Banned in Europe

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By published

Manhunt 2, Nazis... and every videogame ever? Read the amazing story of our continental friends

But let's rewind a few years. The issue started when Mortal Kombat was famously censored on Nintendo machines while Sega owners were given the full blood mode – enabled by a simple cheat code entry. Blood used to be the main problem.

Apparently yes. Case in point: Carmageddon. This PC driving game was initially banned outright in the UK as it allowed you to run over innocent pedestrians (pictured), as well as sheep, cattle and other animals. The censors allowed an edited version to be released, with different sprites.

Yup, zombies. It was still the same game at heart, but you weren't actually killing anything, because technically each figure was already dead. Never mind the fact you're still sending entrails flying across the hood of your car. Think of it as offal. Because that's OK.

Nowadays, the game looks its age so nobody's going to be shocked by it – unless it's at the shoddy quality of the graphics by today's standards.


Above: Is she scared of being run over, or just appalled by the mess of shapes that qualified as a car in 1997?

Justin Towell
Justin Towell
Freelance Writer

Justin was a GamesRadar+ staffer for 10 years but is now a freelance writer, musician and videographer. He's big on retro, Sega and racing games (especially retro Sega racing games) and currently also writes for Play Magazine, Traxion.gg, PC Gamer and TopTenReviews, as well as running his own YouTube channel. Having learned to love all platforms equally after Sega left the hardware industry (sniff), his favourite games include Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, Zelda BotW, Sea of Thieves, Sega Rally Championship and Treasure Island Dizzy.