Saturday, November 16, 2013

Censors gone wild

If you thought last gen's Cofagrigus controversy was going to cause Nintendo to listen to reason... tough luck. If anything, they've taken nickname censorship to new heights. Many bad words that are only used in specific parts of the world or even a certain country were banned worldwide, even when the nickname itself is perfectly okay. For example, good luck naming a Pokémon after Kakashi from Naruto. As it turns out, "kak" is South African slang for feces. Are you serious? Banning a potentially common three-letter string just because of slang USED ONLY IN SOUTH AFRICA? Forget about "Thanks Obama" too, you can see "SOB" in there. Yep, even if there's a space the censor is triggered. The word "kill" is also out of the question. "Penelope"? Tough luck, "pene" is Spanish for PINGAS. Then again, what else did you expect from the company that shut down Swapnote instead of adding a special notice about online content not being rated like every other company?

So I tried having some fun with French Canadian swear words, and believe it or not, they cracked down on these too. "Tabarnak" is a no-go, and neither are "tabarnacle" and the proper spelling of "tabernacle". "Crisse" doesn't work, as does "criss". So if nicknaming something "criss-cross" is your thing, blame Quebec. "Calisse" doesn't work either, but oddly enough "calvaire" does. And finally, although it has nothing to do with Quebec swear words, Hitler spelled normally doesn't pass, but replacing the L with an uppercase i works. Something to keep in mind when using Wonder Trade.

Finally, there IS one silver lining: "fag" is still forbidden, EXCEPT when the nickname used is Cofagrigus. Progress!

8 comments:

  1. Hope no Touhou character names are blocked by the GTS. Not that I would trade the Pokemon I have actually nicknamed myself. No, I keep those...

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  2. Thankz Obama

    Seriously though this is one of the worst parts of gen six. Why not just prevent people from trading Pokemon that Nintendo deems of having an "explicit" name, like in gen 5? Preventing people from naming them that outright is just a load of BS.

    Also, you can't name a Pokemon anything that has "Grass" in it (guess why), a type IN THE GAME. And now that I know I can't name my Pokemon Penelope or Kakashi, that's all I want to do.

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  3. Since I started nicknaming my Pokémon more often, I'm surprised I didn't trigger the censor yet... Though I usually keep my nicknames simple or I just name them after a monster in Monster Hunter. (Rule #1 - ALWAYS nicknaming a Lanturn after the goddamm Gobul. ALWAYS.
    Rule #2 - Charizard isn't worthy of the name Rathalos.)

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  4. So apparently nicknaming your Pokemon "HAXORUS" in all caps is not allowed. Why? Because that's what 12 year old kids on the internet call each other when they think someone is hacking. Honestly it doesn't affect me personally but why would they waste time going this far in censoring stupid shit like this?

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  5. In Germany we can't trade Feebass with it's original name in the GTS since it's German name Barschwa has the combination "arsch" which means "ass" in German...however this is also the case for Basculin, since in German (Barschuft) it has the same wordcombination and is baned even though it has NOTHING TO DO WITH ASS??? This is just insane...

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  6. To be honest, I get tired of seeing people give stupid nicknames to their pokemon, but blocking out swear words did nothing to prevent the kid I did a wonder trade with from naming their luvdisc "ihatedisthing" so it's kind of a futile effort. This might just be even worse because now kids are discovering all sorts of new foreign swear words to let their creativity run wild. Actually, expanding children's potty mouth vocabulary might just be a plus (picture mariotehplumber with a high pitched voice). If they won't stop swearing, they can at least learn new words from pokemon to be less repetitive.

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  7. Doesn't help that Kakashi is my favorite Naruto character too :(

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  8. But I did dodge a bullet with the, "Thanks Obama" one. Cause I named my Abomasnow, "THANKS ABOMA" instead

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