So, what's with the censored alcohol?

SNES, HM64, BTN, STH, A Wonderful Life, Another Wonderful Life, AWL:SE, Magical Melody, Puzzle de HM, Tree of Tranquility, Animal Parade, Frantic Farming, Hero of Leaf Valley, My Little Shop, Seeds of Memories, Lil' Farmers, Light of Hope, Popolocrois: SoS, and Doraemon: SoS.
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Anonymous Fish

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Is this something that appears in all new titles? I haven't played since the Wii days, but I picked up FOMT.

All the drinkable wine is non-alcoholic. "Premium grape juice" and "Wild grape water"? I'm getting grape soda flashbacks.
They were wine in the Game Boy version.

I assume this is a ratings problem. Does the ESRB not alcohol drinking alcohol in E games anymore? I cringe to imagine what would happen to the bar if we get a DS or AWL remake.

Is there any alcohol in Pioneers? I don't get results from google
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Code_Name_Geek
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If I remember correctly, the EU versions had been using “syrup” instead of wine for a while before the FoMT remake due to rating issues. Maybe they decided to standardize that between the two regions?
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Kikki
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Goofiest thing ever, imo. I noticed it too for several games and a mere reference to wine (not even to anyone DRINKING it, just to it existing!) shouldn't affect a game's rating. But this world is moronically full of red tape and illogical technicalities and I guess it does.
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Arcy
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ESRB and other ratings boards guidelines also change over time as we learn more things about human beings and how we react to various stimuli.

What was okay to show uncut in a video game 20 years ago without a ratings bump is not the same as it is today. It wasn't then either but now we know better.
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Mikodesu
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It's definitely a ratings board problem. Video games are weird. And game ratings (and censorship) are often arbitrary and super, super culturally specific.

If you're curious, it's a generalized look--not specific to any one game, but Super Bunnyhop has an excellent video on all the weird little eccentricities of rating games around the world. I'd be curious to see somebody do a video with more funny examples, like this, or all of the weird censorship in the Xeno series. It gets pretty odd.
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Kikki
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I'm not sure I get that. For some reason it's not okay for children to see the word 'wine', so it has to be changed to 'grape juice'? I don't see why wine's existence needs to be censored. Maybe from an alcoholic who is better off to not ever even think of alcohol, if they can avoid it? But not from kids under 10. (If they are removing the reference to try to keep an E or E10+ rating. If they decided to remove it because they found out that recovering alcoholics were getting triggered by it being in the game, well...that would be uncommonly considerate of them. I guess it could happen?)

EDIT: Mikodesu's post was not there when I posted...Arcy's was the one right above mine when I hit 'reply'.
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PaleSunflower
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The thing about the wine that I find weird is that, in my region at least, alcoholic wine (and beer) are sold in most grocery stores, usually taking up an aisle. Big display advertisements for beer in particular tend to be common near the front of the stores during certain times of the year (I think it's American football related). A kid can easily encounter wine bottles while shopping with parents. I can understand censoring the effects of alcoholic drinks on people or making wine un-drinkable (some kids will copy what they see on TV, so, if a character drinks alcohol, then these kids may try to do the same), but the censoring the existence of wine itself makes little sense to me.
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Anonymous Fish

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Kikki wrote:Goofiest thing ever, imo. I noticed it too for several games and a mere reference to wine (not even to anyone DRINKING it, just to it existing!) shouldn't affect a game's rating. But this world is moronically full of red tape and illogical technicalities and I guess it does.
The game is full of alcoholic references, but that only applies to NPCs. The player can only drink grape juice
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Arcy wrote:ESRB and other ratings boards guidelines also change over time as we learn more things about human beings and how we react to various stimuli.

What was okay to show uncut in a video game 20 years ago without a ratings bump is not the same as it is today. It wasn't then either but now we know better.
There's nothing wrong with alcohol in an E rated game. The characters are all full grown adults. Even Disney features alcohol in most of their films.

Maybe the series should aim for a higher rating, but that may hurt sales. I'd hate for them to remove alcohol from the series. I always liked the realism of it
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the game industry has softened up quite a bit in regards to this! wasnt there an actual drinking contest in hm64 on new years eve?
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yzafre
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Erith wrote:the game industry has softened up quite a bit in regards to this! wasnt there an actual drinking contest in hm64 on new years eve?
There was! And that would have been a lot harder to sensor, what with your character going red in the face before falling over and passing out if you hadn't gotten your alcohol tolerance up high enough throughout the year. Would love to see what excuse they could paper over that animation.
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Anonymous Fish

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Looking up, it seems like most games with the “Use of alcohol” label are T rated under the ESRB. Maybe XSeed is trying to avoid a T rating.

This is annoying nevertheless. I thought the days of “soda” were done years ago. Could they get away with fancy cocktail names like AWL? I’ve seen some say that names like “Moo Moo Milk” and “Red Punch” help take away from the alcoholic implications
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Maybe? The first SoS game mentioned wine by name in 2015 and it was rated E10, not T. I think your character could drink the wine, but couldn't get drunk off it in that game. With that being said, I have heard rumors that the SoS franchise is aiming for younger and younger audiences, so an E10 rating might be considered too high nowadays.
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Anna_Lynn
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See that's what bothers me; how anal the gaming industry is in general with age ratings these days. I'm in my 20's and grew up playing the DS games. I remember Grand Bazaar in particular having a LARGE variety of different wines and liquors you could ferment: white wines, red wines, champagne, straight up beer, etc. Much like HM64, there was even a festival dedicated to sharing wine with the villagers. And that game gets bashed on all the time for being a childish entry to the series.

I really enjoy Stardew Valley because of how realistic it is, while still having a fantasy element. It's ridiculous how much censorship has to pass through the SOS games these days, like changing alcohol to soda, no kissing your spouse at the wedding, removing animal death because it's "too dark" for the kiddies to handle, blah blah blah. Crazy to think the dev's are trying to strive for even lower than an E+10...but I suppose business is business.
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Kikki
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Pretty sure that's just a rumour or a common but unsubstantiated belief among fans; I've never encountered any proof that the devs are actually aiming for a younger audience. It's just something people say when they get annoyed by the art style, or features they feel have been dumbed down in some way, imo, that they think the devs are aiming for a younger age market. I don't think the devs have ever expressed that desire...not that I've seen, anyway. It'd actually be rather stupid to aim specifically for a younger age market...you want the biggest market you can get, not to deliberately narrow it down. So in an effort to get the biggest market, they might axe something that would give them a T rating and scare off some parents, but I don't think they'd go any further than that.

Alcohol was still in SoS1, though, and Trio as well.
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