The Nintendo of old is gone. Where once the Japanese giant would be squeamish when it comes to mature games featuring blood and gore, it is now far more welcoming in that respect. That’s the opinion of 3D Realms vice president Frederik Schreiber, who outlined just what is and isn’t allowed on the Nintendo Switch, a far cry from the censor-happy days of Nintendo in the 1990s.
“It’s a very simple process working with Nintendo these days,” Schreiber explains during our recent interview about the publisher’s new game, Wrath: Aeon of Ruin. “Back in the day, you had to go through a process where they curate what type of games they want on the platform.”
Famously, Nintendo forged forward with a seemingly heavy-handed censorship policy in the mid-‘90s, with perhaps the most egregious example of the process coming in the form of a neutered Mortal Kombat on the SNES.
But there’s still some titles that are, understandably, off-limits for a company that has cherished and cultivated a family-friendly image for the past three decades. “They still kind of do that [keeping games off the Switch], but the game has to be Adult-Only rating, which games rarely get… It has to be like straight-up nudity and violence in the same game to get that rating. I think those games they keep off the platform, otherwise, it’s pretty straightforward.”
While Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is set for a 2020 release on the Switch, the game hasn’t exactly been bombarded with notes and suggestions. In fact, Schreiber peels back the curtain a little bit by revealing that “We haven’t heard anything from Nintendo in terms of why they wouldn’t get it on [to the Nintendo Switch].”
Things are clearly different now and, with a game as brutal as Wrath on the horizon, it appears that Nintendo has mellowed out over the years regarding its output.
