Hi Eckhard!
> The early guidelines of the BPjS saw this rule violated when
> you could just 'play war'. I think this is how games like
> River Raid and Battle Zone got on the list. But then there
> was the Microprose case, who sued to have Silent Service and
> F15 removed from the list. They could prove that they were giving
> proper historical background in the manuals and that they therefore
> weren't 'gloryfying war'. Since then the guidelines of the BPjS
> have changed a bit, but neither Activision nor Atari cared to
> have their games removed from the list as well.
BTW: The reason that 'Panzer General' is banned and 'Allied General'
not, is that in 'Panzer General' you can win WW2 for the german side and
in 'Allied General' not...
BTW²: They banned the 'Platoon' game for 'gloryfying war', too :-)
> from Manuel Polik:
> > Ariolasoft was the german distributer of Activision titles.
> > At least for C64 titles, I'm not sure about VCS Carts.
> > But the banning includes all ports anyway...
> And I think the ban only affects one specific version. If
> you release the game on a different system, or rerelease it
> with some small changes on the same system, the game has to
> be reviewed again before this version can be banned too.
> However the bureaucratic hurdles for banning a game that is
> (almost) identical to a game that is alreaddy banned are much
> lower.
Here I'm not sure. I even thought that the ban automatically includes
not only all versions, but sequels, add ons & data disks (official or
not) as well. At least such a policy was in discussion some 2-3 years
ago. That'd mean for example that Doom 3 already is banned even before
it is released and that ID would actually have to start a lawsuit to get
it possibly removed from the list.
> This is why the PC emulator packs from Activision and Atari
> with River Raid and Battlezone on them can be sold here without
> a problem, since the standard for banning games has shifted a
> bit since the early 80s, while the Atari Party Pack still got
> banned pretty quickly, because Smash TV is still considered too
> violent.
Here I'd assume the Activision & Atari packs had just luck that no one
noticed that River Raid & Battlezone were on. If someone had noticed it,
these packs had been banned as well, no way. You know what they say
about the bureaucrats in germany, or? :-)
Greetings,
Manuel
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