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Tag: Censorship

Molehill Mountain Episode 87 – Publishers and Politicians

Published February 28, 2018 by Andrew Eisen

It’s like they’re trying to piss us off.

0:00 – Monster Hunter World’s DLC is grossly overpriced.

10:18 – YouTube’s recommendations algorithm sucks.

28:38 – Game developer uses malware as DRM. It goes about as well as you’d expect.

41:34 – ESA doesn’t want you to enjoy anything it can’t make money off of, bemoans it sees no revenue from admission fees of museums displaying video games that have long since been end-of-life’d.

56:28 – Konami is monetizing extra save slots. Seriously.

1:02:38 – Assassin’s Creed: Origins’ educational spin off saddled with unnecessary censorship.

1:09:26 – Politicians are being dumb about video games. Again.

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Molehill Mountain Episode 7 – Quietly Into the Night

Published July 5, 2016 by Andrew Eisen

As it happens, Andrew is going to be busy for the next several Saturdays in a row so this is his last episode of the podcast until August.  In the latest episode, you get him all to yourselves for an hour and a half.  Ain’t that peachy!

  • 1:10 – I have a problem. A Ghostbusters problem.
  • 10:50 – Let’s talk about the localization of Tokyo Mirage Sessions! Again.
  • 17:35 – Let’s speculate about the NX, Nintendo’s new console that we still know almost nothing about!
  • 22:07 – GameStop made me mad. Here’s why.
  • 26:24 – More NX talk! Game controller talk! Zelda talk! Paper Mario talk!
  • 46:18 – Wind Waker is five times better than Skyward Sword. Do I agree?
  • 58:15 – I share my thoughts on VR.
  • 1:13:13 – Let’s talk about accuracy (and ethics!) in entertainment journalism.
  • 1:22:00 – Let’s talk about video games and keeping the original language track!
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Game director encourages western gamers to buy Tokyo Mirage Sessions despite localization changes

Published June 28, 2016 by Andrew Eisen

Outfit comparisonLast Friday, Mitsuru Hirata, chief director of Tokyo Mirage Sessions hit up Twitter to ask western gamers to buy the game despite various localization changes.

“Come to think of it, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE release date is this week on 24th isn’t it! For various reasons we had to change some outfits, contents of events and vocals, but I think the outfits of the overseas version are quite cute! If you live overseas and own a Wii U by all means buy the game!”

Okay, let’s unpack that comment, shall we?

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When covering cleavage on North American box art is NOT censorship

Published June 7, 2016 by Andrew Eisen

P5 box compareTo your left is an image comparing the lower left portion of the Japanese and North American box arts for Atlus’s highly anticipated Persona 5.  You may notice that Morgana (the smiling cat) has been repositioned in a way that covers up the cleavage of another character.

CENSORSHIP!!!

Not so fast…

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Molehill Mountain Episode 3 – Hell No, AO!

Published June 6, 2016 by Andrew Eisen

On this week’s podcast, Andrew is still playing Yakuza (awesome series from Sega that EVERYONE should play!) and describes a sequence where he helped a jumper by chucking him off the roof (6:46), he and EZK discuss Nintendo’s updated E3 plans (17:23), they continue comparing bucket lists and determine that Zachary has never left his house (36:35), and passionately argue why the ESRB should get rid of the AO rating (49:10).

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Liyla Makes It To The Games Section In App Store

Published May 23, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

Liyla On The App StoreLooks like it is possible to get the lumbering behemoth to budge. Last week we wrote that Apple had rejected Liyla and the Shadows of War as a game. They wanted the game classified in the News or Reference sections. Yet, to anyone that actually took the 10-15 minutes to play through the game, it is clearly a game.

We now learn that Apple has relented and classified Liyla as a game.

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UPDATED: Apple Rejects Game Based On War In The Gaza Strip As “Not A Game”

Published May 18, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

Liyla and the Shadows of WarUpdate: Apple has relented and classified Liyla as a game.

When is a game not a game? According to Apple, the answer is when said game has a political message. At least that is what it is telling Liyla and the Shadows of War developer Rasheed Abueideh when it rejected the game.

In a tweet from the official Liyla Twitter account, the developer expressed confusion over the rejection. “Unfortunately Apple rejected the game as a game,they say its not game,it has a political statement.” They instead suggested that Rasheed reclassify his game as “news” or “reference”. This is a confusing but sadly not uncommon move from Apple.

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Presenting the Molehill Mountain podcast! Where every topic is of the utmost importance!

Published May 16, 2016 by Andrew Eisen

Molehill Mountain.

That’s the name we’re trying out for the podcast.  So far the reaction has been positive but please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

On this week’s show, EZK and Andrew discuss Nintendo’s continued nonsensical localization changes to Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE (14:11), the Pokemon business model and which Sun and Moon starter is best Pony (31:38), Microsoft back peddling its Universal Windows Platform announcement (47:52), the #BlackPantherSoLIT hashtag and what the heck “LIT” means, and properties like Monster Musume and The Purge that don’t live up to the full potential of their premise (1:15:55).

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Lonely Andrew Yaks About Video Games and Stuff

Published May 2, 2016 by Andrew Eisen

Andrew is all by his lonesome on this week’s podcast.  Topics discussed include the recent Nintendo NX and Zelda news (2:45), removing content from western localizations and how it affects games like Yakuza 3(22:49), what to do about prostitutes in Grand Theft Auto games (41:02), and Sony’s continued failure at marketing the new Ghostbusters movie (1:07:35).

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