the arcade (and Saturn Tate mode) are GONE. There still is some parallax though.

FS has some good arrange BGM on the Marty, but nothing beats the X68000's soundtrack for this one- not even the PCB tunes.