Bullet-Hell Shmup Refused Classification In The West Over 'Expression Restrictions'

I've never been too keen on this but surely if it's given an appropraite age rating then it should be available everywhere!

There's more to classifying a game than just the aesthetics of it. I don't know about how the US classifications are done but I was told this directly by someone at PEGI who rates the games, that a few people at PEGI play through the entire game before they decide a rating for it. If a complaint is received, e.g. "this game is rated too low, it should be rated 18 due to its content" then the staff will replay the entire game in order to determine whether it should be reclassified or not.

I checked and it has a 12+ rating in Japan. How on earth did it get rejected in the west? Surely it could've gotten a 16+ or even 18+ rating here and would've been fine.

I suspect that the issue really is that they didn't get the approval for the age rating they were aiming for and instead of going for a higher age rating, they decided to gatekeep the game to Japan.

Was not expecting to see a girl with Humoungos hungolomghnoloughongus proportions when I woke up today.

I can't say anything about the game itself, but loads of companies in Japan do this sort of thing because males are gonna be males. Expect a lot more headlines like this in the next 4 years, considering the way the world is going.

Yeah I'd reject it more for looking like hot garbage. I'm sure they just need to iron out what rating it will get with each board which is surely not an all ages. But hey based on that x post, never miss an opportunity to tug at the outrage gland by implying big bad N is repressing a game. No better way to move what looks like a waste of money.

Problem with rating classifications is that you can have two individuals look at a game differently, and rate it different.

I do hope PEGI and ESRB are not as messy as game classification on Steam (some people that rate if a game may or may not release on Steam hate anything anime, but would be fine with a 18+ western game containing "adult" scenes, even while the anime game they just refused was more tame than Witcher 3...)

Anyhow, Steam is sadly a more extreme example (as a PC and handheld gamer, I deal a lot with them just like Nintendo for my games to play)

But it did happen a few times that rating boards (ESRB and PEGI for example) refused a game for baffling reasons.

@MeanBeanEgg I'm sure in some other reality that might be considered clever. I was trying to mention how perpetually horny people are, usually guys, without spelling it out but here we are.

It might be worth noting that this studio's previous two games "Like Dreamer" and "Cosmo Dreamer" are in the eShop, with a 12 and a 7 rating in the european eShop. And I'm pretty sure those games have big boobies in them as well.

So I'm leaning more towards it being the drug thing

Who cares? Gameplay-wise, it doesn‘t look like they‘re reinventing the wheel here.

@JohnnyMind I wouldn't say it's a censorship issue per se. Japan is VERY liberal with age rating, especially of sexual things and is in general ok with younglings being used in sexual acts (just look at shota). Watching the trailer for the game and seeing the age rating in Japan is 12+, yeah, there's no way that would even fly under 16 in the US and Europe - and for good reasons. If it were less I would be one of the firsts to file a complaint, even though I have no kids and despite being far from a puritan.

But we don't know the reasons so it's just speculation (and I'm a lot against speculation) and I was just mentioning it could be the issue because sexy and/or mature games are almost never rejected in Europe with the proper age rating.
Almost because there were a very few exceptions with games inviting to hate/discrimination/extermination of groups of people, but you can count those on your hands.

I got back problems just by looking at that thumbnail

I wonder if we are at the point where Japanese developers of deeply niche and unremarkable looking games are exploiting the Western 'Culture Wars' as a marketing strategy.
How many more people will buy this because they are 'fighting censorship' that would never of heard of this otherwise.
Not saying that is the case here, just wondering.

@KingofRedLions
The irony is you showing far more misandry than I've seen anyone show misogyny here on Nintendo Life.
How you or anyone else thinks this one very cartoony character with comically large breasts is some kind of pornbait and not just a joke is beyond me.

That said, I'm not really into bullet hells, nor whatever art style this game is going for. But hopefully this is mostly about the drug thing and they didn't get the age rating they wanted, rather than it being an issue of the art style contrasting with the content.

oh PLEASE. 😒🙄
there are other, more egregiously salacious games on the eshop than this.
this is a self-inflicted restriction by the developer, seemingly to get pity purchases from people accessing the JP eShop.
weird move, considering Outside published two similar shmups (Cosmo Dreamer and Like Dreamer) on the North American eShop with no problems.

@AJWolfTill "How many more people will buy this because they are 'fighting censorship'?"

Too many.

Sounds like it was possibly rejected by Nintendo of America/Europe rather than by the ESRB/PEGI.

Does the ESRB even reject anything? 🤔

And PEGI has been quite permissive with some rather explicit releases that would never have seen the light of day in the States. 🤷‍♂️

Sounds like a publicity stunt. People get so easily riled up about perceived ‘censorship’ at the moment it makes for easy marketing.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they submitted with an aim for a lower age rating than they knew it required so that it would get rejected and they could then go to socials and get people all agitated over perceived slights. They don’t even need to say what has or hasn’t happened people fill in the blanks with their own rage.

Now they’ll have a bunch of people who likely wouldn’t have heard of this game or bothered with it, staunchly defending it as a paragon of righteousness and terrible victim of social injustice (but not calling it that because that is woke and they don’t like woke) out of some misguided principal.

Available on Steam BTW for those interested, currently 20% off.

Yeah, it just sounds like they couldn't get the rating they wanted and then refused to sell in those regions.

Does the ESRB/PEGI just "reject" things like that? Can they? I know countries can step in and ban certain games, but I've never heard of such a thing happening with these boards.

I never really was a fan of these types of games that focus solely on anime girls for no real reason besides the obvious. Especially when they have big, uh, assets. But whatever lol. When playing the game you will probably not really be looking at that. That said, IF I were to get one of these games, I would 100% get a game without that, unless the game in question that has that stuff is just really, really good somehow.

I just want one with pretty colors all around. Not pixely, pleasing neon-y colors or something like that. I don't care about characters in a game like this. I don't think there is one like that on Switch. IS there even a game like that? A good one, I mean.

That is one fugly-looking game. Restrict away.

I seriously doubt it's just the jumbo jugs that did it in, considering more suggestive fare in the eShop (looking at you, Hentai series).

Ratings do seem to take in the whole context of the game though. Persona 3 basically has high schoolers shooting their brains out with a gun (in a way) as part of the story, but that's on the eShop.

It's a joke. I recently complained to PEGI about the 3+ rating for Just Dance '25 in pericular the song Poker Face and they had no objections to that.

@DDFawfulGuy

I don't know if it helps or hurts the point you were making, but I just wanted to bring attention to the twitter account of the game's artist, which features many erotic artworks of big boob characters drawn in the same cutesy art style.

(WARNING EXTREMELY NSFW TWITTER)
https://twitter.com/Skapon_g

As for the big boob characters in REDNEG ALLSTARS specifically, who can say if it was intended to just be a funny character design or not, but I just wanted to point out that the artist does in fact draw erotica in the same exact art style.

By the way, my stance on the matter is that it shouldn't be such a big deal to draw a character with big boobs. I don't think big boobs are always inherently sexual, it can just be used as a character design element in order to exaggerate someone's appearance for comical effect, characterisation, or any other reason. Even just to have some big boob characters for the sake of it, or for representation, or whatever, I think it's fine.

And I also don't think that a game should be "banned" just because one of the characters is very booby. I think there must be something else going on that hasn't been made clear.

Some women happen to have very large appendages on their chests. Are they not deserving of fair representation?

I love Japan but I wish they would keep their fetishes to themselves or at least away from stuff with age ratings of 12 and below.

BTW this is really cool shoot'em up game!
as great as previous games "CosmoDreamer" and "Like Dreamer"
must have for all buller hell lovers!

" it's likely that the rating boards aren't too keen on the combination of suggestive elements (i.e. exaggerated parts of the female anatomy) alongside the cutesy, almost child-friendly artwork and pastel colour-scheme."

have they seen the Nintendo eshop? 🤔

EDIT - "...aren't too keen..."

the more I think about it, the more this phrase being used grinds my gears. they are there to report factually what is in the game, and we project this moral authority onto them. gross.

Definitely a game I don't care about. Just watched the video and besides it looking ugly as hell, I really don't care for schmups like this. Cheaply made and uninspired, that is.

There's already 2 games in this series on the Switch already with the same art. Good games too. Either way I'll just import it.

@EarthboundBenjy When you said "Extremely NSFW" I thought you meant something else. Checked out their media tab and all I saw were pinups. That being said I find their art hilarious looking I just don't care for shmups so the game wasn't for me anyway.

@betterthanvegas

Yeah, it's not "hardcore", but if I'm gonna be posting a link to erotica on NLife I wanted to make sure it was clearly marked lol.
(also the artist does have a link to their explicit nsfw account on there too, so y'know)

@gcunit a) They are not appendages.
b) Some cartoon character with extremely exaggerated anatomy and monster eyes is not fair representation at all.

I never understood why Japan is so relaxed on this stuff but in America it's all (Won't somebody think of the children!) Any instance of nudity or partial nudity, overly exaggerated fun bags etc is immediately looked down upon. Why are people so ashamed and embarrassed about the human anatomy?

Like when men walk down the street shirtless who appear to have breasts because they are so out of shape and that's just fine. An actual woman does it and....you cover those up this instant young lady!

Confuses the heck outta me. 😕

Now how did stellar blade pass just fine? Not to mention all the crazy exaggerated female designs in the street fighter series?

This is definitely more about not getting the rating he wanted, when we've got the likes of Caladrius Blaze still there on the eShop.

@PtM Thank you for attempting to set me straight, but are mammary glands not epidermal appendages?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3706056/

@LadyCharlie "this is a self-inflicted restriction by the developer, seemingly to get pity purchases."

How can you buy something that can't even be sold?! What are you talking about?!?!?

@AllieKitsune I dunno if there's a weird change with the age ratings though. Even PEGI is a far more liberal system and even they reject it?

I do have Caladrius, but that was rated a few years ago. Hope it's not a negative sign of the times....

@Samalik I work with ESRB. There's no change. I'm not privy to what went down with this one for obvious reasons, but they probably submitted for E or T, got rejected, and decided it wasn't worth re-submitting.
Perhaps they misunderstood the rejection for their desired rating as rejection of the game entirely.

@Zaruboggan That sounds like a very "japanese" misunderstanding, ngl

Someone should probably talk him outta it then. Maybe you could? I dunno.

....Does Nintendo not realize that some of the games on their eShop LITERALLY HAVE HENTAI IN THE TITLES? >.>

@Joeynator3000 If it has "hentai" in the title, it's not real hentai.
Gotta keep that in mind.

It’s a publicity stunt. Dear Lord that’s pathetic.

@gcunit I was wrong.

Oh but the endless AI generated artwork slop games are perfectly ok?

Lolita originally had to be published in France. It ran against US obscenity laws. The truth is that the US has never been the end all be all of free speech.

@Samalik
I did not know that my wishes are so powerful, they can force peoples behaviour.

The hypocrisy of western culture never ceases to amaze me. God forbid a well endowed cartoon character in a video game, but porn? Sex and nudity all over media and TV? All gucci. smh

@Jhena "I wish they would keep their fetishes to themselves" is what you said.

It's not about wishes. It's about logistics. Take away an outlet, and it will make it harder to control their feelings. Especially for something that is so rooted in nature.

Imports game

@Zebetite

"I can't say anything about the game itself, but loads of companies in Japan do this sort of thing because males are gonna be males."

(question: meaning of the "males going to be males" part of this message)

What a shame, as the previous titles, Cosmo Dreamer and Like Dreamer, are excellent shmups. I hope East Asia Soft will release an Asian physical release for import.

@Samalik I know, just saying that Nintendo makes no sense sometimes, but also some games out there actually do have nudity. lol

Sounds like the same issue that happened with Prison Princess 2. Nintendo seems to have changed their stance on lewd content on Switch outside of Japan.

@oatmaster felt pretty sad for the leading lady in that picture tbh.

@Samalik
Still I am not taking anything away from anyone with my wishes. Even so there is no real need for stuff like this.

I want to live as innocent as possible, so I want the media I consume to reflect that. It annoys me when games with an age rating of 12 feel innapropriate. For example some stuff in Xenoblade 2 or Visions of Mana. It does not even feel like it belongs there.

@Samalik Now you're just bullying. I once made a very mild comment on an article re not wishing to receive porn advertising and you responded with anger and insults, insisting that I had no right to object, amongst other appalling sentiments. My comment that you link to is a response to your disgusting tirade against me. According to you, sexism is objecting to porn and you think I should be banned for that, lol.

I have never called for you or anyone else to be banned. And as for blocking, I don't understand why you accuse me of that since a) I have never blocked anyone and b) I never even knew that was ever a feature here. A member of staff or a mod would be able to 100% confirm that I have never blocked anyone. I am aware only of the ignore feature and I haven't set even you on ignore, despite your nasty behaviour towards me. I have only ever ignored one user, and it's nothing personal there, it's simply that I find his English very difficult to understand.

@Jhena You mean teenagers can't enjoy games that acknowledge that they are growing up? Weren't you a teen yourself?

This kind of stuff is enjoyed because of innocence, not in spite of it.
I think it's bad that something that is trying to encourage you to have babies is looked at as though it is anything but from a place of innocence in the more ethical conditions.

For me, games like The Last of Us 2 should also be prohibited, because they are absurdly heavy, grotesque and even inappropriate. These regulatory bodies are very incompetent.

I understand why Dragons Crown, one of the best Beat n' Ups out there, hasn't been re-released on the Switch until now.

@MeanBeanEgg the whole game is shovelware, nothing to note here apart from perversion 🙄 glad the west has been saved from this mess smh

@KingofRedLions that’s not the definition of misandry, so you clearly didn’t do a good job of looking it up.

The game is likely just not being cleared for a E for everyone rating and the creators just don't want to have a 14+ or 18+ rating on their game. Has nothing to do with censorship or anything. The ESRB board tends to play through the games to determine the appropriate rating for games. If it has drugs it by default needs to be rated for teens anyways according to the board as thats a rule they've had for ages.

@Samalik
Yes, I was a teenager and I wish I would not have experienced alot of the media I consumed. You can be a teenager without the oversexualisation of japanese media.

My believe is simple, if it is not good for kids, it is not good for anyone.

"Expression restriction" is so dubiously ambiguous, I'm surprised there arent more comments scrutinizing that claim.

I dont want to be cynical, but why not put it all out on the table? I doubt they're legally compelled to not elaborate or specify.

If you wanna draw a girl with boobs twice the size of her head, y'know what, fine, whatever, you do you.

But you submitted that for an all ages rating? And played the victim when you didn't get it? I'm calling bogus.

We live in such a weird timeline where sexuality is both praised and criticised in equal measure.
Imo as long as it’s nothing illegal people should be free to express themselves in whatever way they wish.

@KingofRedLions Thank you for expressing your disapproval. Time to get another eShop card from Play-Asia!

If this is as it seems, the people that made this utterly absurd decision should be fired.

@PessitheMystic I didn't say that was the meaning though. You misunderstood me. The dictionary defines misandry as 'hatred of men'.

The relevant part of my earlier comment is quoted below:

"I had never heard of misandry before so I looked up the definition and found it tends to be used a lot in certain circles, namely by unattractive, unwashed men who lash out at women for not dating them and blame all their self-inflicted problems on women."

If I had written what you claim, I would have written "I had never heard of misandry before so I looked up the definition and found it means...etc" but I didn't do that; I was referring to its usage. In the first part of my sentence I stated I had looked up the definition of misandry and then in the second part I expanded on that by writing 'and' (meaning also, additionally), which is where I remarked on its usage, i.e. the circles in which it's commonly used.

@FirstEmperor Sure. Do as you please. It's your life.

@Samalik You most definitely are bullying, and now you're dredging up the very comment you were previously moderated for, which basically amounts to "I'm furious at you! How dare you object to porn!" Yeah, I get it, you love porn and you can't bear the thought that other people have no interest in it, and take it as a personal insult that others don't want anything to do with it. You basically have no respect for boundaries and refuse to take no for an answer.

Man-hating?! Well, that's a very strange thing to say. I have a lot of love and respect for the good, decent men in my life and I would say the vast majority of the billions of men in the world are good, decent people.

Also outright accusing me of lying as well. I have no idea about what you're referring to because a) I was never aware of blocking in the first place and b) even if I had known, I wouldn't have used it anyway and c) I don't have access to people's accounts so I don't know what people can see or not see when logged in or whatever. I don't even use the ignore feature except in the one case I mentioned, and that was nothing personal.

@Olliemar28 Could a moderator please step in here and check my account details and confirm to this user that I've never used the block feature on him or indeed on anyone. It's not nice to repeatedly be accused of lying and falsely accused of something. I would really appreciate it, thank you.

I’m assuming there must be something more… lewd… within the game because the trailer isn’t really giving me “too far to be rejected for classification” vibes

@JohnnyMind "censorship is at an even further stage than I feared"
How is this anything different than anything that has happened in the past decades? I'm pretty sure movies have been censored since the MPAA has been around.
As to games, even the NES had games self-censored to avoid release delays by a Nintendo approval rejection.
"Censorship" is just what's going to happen when you make work intended for a mass commercial market, even moreso when authors work on content delivered on a platform completely owned by another company.

@KingofRedLions Of course. And there's no need for me to strive to be a better human being because I'm already good enough according to my own criteria (AKA the only criteria I care about), but even if there was the idea that only playing games you approve of makes one a better human being is one of the most self-important things I've ever read.

@KingofRedLions Are you talking about that fictional character with the big breasts? I really don't understand how you can just straight up come to that conclusion that "they have hatred of Woman." Makes no sense. That isn't proof.

Plus I don't know about this game, but that character looks like a robotic figure?

they should have made the game more inclusive. would have been received with open arms

Good, stay in Japan. Maybe this dev can learn to focus on gameplay instead of trying to profit off being yet another amateur, boring-looking Touhou clone.

I can understand kinda why this isn’t going to pass over here. But how come I open up the eshop, and there are more anime waifu games than large first party and AAA games

So actual murder in gta games is fine, actual nudity in the witcher 3 and cyberpunk is fine, but a 2D shooter isn't fine? Wtf are the classification people in us and europe were thinking??

@KingofRedLions mate, I’m not reading all that, have a night off of it. Although lol @ copying a moderator in asking for help. Have you really got nothing better to do than proclaim your NintendoLife account innocence? Hahaha

@JohnnyMind Honestly, yeah. The censorship has gotten really bad here.

It's not a tumor!

Just played through the PC version of the game on my Steam Deck. The main boss rush mode anyway. And of the 31 girls featured, only three of them had a laughably huge chest, and none of them were shown in any offensive capacity that I can discern.

Game looks incredibly mid so no reason to really care.

@EarthboundBenjy Thank you for that it is appreciated. I completely missed their other links and I've been on the internet too long so I jumped to the worst immediately.

ok, but, game look bad. I'm all for booba, but, game look bad.

@Truegamer79 "I never understood why Japan is so relaxed on this stuff but in America it's all (Won't somebody think of the children!)"
Different countries have different standards.
America censors breasts, Japan censors violence, Europe and Australia can't stand the idea of children gambling fake money (but spending their parents' real money on "loot boxes" is still allowed). Each ratings board has something!

See, I’m far from a prude. But the human anatomy should at least still be recognisable.

Assuming this WAS censorship, When we complain about the west becoming overly puritanical and censorious, this here is exactly what we try to warn people about.

I haven't heard of this game before and Shmups aren't my cup-o-tea, but it's ridiculous that this game gets refused classification over what seems to be just suggestive imagery and covered up cartoon boobs, while stuff like Last of Us 2 can have realistic graphic violence, full frontal nudity, and a sex scene.

People saying like "the game looks bad", or "looks mid" are entirely missing the point here.

@Zaruboggan say, this might be a long shot but, is there a way you contact the devs to get clarification? if nothing else, it'd be good to have just to understand what happened here.

@MARl0 I just learned of the existence of Prison Princess 2 and if that's true, I'll be extremely disappointed, one of the main reasons I dropped every other major console except for Nintendo was because Furukawa was the only CEO of the Big 3 to openly denounce censorship and say in no uncertain terms that Nintendo doesn't censor third parties.

Really hope NoA isn't taking things in their own hands. I tried googling about it after reading your comment and the only "proof" I found was someone commenting "Nintendo of America and Europe are not allowing lewd games like this on their eShops anymore. Tokyo Clanpool is also not coming to the Western eShops and they directly cited this as the reason."

This is quite worrisome.

I'm either looking at the wrong game, or there's nothing in there that's even remotely on the same level as games like Moero Chronicle (USK/PEGI 16) and there are quite a few physical PEGI 18 titles out there that feature full frontal nudity and more (that still have 16 versions availble on the eShop). I doubt we've gone full censorship in such a short amount of time that this gets flagged for whatever there even is to censor while the many games about touching and undressing characters are perfectly fine.

@RubyCarbuncle not liking the artstyle is fine, the problem is saying "The Artstyle is ugly therefore it's fine that it was rejected".

To the best of my knowledge, the US ratings group doesn't outright reject games, except in the most extreme cases. Hell, even the Postal games got ratings and weren't denied them. It just sounds like this publisher didn't get the rating they wanted. It's problematic that they're making such a big fuss over not getting their desired rating, especially for such a mid title. The US and Japan have a lot of differences in ratings. The US is more allowing of violence and Japan is more allowing of sexualizing minors. When you make your game in one cultural context you can't just arbitrarily raise a fuss that it won't be received the same way in a different cultural context.

@Marurun I've only a little heard about Postal. Just that even Game Informer back in the day rated it poorly and said that the M rating on the box didn't make it cool.
Once I learned the meaning of "postal" I was later shocked to see Nintendo themselves use that word to describe Donkey Kong 64, in a promotional video for Toys 'R Us!