Learning about other cultures and what made them tick used to be a more involved process. Now, thanks to the internet among other factors, their quirks are just a Google search away. Like how the UK censored ninjas and nunchuks from their media for 20+ years, or how Namco had to whitewash Mitsurugi into “Arthur” in Korean version of the original SoulCalibur to get around their samurai ban at the time.
It’s particularly funny for Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans, as they usually didn’t have to worry about such cuts and changes. Their version of Castlevania: Bloodlines kept the blood, and the original No More Heroes had more blood added for their ports than the Japanese or European ones. However, it hasn’t always been so good for them. Whether it was due to censorship, timing, or just bad luck, these video games cut their content for North America.
9 Indigo Prophecy
North America may be less squeamish around blood, guts and gore. But if there’s one thing that gets the people in charge there shrinking in fear, it’s sex and nudity. Just the possibility of accessing the dummied-out "Hot Coffee" sex minigame in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas caused a media storm that's still talked about today. It may also be why Quantic Dream's first hit game needed to be tweaked for the continent.
Indigo Prophecy (aka Fahrenheit) was less controversial by comparison, yet it still had most of its "adult content" removed for North America. Any erotic scenes left over were further edited, like removing nipple textures, to avoid even the slightest risk of incurring the ESRB's ire. North Americans would have to wait until 2015's Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered release to see what they had been missing out on for all those years.
8 Siren: Blood Curse
The reason Indigo Prophecy made those changes was to avoid getting an “Adults Only (AO)” rating. Despite being a legitimate rating, it's as much of a kiss of death to games as the NC-17 rating is to movies. Neither Sony nor Microsoft would officially license an AO game, and most large chain stores won't carry them. Rockstar re-released GTA: SA with "Hot Coffee" fully removed just to avoid getting reclassified with the AO rating.
Siren: Blood Curse did the same thing, only this time it was because the game found the limit to North America's taste for blood. The intro's violent stabbing sequence was toned down by shifting the camera and covering it in heavy filters a la The Punisher and other formerly AO games. Another character committing suicide via rifle was also cut out for taste reasons. Yet both sequences can be found uncensored in other territories.
7 Resident Evil
The original zombie survival horror game also had its own tweaks. The game itself was left largely untouched. But its infamously cheesy live-action intro was too hot for American PlayStations. The scene where Joseph Frost discovered a dismembered hand before getting dismembered himself was trimmed down, and covered with a black and white filter to hide the blood. Chris Redfield lighting up a cigarette also got left on the cutting room floor.
Interestingly enough, the original uncut intro was meant to open the Resident Evil: Director’s Cut re-release. The ratings board had no problem with it that time except for one line of copyright details that needed to be fixed. Not wanting to waste time, Capcom Japan just replaced it with the censored intro and didn't tell their American division about it. To make up for this faux-pas, Capcom made the uncut intro available as a download on their website.
6 Um Jammer Lammy
Blood, sex, and the like are expected to be trimmed down for a game. But sometimes content can be cut simply because of bad timing. Um Jammer Lammy, the rock-based spin-off from Parappa the Rapper, is pretty much as family-friendly as it gets with its cartoon animals trying to keep to the beat with some guitar thrashing. Unfortunately, it was released in 1999 shortly after the Columbine incident.
The school shooting shocked the nation and, not wanting to add further upset, the game changed a few lyrics to be less violent (“I love choppin' down trees just for fun” became “I love rockin' to the beat just for fun”). While a cutscene showing Lammy going to Hell was replaced with a new scene that turned the underworld into a desert island. Only Europe and Japan got the uncensored versions, but the NA version did give Lammy her own army camo outfit.
5 Rhythm Heaven Fever
Sticking with the musical theme, Rhythm Heaven Fever was the first game in the series to make the jump from handhelds to console via the Wii. This time, players had to waggle the Wiimote to the beat as well as tap buttons. Simple in concept, tricky in execution. The original music was in Japanese, but the vocals were replaced with English performances for the North American release.
It might’ve been nice if players had the option to switch between one language or another, if only for curiosity’s sake. But only for European and Australian players got this choice. Retitled Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise, it had both soundtracks available for owners to bop to via the game's settings. People in North America either had to find a way to play PAL games on their Wiis, or look up the Japanese tracks online.
4 Metal Gear Solid
This alternate Game Boy Color edition of the iconic stealth game was a lovely callback to its MSX roots. Surprisingly, series creator Hideo Kojima had little to do with it. The game was overseen by future Metal Gear Ac!d director Shinta Nojiri, and written by Tomokazu Fukushima and Shuyo Murata. One of Murata’s additions was “IdeaSpy 2.5”, a comedy story players could read by calling a Codec number after playing a new game on a completed save file.
It was a funny callback to 1960s spy shows like Get Smart. However, it wasn’t included in the North American version because the cartridge didn’t have enough memory left to fit its translation. Hackers can find a partially-completed attempt in its files, but that's it. The only way players could check it out in English was to get the European version, as it received a cartridge big enough to fit it and the rest of the game into multiple languages.
3 Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe
This combination of America’s top fighting game and its most iconic comic book company had a few issues, with one of them being the ESRB. Mortal Kombat’s infamous fatalities already had to be toned down to fit DC Comics’ standards, but Deathstroke and the Joker’s executions were still too violent for the T-rating Midway and DC were aiming for. The camera had to zoom in and pan away from the opponents before the villains shot them in the head.
The bullet-to-bonce content was considered fine in other territories as they usually had a rating that allowed stuff harsher than a T but softer than an M, like the UK and Ireland's "15+" rating. Netherrealm Studios would make up for this by recreating Joker's fatality for Shang Tsung in 2011's Mortal Kombat. Then they'd add Joker directly to Mortal Kombat 11 to make quips about his prior meetup in MK vs DC before killing his opponents horribly.
2 Final Fantasy 10
The original North American version of Final Fantasy X was a step-up from the Japanese version. It came with some bug fixes, some quality-of-life updates like automatic menu sorting, and other little goodies. So much so that Square used them for its Final Fantasy X International re-release. But that wasn't enough to justify a new disc and packaging. They added a whole host of new features that made it a grand step-up from the first release.
Players received new abilities and new weapons to play with, alongside an “Expert Mode” Sphere Grid that let players customize their party however they liked. There were also 8 New Dark Aeon boss fights, and a superboss for players to test their skills against. European players would get the same game alongside a bonus disc full of goodies, but North American players wouldn't (officially) get any of this content until the HD Remaster a decade later.
1 House Of The Dead 2
Finally, House of the Dead 2 on the Dreamcast is a unique case as it didn’t really lose anything significant from the game itself. It looked and sounded more or less on par with the arcade edition (including the terrible voice acting). What it lacked was a peripheral. The aforementioned Columbine incident made guns a sensitive subject in North America, so Sega released the game without an official lightgun controller.
They did make official lightguns for Asia and Europe, but importing them wouldn't have done much good as they were region-locked. Plugging them into a North American Dreamcast (without any possible workaround) would just bring up an error message. Dreamcast-owning rail shooter fans had to make do with third-party options like Madcatz' lightguns.