The Genesis 32X port was one of the first games to receive an M for Mature rating from the ESRB and received increased scrutiny following the Columbine High School shootings on April 20, 1999, after it was discovered that the perpetrators, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, had both been avid Doom players. However, while Doom is a gaming mainstay nowadays, it faced quite a bit of heat in its early years due to its graphic violence and satanic imagery, which drew criticism from multiple groups. One of the most influential video games ever made, Doom, along with Wolfenstein 3D, helped pioneer the first-person shooter genre and launch a franchise that has continued to stay relevant a quarter century after its conception. These days, Hatred is mostly forgotten about because it simply wasn’t good enough to stay in the spotlight.
Gamezone’s Mike Splechta worried that Hatred would become the “ next scapegoat” for school shootings and other acts of violence in America, while Rock, Paper, Shotgun noted in their review that “ Hatred fails in every way.” In light of the controversy, Valve decided to remove Hatred from Steam Greenlight, but ended up reinstating it after gamers labelled the move an act of censorship.
Though the controversy resulted in increased sales temporarily, Sega decided to pull Night Trap from store shelves in January 1994, with a censored version later released and ported to the 3DO, Sega 32X, MS-DOS, and Mac OS, and a remastered version released on PS4 and Xbox One in 2017.Īn isometric shoot ’em up in which players control a misanthropic mass-killing sociopath on a “genocide crusade” to kill as many people as possible, the surprising thing about Hatred is not that it was deemed controversial, but that its detractors were largely video game journalists - not parent groups or politicians - who criticized it for not only being a poor reflection of the medium, but a poorly made game to boot. While the goal of Night Trap is to prevent the trapping and killing of women, it was claimed that the game featured gratuitous violence and explicit sexual content, despite the fact that it contained no nudity or extreme acts of violence. Although the game was relatively tame by 1992 standards - and looks positively quaint today - Night Trap was heavily scrutinized in the same 1993 United States Senate committee hearings on video game violence that would lead to the creation of the ESRB. Released at a time when the full-motion video game genre was all the rage, Night Trap is a horror game that was released for the Sega CD in 1992 that plays out like a C-grade slasher film, with minimal input from players actually required to progress the story. Additionally, the mobile gaming sensation Pokemon GOwas the focus of intense media scrutiny after it took the world by storm in July 2016, as there were many reports of physical injuries, car accidents, and even death resulting from people playing the augmented reality game.
The Pokemon Jynx was accused of being racist and even Satanic in appearance due to its face bearing a resemblance to an actor in blackface, and the design was later reworked.
The original Pokemon games for the Nintendo Game Boy ( Pokemon Red and Blue) got in some hot water over one of their creature designs. Really, Pokemon? Yes, believe it or not, the Pokemon games have had their fair share of controversy over the years, despite being rated E for Everyone and targeted toward a younger audience.