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Stellar Blade (2024)

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Stellar Blade became rather controversial with critics in large part due to the sexualization of its protagonist Eve. They argued that the game's marketing leaned heavily into Eve's sexual appeal by focusing on elements such as revealing costumes and suggestive character designs for its promotional strategy. This got to the point where the South Korean version of the game received an "Adults-Only" rating due to suggestive images, nudity, and violence. Hyung-Tae Kim, the game's director, defended these design choices, stating:

"When it comes to the design, we put special attention on the back of the character because the player is always facing the back of the character when they're playing. That's what they see the most of, so we thought this was pretty important."

This controversy culminated when the game released with a Day 1 update that patched out unintentionally offensive graffiti, and censored two revealing outfits Eve can wear in the game, the Holiday Rabbit and the Cybernetic Bondage, but these are not the only censored outfits left in the game. When the player finds their first unlockable Nano Suit blueprint on the overworld, a tutorial pop-up appears featuring a video that scrolls through a montage of the other Nano Suits you can unlock in the game, and among them is an uncensored version of the Moutan Peony, an outfit that features dark pantyhose covering Eve's skin up to her waist in both the base game and the Day 1 patch. It appears that the developers forgot to remove this video when changing the costumes during development, and it's currently not known if other outfits in this video were changed in the final game.

These changes are in contrast to a claim from the game's official Twitter account stating that all versions of the game worldwide would be released uncensored, leading to the changes being widely criticized by players on social media and speculation that the game's publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment mandated the changes after addressing the offensive graffiti. However, Kim addressed the matter during a Q&A at a launch event for the game, stating that the costumes in version 1.0.0.2 was their "final product", but claimed that "the answer is not enough to convince our users" and that an ongoing internal discussion was proceeding. Kim later reaffirmed his stance on the changed costumes in an interview with Korean outlet GameAbout, stating:

"I don't think that just because the costumes are vulgar doesn't necessarily mean they're good, so this is something that was modified for quality. As a result, there are parts where eroticism is lessened or emphasized. This is the final product that we want to show as the intended result."

Despite this, the version 1.0.0.3 update would cater to the complaints, adding two new variants of the Holiday Rabbit and Cybernetic Bondage with the censored parts reverted, as well as two new eroticized costumes, the Black and White Kunoichis.

The speculated tensions between Shift Up and Sony during development were actually highlighted by Drakengard and Nier: Automata creator Yoko Taro, a developer with a history of tensions with Sony, during a joint interview with him and Kim for IGN published a little over a week before the game's release:

Yoko Taro: "[...] Mr. Kim, I wanted to ask you if there were any fights with Sony Interactive Enteratainment (SIE), since they are publishing Stellar Blade."

Hyung-Tae Kim: "(Glances at SIE staff members in the room and laughs.) The people at SIE are... very, very nice!"

Taro: "SIE's staff members are pulling faces I've never seen before. I wish the readers of this article could see it!"

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Sexualization complaints:
https://www.denofgeek.com/games/stellar-blade-controversy-explained/

South Korean rating:
https://en.as.com/meristation/news/stellar-blade-gets-an-adults-only-rating-due-to-nudity-and-explicit-gore-n/

Design choice quote:
https://fandomwire.com/hyung-tae-kim-stellar-blade-avoid-controversy/

Day 1 patch censorship:
https://esports.gg/news/stellar-blade/players-outraged-at-unexpected-stellar-blade-outfit-censorship/

Compilation of outfits in base game before Day 1 patch (uncensored versions of Cybernetic Bondage at 2:30, and Holiday Rabbit at 4:52):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMT6z9xejeA

Compilation of outfits after Day 1 patch (censored versions of Cybernetic Bondage at 1:03, Holiday Rabbit at 2:19, and Moutan Peony at 3:02):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAcvYBGPoGk

Nano Suit tutorial pop-up montage with uncensored Moutan Peony costume (this is the only footage I could find of anyone sitting through this video start to finish):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHJhViruQKM?t=3761

Stellar Blade uncensored claim tweet:
https://twitter.com/StellarBlade/status/1781976139688534449

Video of Hyung-Tae Kim defending update changes:
https://www.reddit.com/r/stellarblade/comments/1cdlllp/directors_answer_to_the_change_in_the_outfitvideo/

GameAbout interview with Kim (article in Korean):
https://www.gameabout.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=87017

Holiday Rabbit and Cybernetic Bondage costume reversal:
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2024/05/stellar-blade-ps5-quietly-adds-uncensored-new-costumes-in-controversy-aftermath

IGN interview with Yoko Taro and Kim:
https://www.ign.com/articles/stellar-blade-x-nier-automata-taro-yoko-hyung-tae-kim

Deltarune (TBA)

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Although Chapter 1 was given a surprise release in 2018, with Toby Fox giving no prior public indications of its existence, Deltarune had been teased in secret since at least 2015. Three months after Undertale released, the fan site DeltaRune.com announced that it would be rebranding to Dreemurr.com at Fox's request; Fox didn't tell the owners of Dreemurr.com why he didn't want them to use the domain. However, after the fan site fulfilled his request, Fox used deltarune.com to host an image called him.png, a passage of Wingdings text only readable by turning up the brightness using image editing software.

While the text initially parroted the phrase "THIS NEXT (space) EXPERIMENT (space) SEEMS (space) VERY (space) VERY (space) INTERESTING" from the unused room_gaster event in Undertale, by July 1, 2016, the text was edited to read "THREE HEROES APPEARED (space) AT WORLD'S EDGE", later being edited again by August 17 to say "THREE HEROES APPEARED (space) TO BANISH THE ANGELS HEAVEN". Both revisions quote portions of the legend that Ralsei recounts in Chapter 1, indicating that these parts of the game's backstory were already conceived by this point.

Following the release of Chapter 1, deltarune.com would be refurbished as the official website for Deltarune itself. Consequently, earlier versions of the site only survive through snapshots on the Wayback Machine, a URL archiving platform hosted by the Internet Archive.

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person VinchVolt calendar_month May 13, 2024

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The Cutting Room Floor article:
https://tcrf.net/Prerelease:Deltarune

Comments section and screencap of the now-deleted r/Undertale post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Undertale/comments/3vxmhq/dreemurr_31_faq/
https://tcrf.net/images/d/db/Deltarune-dreemurr-com-originally-deltarune-com.png

December 9, 2015 Wayback Machine snapshot of him.png:
https://web.archive.org/web/20151209013205/http://www.deltarune.com/him.png

July 1, 2016 Wayback Machine snapshot of deltarune.com (Note: this archive is not displaying correctly as of May 13, 2024):
https://web.archive.org/web/20160817183540/http://www.deltarune.com/

August 17, 2016 Wayback Machine snapshots of deltarune.com and him.png:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160817183540/http://www.deltarune.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20161221070931im_/http://www.deltarune.com/him.png

Tweets by @ChristopherMoom:
https://twitter.com/ChristopherMoom/status/1334580988521934850
https://twitter.com/ChristopherMoom/status/1334562885461307395

Star Fox (1993)

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The hand-operated puppets utilized in Japanese promotional material for the first Star Fox game, as well as the cover of one of its guidebooks, were created by Takashi Yamazaki, a Japanese filmmaker and visual effects supervisor best known internationally for his 2023 film "Godzilla Minus One".

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person Dinoman96 calendar_month May 15, 2024

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Star Fox - Japanese promo store video featuring puppets:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hR4G8BK59c?t=130

Time Extenstion article:
https://www.timeextension.com/news/2024/05/seems-like-godzilla-minus-ones-director-worked-on-star-foxs-puppets

Takashi Yamazaki interview featuring attached image (text in Japanese):
https://cgworld.jp/interview/1502-entry010-admiration.html

Star Fox - Japanese guidebook cover with puppets:
https://twitter.com/ayano_harumaki/status/1790292102796153093

Assassin's Creed Shadows (2024)

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One of the game's dual protagonists Yasuke, an African samurai, is the first main character in the Assassin's Creed series to be based on a real historical figure, but his real-life identity and status serving under Japanese daimyo Oda Nobunaga has been the subject of a contentious debate among historians. There are few scholarly/historical resources available describing him and his life, as well as no known resources from the time he was alive that refer to him as a samurai, with the most common conclusion being his title was a retainer to Nobunaga.

His reveal as a main character in the game on May 15, 2024 caused polarizing reactions worldwide on social media. Fans critical of the decision claimed Ubisoft were going against the series' penchant for accurate historical backgrounds and misrepresented Japan, which had never been covered in-depth in the globally-spanning game series, by inflating Yasuke's role in history and not having both protagonists be Japanese (the other protagonist, Naoe, is Japanese), claiming that Yasuke was not actually a samurai. Fans in support of Yasuke's role claiming that he was actually a samurai called these objections racist and based on narrow-minded arguments and inferences, with some going so far as to claim that Asian samurai protagonists in media were oversaturated and that critics would give the same complaints if it were a game set in Africa starring an African protagonist. This intense fighting led to an edit war on Yasuke's English Wikipedia article, with administrators publicly calling the article's Talk page "a complete dumpster fire". As of May 30, the consensus that was reached on the Talk page appears to be that the available resources are inconclusive, and there is still no historical evidence confirming that Yasuke was or was not a samurai. Reflecting this, the article does not call him a samurai when covering his documented life.

The lack of clarity on his life allowed popular culture and media to take creative liberties in speculating who he was, often depicting him in adaptations as a high-ranking samurai, and Ubisoft seemed to be going in a similar direction. The advertising for the game at its announcement described Yasuke as a "samurai of historical legend", and a press release stated:

"Ubisoft Quebec wanted to include a Samurai, and Yasuke's story was open-ended enough to allow for creativity; there are still plenty of questions and speculation surrounding him. The fascinating facts, though, were undisputable: of African origin, he arrived in Japan enslaved by the Portuguese; he impressed with size, strength, and wits; he served under the Japanese daimyo Oda Nobunaga. There must have been something exceptional about Yasuke to succeed in the service of a personality like Nobunaga's, [...] and the goal has been to expound on this in Assassin's Creed Shadows through his curiosity, openness, respect for values and tradition, valor, warmth, and charisma."

While the header for this section of the press release is called "Yasuke: A Real-Life Samurai", this description seems to be carefully worded to stop short of directly calling him a samurai, with the use of "historical legend" elsewhere suggesting that they were aware of the unconfirmed status and were fictionalizing Yasuke for the game.

In a set of developer interviews with Famitsu published on May 15, creative director Jonathan Dumont elaborated that they also chose Yasuke to fit with the game's story of a foreigner who fights off oppressing forces, like the Portuguese slave trade's effects on Japan, while exploring a country unknown to him alongside the player, stating that they were "first looking for "our samurai," someone who could be our non-Japanese eyes". The following day, the Famitsu article was edited to change developer quotes in the interviews that either directly or contextually referred to Yasuke as an "outsider" to being a "foreign-born samurai", and also removed the aforementioned Jonathan Dumont quote, for unknown reasons.

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Game website with "samurai of historical legend" quote:
https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/assassins-creed/shadows

Ubisoft press release:
https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/article/2LH4Ael4X1TlNJY3B3aYg5/assassins-creed-shadows-launches-november-15-features-dual-protagonists-in-feudal-japan

Ubisoft article with several videos explaining historical backgrounds behind previous Assassin's Creed games:
https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/article/6d4zQXyH0VF6z75Ab7jfss/discover-the-real-history-behind-every-assassins-creed

IGN articles:
https://www.ign.com/articles/when-and-where-is-assassins-creed-shadows-set
https://www.ign.com/articles/assassins-creed-shadows-yasuke-asian-protagonist

TheGamer article:
https://www.thegamer.com/african-assassins-creed-shadows-controversy/

Time article:
https://time.com/6978997/assassins-creed-shadow-yasuke-controversy/

Forbes article mentioning Wikipedia edit war and international reactions:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2024/05/15/japanese-fans-are-puzzled-that-yasuke-is-in-assassins-creed-shadows/

Yasuke English Wikipedia article (Note: while much of this controversy occurred on English language Wikipedia, bear in mind that Wikipedia articles by themselves are not reliable sources for historical research, and the English article is not a uniform representation of the information on Yasuke across the different language versions of Wikipedia that have this article. There are varying primary, secondary, historical and pop culture sources suggested for and used in all of these articles either backing up verified information about him, or making different claims that may not be accurate.):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yasuke

Wikipedia administrator discussion:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240518220622/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Talk:Yasuke_is_a_complete_dumpster_fire

Earliest archive of original Famitsu interview (in Japanese; English machine translations for all archives of this article compared between Google Translate and DeepL prior to publishing this submission. Deleted quote in Japanese is "まず“私たちの侍”、つまり日本人ではない私たちの目になれる人物を探していましたが、これは") (May 15):
https://web.archive.org/web/20240515185159/https://www.famitsu.com/article/202405/5194

Archived edited interview (May 16):
https://web.archive.org/web/20240516194746/https://www.famitsu.com/article/202405/5194

Latest archived edit (May 18):
https://web.archive.org/web/20240518034336/https://www.famitsu.com/article/202405/5194

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl (2021)

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In Jenny's showcase, her neutral air light attack is referred to as a "lingair". This is a reference to a tweet made by developer Thaddeus Crews prior to her reveal, where he questioned the appropriateness of the "sex kick", a competitive fighting game term originating from the Super Smash Bros. series for an aerial attack that stays out for an elongated period and slowly becomes less powerful, and suggested "lingering air" as a sanitized alternative.

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person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month May 23, 2024

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Jenny Showcase:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WM3AoVxDFw?t=64

Lingering air tweet:
https://twitter.com/Repiteo/status/1512259022346412032

Confirmation of tweet's connection:
https://twitter.com/Repiteo/status/1525204198727593984

Sex kick SSBWiki page:
https://www.ssbwiki.com/Sex_kick

Kamikuishiki-mura Monogatari (1995)

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Upon its discovery by English-speaking audiences, Kamikuishiki-mura Monogatari was widely speculated to be a propaganda game by Aleph (formerly and more infamously known as Aum Shinrikyo), a Japanese apocalypse cult and terrorist organization most notorious for perpetrating the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack in 1995. The game sees the player control Aleph founder Shoko Asahara, who expands the cult's influence throughout the game before eventually carrying out the sarin attack. Successfully carrying out the attack results in the player winning the game, while repeated mismanagement of the cult triggers the apocalypse that Asahara prophesied. Various photographs, propaganda footage, and news coverage tied to Aleph is also featured throughout the game, most prominently on the title screen.

Despite these elements, the idea that the game was created to advertise Aleph was eventually disproven in a 2019 investigation by Vice. According to the article, the game was published shortly after the sarin attacks with the intent of mocking the cult instead of endorsing them. Developer HappySoft's advertising campaign emphasized their hatred of Aleph and highlighted the fact that players could sell Asahara's bodily fluids to "stupid believers." Additionally, the live-action footage featured in the game was picked specifically to demean the cult, as featured news coverage is negative in tone and shows Aleph spokespeople frantically trying to avoid reporters, while the propaganda footage consists of clips that were widely mocked in Japanese media following the sarin attacks. Vice attributed the misconceptions to a combination of language barriers and limited international knowledge about Aleph beyond the sarin attacks.

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person VinchVolt calendar_month May 27, 2024

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Vice article:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/vb5k7a/the-true-secret-history-of-the-creepiest-cult-game-ever-made

Advertisement in volume 4 of Game Urara (in Japanese; warning: some of the magazine's content is NSFW):
https://archive.org/details/gameurara-vol4-1995-600DPI/Game%20Urara%20-%20Vol.%204%20%28Searchable%29/page/n187/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/gameurara-vol4-1995-600DPI/Game%20Urara%20-%20Vol.%204%20%28Searchable%29/page/n189/mode/2up

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