10 Most Controversial Games

Controversy is no stranger to games and usually publishers are happy to stir up a bit of public horror because it generates lots of free publicity. It also generally has the opposite effect than that intended by the moral crusaders, rather than discourage sales it gets people interested and drives them higher. In this article we’ll look at the most controversial games ever developed.

Six Days in Fallujah
Konami were recently persuaded to ditch their forthcoming game Six Days in Fallujah after public pressure. Developer Atomic Games had been working on the shooter since 2005 but it generated anger amongst military veterans and the general public, particularly when it came to light that they consulted insurgents who had fought against US troops. After a whirlwind of angry emails, phone calls and letters Konami decided the game was more trouble than it’s worth and washed their hands of it.

Hot CoffeeGrand Theft Auto
This is by far and away the top selling controversial game series of all time. The games cast the player in the role of a criminal. You can shoot cops, steal cars, run over innocent pedestrians, sleep with prostitutes and then beat them to death, in the latest instalment you can even get drunk. While all of this raised a few complaints from the usual suspects and a ridiculous campaign from one crazy lawyer (look up Jack Thompson) who attempted to blame some shootings on the game it was all relatively low key. That is until the Hot Coffee scandal. Violence and crime are fine and even sex is acceptable if you don’t see it but a patch which allows you to control a crude sex mini-game? That was a step too far and the public outrage could not be contained. The laughable campaign to have GTA San Andreas banned because of this simply drove the sales higher and higher.

Mortal Kombat
The wannabe competitor to Street Fighter II had one edge over its burly opponent, graphic bloody violence. The special fatality moves caused an absolute uproar at the time with parents rioting in the streets….well ok sending angry letters then. The ability to finish off your enemy by ripping their spine from their still living body or to kick them into a bloody pile of guts actually sparked demands for a rating system. Suddenly video games weren’t just for kids anymore and age ratings began to appear on the covers just like movies.

Manhunt 2
You thought Manhunt was bad? The first batch of gimpy underworld murder with a dirty snuff video theme was tame in comparison to the second instalment. The public was outraged again and the game was rejected by the ratings board in the UK and had to be tweaked before release. There was even a Wii version for miming out your murder moves, a bit different from your average cutesy poo Wii shovelware.

Postal 2Postal Series
After some U.S. postal workers went crazy and shot a bunch of colleagues the term going postal came into usage and developer Running With Scissors decided to use it as the title for a series of ultra violent games. I use the term games lightly. The first game was an ugly 2D isometric affair and it surprisingly spawned two sequels, Postal 2 allowed players to set fire to cats and dogs, carve off limbs and it included a guest appearance by Gary Coleman. Badly made and full of swearing, violence, racial stereotypes and general intolerance the Postal games are trying too hard to be controversial. Fittingly the worst director in the world, Uwe Boll, made a film based on the second game.

Phantasmagoria
This was one of those live action games with spooky and slightly sexy action. You had to juggle about a million CDs and it featured gore and violence but it was the rape scene that stirred up the most controversy and got the game banned in Australia. Amazingly it was never banned in Germany and even more amazingly it was the biggest selling title of the year for Sierra. It was also seriously rubbish and those sales can be attributed to publicity because it certainly wasn’t the game-play or acting.

Carmageddon
A racing game where you try to run down as many people as you can for points leaving sticky bloody smears all over the road. This was like the old arcade game Death Race which also caused a bit of a stir. The developers had to make the people into zombies and turn the blood green for release in certain territories and in Brazil the game was banned for inspiring road rage.

BMX XXX
Developed by a group of sniggering twelve year old boys this featured topless women pulling off BMX tricks. You could save up points to unlock video footage of strippers and they threw in lots of swearing and hookers for the missions. It was total garbage. Australia banned it and lots of shops refused to stock the game but nobody really cared.

JFK Reloaded
This was a small downloadable game which challenged you to take on the role of Lee Harvey Oswald and assassinate President Kennedy. Holed up in the Texas Book Depository players had to peer through the rifle scope and see if they could pull off the most famous assassination in history. Developers Traffic Software even ran a competition to reward the closest replication awarding over $10,000 to the winner. The game was roundly condemned with Kennedy’s brother calling it “despicable” but it was just a simple simulation which cleverly used the controversy to drive sales.

RapeLayRapeLay
This hentai game was only released in Japan but that didn’t stop it from causing a scandal in the western media. The aim of the game is to rape a mother and her two daughters. You can choose sexual positions, use a disembodied hand to grope and probe them and even impregnate them and then force them to get abortions. This is seriously sick stuff which prompted Amazon and Ebay to ban it in hopes of preventing it from falling into the hands of anyone outside of Japan. Everything else on the list pales into insignificance by comparison. This is the hands down winner for most controversial game ever and I’m still struggling to believe it’s real but sadly it is.