Sega reps won’t be showing the extreme gore-fest MadWorld at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, mostly due to the fact that it may be too extremely gore-festy for Japanese audiences.  The game is being developed with a western audience in mind and will only be evaluated for a release elsewhere if it becomes a hit.

Japan-based Platinum Games, developer of MadWorld, is said to be be working closely with the ESRB.  They want to make the ESRB feel like “part of the process” and they “don’t want to surprise them”.  Basically, they want the game to be as violent as possible and are pushing to see where the ESRB draws the line.

This level of violence obviously doesn’t go over well with those pussy censors in places like Australia and Germany, so those countries are not currently in the running to receive a localized retail release.  Oddly, even Japan is not being targeted for some MadWorld action.

Platinum Games and Sega are mainly focused on making MadWorld a huge, bloody hit for the Wii when it releases in North America in March ‘09 and, depending on how successful it is, will consider releases in other countries sometime down the road.

Tough call on this one.  Most Wii owners are the proverbial “casual gamers” like my sister and her 7-year-old, and I don’t see either one of them being a likely fan of the game.  Sure, there are plenty of parent gamers out there that used their kids as a cover for buying a Wii, and maybe they would appreciate some intestine-ripping action, but people like me who think the game looks awesome, well… I don’t own a Wii.

What do you think?  Even if MadWorld were a good game, would that be enough to get the numbers given it’s violent nature?

Source: MTV Multiplayer

Tags: australia, Banned, casual gamers, censor, ESRB, germany, gory, Japan, Mad World, madworld, TGS, Tokyo Game Show, violent

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1 Comment » Mik on October 5, 2008 11:58 am I like gore. :) And I really liked this post! Keep up. RSS feed for comments on this post. Comment Now Note: Commenting on Ripten does not currently require registration, however to be eligible for contests on the site, you must be a registered user. Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Commenting Rules: No hate speech allowed. If you must argue, please debate intelligently. Comments containing selected keywords or outbound links will be put into moderation to help prevent spam. Ripten reserves the right to delete comments and ban anyone who doesn't follow the rules. Thanks. Notify me of followup comments Tired of the Goomba? Upload your own custom comment avatar.