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Profanity not funny in Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker

By Heath | November 9, 2007 at 6:25 pm

While RPG Land’s Janelle Hindman was enjoying Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker today, she captured a skeleton monster and was about to give it a name. Being a longtime Nintendo fan and seeing that the new beast was indeed a skeleton, she attempted to name it “Drybones,” after the Mario series character. The game would not let her use this name. She changed it up to attempt “Mr. Bones.” This also was not allowed. The simplified “Bones” was likewise rejected. This led to heightened curiosity and extended experimentation.

Janelle and I were interested to see how far this would go. Not at all interested in actually using any of these names, but more curious about how much censorship we would find in the game. As a note before we proceed, RPG Land is not sitting here being all like, “Rawr censorship! Rawr, the man is bringing us down!” It’s not that big of a deal. We simply found it odd that we couldn’t name a character anything with “bone” in it, and went from there, curious as the kittens in countless cat macros seen around the internet.

The following names were attempted, but could not be used:
-Anything with the syllable “ass,” including things like “Glass” and “Assort.”
-Pooh, which is highly ironic, since Winnie the Pooh appears in Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories on Game Boy Advance.
-Words that denote a woman’s looseness.
-Words that denote a woman’s snappy attitude or fact that she is a dog.
-Forms of words that mean “genitalia.”
-Forms of words that mean “excretement.”
-Anything with “bone” in it, including the name of the aforementioned Mario character.
-The F word

Adding letters, symbols, or punctuation in front of or after these didn’t change anything.

“Ho” and “Hobag” worked, however.

Wondering if we could assume it was mostly Nintendo or Square Enix that had the idea and took the time to implement this, we popped in Digimon World: Dawn, which, just like Joker, is rated E and features online multiplayer capabilities. Digimon World: Dawn didn’t bat a digital eyelash when we named a charcter “The F word,” which ironically, is censored also on RPG Land, making this hard to tell you in writing.

When attempting to name a character The F Word in Animal Crossing: Wild World, also for DS and featuring online play, the name was blanked out — made invisible. “Ass,” however, worked in that game.

It may be relevant to note that Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker is reted E for “Mild Fantasy Violence” and “Suggestive Themes,” while Digimon World: Dawn/Dusk is rated E for “Mild Cartoon Violence,” “Alcohol Reference,” and “Crude Humor.” While RPG Land has two staff members that have played through the new Digimon World games, neither of us can quite recall either the alcohol reference or any sort of crude humor, so perhaps these were added in anticipation of someone naming a character something offensive. Like Drybones.

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