Errr Child Porn in Nintendo's 3DS game? I don't think so

Mike Bantick
Wednesday, 01 June 2011 21:01

Opinion and Analysis

From the storm in a teacup file comes the story of Dead or Alive: Dimensions possibly being banned due to the possibility of child pornography being part of the design.  How ridiculous.

The Nintendo 3DS challenges both players and game designers alike.  The combination of touch=screen, glasses-free 3D, accelerometer, microphone and the usual array of controls gives an amazing choice of development options to work with.

Dead or Alive: Dimensions is a 3DS game, a competent 'fighting' game that makes the most of the 3D capabilities of the Nintendo hand-held bringing jiggle physics to the fore, as well as other dimensions given the glasses-free ability of the 3DS.

As reported recently by iTWire's Alex Zarharov-Ruett, the game has hit the headlines because of the reported ability to pose and perve on under-age character models.

The game has reportedly raised the ire of the Swedish classification board that have always been sensitive of the issue of child pornography.

And as Alex has pointed out in his article, child porn is definitely no game

But seriously, you would need to be extremely demented in the first place to get more than mildly titillated by this game, in fact if you are titillated by the word titillated, the you might be a candidate for enjoying this game for more than it presents.

Dead or Alive has a long standing reputation for bringing manga style graphics to a variety of titles, usually fighting, over the years. But along the way that reputation has certainly ventured into the bawdy end of the scale rather than the more violent as franchises such as Mortal Combat, Soul Calibur or Street Fighter games.

In fact, the lamentable tangent, Dead or Alive Beach Volley Ball was really a chance to show off shapely polygons in the guise of very shallow game.  Bouncy, jiggle physics (both Male and Female) are what this franchise is about. 
DoD:D returns the franchise to its fighting roots, and it is a fun game providing a challenging tactical virtual combat arena.  And whilst one of the 'unlocks' is to collect 'models' of the fighters to place in 3D dioramas, it is a long-bow to draw from that to the extreme seediness of a child-porn label.

Also, though the game tells the origin story of many characters in the game, including back to child hood, so far I have not seen any reference to any under-age inappropriateness.   Essentially, this is a blow-up which I guess I am contributing too, but surely there are more serious crimes for authorities to pursue.