Ocarina of Time Should Ocarina of Time Been Rated Teen?

[00steven]

The original version of Ocarina of Time had some "questionable" content in it. Nintendo had to change a few things for later releases of the game.

The following content had to be changed-

~Ganondorf's blood was changed from red to green in the later versions.

~The Mirror shield was changed because of an Islamic symbol.

~The music in the Fire Temple was changed do to Islamic chants which some people found offensive.

~The Shadow Temple had redeads with blood on them.

I like the original content and thought it was fine. But, I'm surprised the ESRB didn't issue the Teen rating innitially because blood automatically warrants a Teen rating.

So did you think the original content was fine or was it over the line? I value your imput!

 

[Ganondorf]

They probably didn't think to because prior LoZ games did just fine without it, and didn't think it needed a Teen rating.
I think they only did it because of the few parents out there complaining about the scary elements and scant blood at the end.

Funny no one ever complained about the blood seeping from the eye of O2 in Kirby 64, though.

 

[Shroom]

I think it was fine as E personally. I played it as a young kid, and it never phased me besides the Shadow Temple and the well freaking me out xP And just having the blood in the few parts they had it in was fine because the rest of the game didn't have it. Besides the parts that did have it were intentionally supposed to have a different feel, the Shadow Temple and Well were revolving around death, so there was blood there (or if I recall right there's blood stains on parts of the walls and floor in parts) to give it that vibe, and when Ganondorf coughs up blood it's suppose to show that he's been defeated (not exactly the case though) and that you had finally beaten the man behind all of the lands troubles and suffering.

As for the Mirror Sheild, and Fire Temple theme, that was because of how it was too similar to Islamic Religious pieces, so Nintendo recieved many complaints and decided to change it in later versions. I was lucky enough to get one of the earlier versions though, and I'm glad because I prefer the Cresent Moon over that odd design they added in later for the Mirror Sheild...

 

[Deniro]

I am glad they changed the Islamic icon and chanting, 'cause I don't want religion in my fantasy about changing the blood I was more meh, it looks REALLY stupid when ganondorf barfs in the oot verison I have I don't think they went over the line though, teen would be too high rating for this game

 

[Kybyrian]

I think it's kind of on the border between E and T. I believe Ocarina of Time 3D is going to be rated E10+, which I believe it just right. It isn't quite suitable for everyone, but it isn't necessarily too bad for people under 13 to be playing. Some of the parts that contain blood can be questioned a little bit, but it's nothing too serious. If anything the Shadow Temple is what put it on the borderline. The blood and theme of that temple is probably the scariest and most mature thing about the game, but I don't think it's enough to push it to the T rating

 

[Hanyou]

I think Ocarina's content was more consistently violent and frightening than that of, say, Halo, which was an M-rated game. I was quite surprised at the time that it did not receive a Teen rating and I am still surprised. It wouldn't have made a huge difference to me either way, since my parents let me play a few Teen-rated games, but it was still odd.

 

[Emma]

~The Mirror shield was changed because of an Islamic symbol.
~The music in the Fire Temple was changed do to Islamic chants which some people found offensive.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the rating. Having it in there would not have increased the rating. Changing it was for a completely different reason, for religious reasons.

~Ganondorf's blood was changed from red to green in the later versions.
~The Shadow Temple had redeads with blood on them.

Well... it's not gory blood really. Most of the automatic blood ratings come from blood directly from striking a foe. Neither of these were that. And those ReDeads didn't have anything on them. What you're thinking of is the blood on the ground near the the ReDeads towards the end. But even that wasn't clearly blood and could have just been paint.

 

[OcarinaSword]

Well im not too sure what it should be but, I think it should be rated E10+ or Teen.

 

[Kybyrian]

I think Ocarina's content was more consistently violent and frightening than that of, say, Halo, which was an M-rated game. I was quite surprised at the time that it did not receive a Teen rating and I am still surprised. It wouldn't have made a huge difference to me either way, since my parents let me play a few Teen-rated games, but it was still odd.

Ocarina of Time's battle may have been more violent in a lot of cases, but Halo was in general made to be a lot more realistic. It depicted war and people actually getting killed and using weapons to destroy each other. It's the themes of games like that that get them their M rating, the actual violence usually doesn't mean a whole lot. When you've got your hero fighting beasts with a small sword and they simply go *poof* when they're destroyed, it's not exactly made out to be quite as bad as if a person drops dead after pumping them full of bullets into their head. The violence is similar, but the impact it makes on a person is a lot different.

 

[Zorato]

You have to keep in mind this game was out before the ESRB was *good* at their job. I think just because a game has blood doesn't mean it should have a higher ESRB rating. It's not like you slice Ganon and he starts dripping blood, so I think it shouldn't be changed. If they are going to change it to "T" then, we will see when we get OOT 3DS. Besides, the ESRB always rates a game poorly.

 

[zeldakid895]

Not really, though E10+ would be better. I believe that games that are presented to be more realistic are rated higher, which is what gave TP its T rating. Sure there were some more restrictive scenes than previous games, but I don't think anything in particular would have triggered a T rating for the game.

 

[Hanyou]

Ocarina of Time's battle may have been more violent in a lot of cases, but Halo was in general made to be a lot more realistic. It depicted war and people actually getting killed and using weapons to destroy each other. It's the themes of games like that that get them their M rating, the actual violence usually doesn't mean a whole lot. When you've got your hero fighting beasts with a small sword and they simply go *poof* when they're destroyed, it's not exactly made out to be quite as bad as if a person drops dead after pumping them full of bullets into their head. The violence is similar, but the impact it makes on a person is a lot different.

Then I guess I'll just say that Ocarina's violence made much more of an impact on me. Goldeneye had come out a year earlier, and I could play it pretty much unperturbed, in spite of the Teen rating (I was 11 at the time). Ocarina, on the other hand, gave me a few nightmares and I thought it was thematically much heavier than even Halo, with its suggestions of Holocaust and a totalitarian government.

Visually, locations like the Shadow Temple were more than unsettling, they were outright scary. So was the dialog and lore. I'll just conclude by saying that given Ocarina's themes, presentation, and explicit violence, I still don't understand how it was rated in relation to games of the time. Perhaps this is all personal experience, which just shows how subjective ratings are, but I still think it deserves a Teen Rating. Not even Twilight Princess, which did score a Teen rating, came close to touching on the same themes or presenting itself in such a visually frightening way.

 

[nicktheslayer]

Noone ever got to O2, xD

Also. I hope nintendo would release the original controversial version sometime. with the chants and everything. id love it, the chants sounded great, i had the original version to play growing up.

 

[DuckNoises]

I actually quite agree with Hanyou; although many of the enemies die with a "poof" as Kybyrian suggests, a lot of them die in fairly graphic manners. Had the graphics been more powerful at the time, I think it would have definitely received a T rating. I was playing the game through with my friend recently, and we remarked how a Tektite's limbs were all severed simultaneously when you killed it, limbs spinning in every direction and green blood seeping out everywhere. Even though these animations only lasted a second before the enemy burst into flames, the animations were actually pretty graphic; we even had a chuckle about how that looked like an enemy dying in Fallout 3 from a critical hit (where they essentially explode into chunks of flesh). For an E-rated game, that violence seemed pretty excessive. Granted, the blood wasn't red, but the biggest factor was probably that you don't see much violence towards humanoids. Although, as Hanyou points out, there was actually a fair amount of very heavy and more mature subject matter in Ocarina of Time than many other E-rated games; there is attempted genocide, murder, torture, and dictatorship, which are all pretty heavy things for a child to see. It can be argued that most of this isn't exactly "witnessed" and merely referred to, but it's still there and it's still apparent to children.
As for the Shadow Temple and the Beneath the Well mini-dungeon, there was a fair amount of violence there. I didn't feel that most of it was the blood that was smeared on the walls (and it is almost definitely blood, as it's mostly located near torture devices), but actually some of the implied torture that went on there. They had things like the Rack, an Iron Maiden, guillotines, all sorts of things where a child could easily imagine pretty graphic things . Although an implication isn't necessarily enough to bump up the rating, it's probably because it's an easily exploitable loophole; if you can't fit in the exact image that you want without bumping up the rating, just put in implications of those images and you can get away with them on a technicality.

With the upcoming 3DS version, I'd be surprised if they didn't bump it to a T-rating unless they scaled down some of the animations, because a lot of them were pretty brutal and I feel that Nintendo got away with a lot from the ESRB.

 

[Blazestarre]

It really is surprising that OoT wasn't rated T when it was originally released, considering the themes and disturbing content. I think a lot of that had to do with the series' reputation. The more mature content was also a bit more subtle compared to most T-rated games. Considering the fact that OoT3D is getting an E10+ rating, I bet it was borderline E and T in the late '90s, much like movies that were rated PG because, at the time of their release, there was no PG-13 rating. I do wonder how some things made it in with the E rating, though. When you take into consideration the Great Fairies, the (original) red blood, and the rather creepier temples, it does make one question the quality of the ESRB rating system.

Now, it is shocking to see TP with a T rating and OoT3D gets E10+. OoT definitely has more disturbing images than TP. This probably has to do with graphics, because it seems that the more realistic the graphics look, the higher the rating will be, regardless of the actual content. Even though I think OoT is more disturbing, though, I think E10+ is a pretty good rating. I don't think it quite qualifies for a T rating, but an E rating nowadays no longer fits the game.