The Most Controversial Video Games Of All Time

‘Baby Shaker’ was an iPhone application that had to be seen to be believed. As with most iPhone apps, the phone can be shaken and moved to control the action on screen.

In this primitive “game” however, you were presented with a cartoon picture of a baby and had to shake the iPhone to stop them crying. When you had shaken them enough, red crosses appeared over their eyes, signifying the fact they had died.

The game caused huge upset with the public and two parents, whose babies were victims of being shaken, protested outside an Apple store and subsequently, the application has been taken off the iPhone store as of 2009.

Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior is a video game first released for Commodore 64 personal computers in 1987; the title was developed and published by Palace Software, and ported to other computers in the following months. The developers licensed the game to Epyx, who published it as Death Sword in the United States. Barbarian is a fighting game that gives players control over sword-wielding barbarians. In the game's two-player mode, players pit their characters against each other. Barbarian also has a single-player mode, in which the player's barbarian braves a series of challenges set by an evil wizard to rescue a princess.

Instead of using painted artwork for the game's box, Palace Software used photos of hired models. The photos, also used in advertising campaigns, featured bikini-clad Maria Whittaker, a model who was then associated with The Sun tabloid's Page Three topless photo shoots. Palace Software's marketing strategy provoked outrage in the United Kingdom; protestors focused on sexual aspects of the packaging rather than decapitations and other violence within the game. The ensuing controversy boosted Barbarian's profile, helping to make it a commercial success.

The game Battle Raper 2,, were made by a Japanese games company called ‘Illusion’. Illusion are famous for developing 3D ‘eroge’ games; a game genre and portmanteau of Erotic Game.

Games in this genre feature anime-style eroticism and are usually either visual novels or romance simulators. There are numerous games released under this pretense, some are harmless such as girlfriend simulators, whilst others include voyeurism, rape and molestation.

Battle Raper 2 is, as the name suggests, a fight game (which has been likened to Tekken 2), with moves involving molestation and humiliation, as well as taking off your opponent’s health, along with the usual punches and kicks.

The winner of a match can then rape the loser how he/she wants, with rape cut scenes being unlocked at the end of the game.

This game was released in 1982 on the Atari 2600 by a company called Mystique; the same company who also released number 9 on this list in the same year.

The company later went out of business during the video game crash of 1983.

The idea of the game is to control 2 nude women, who move back and forth across the bottom of a building, catching semen from a man on top of the building constantly masturbating. Catching semen gives you points and you gain an extra life for every 69 points you get. Another, gender-reversed version of the game was released later, called “Philly Flasher”.

In this game, you play 2 nude men who move across a building catching breast milk from a witch (you read that right). Upon catching all the milk, the men masturbate and ejaculate. Although it was unbelievably risqué as well as becoming rated as one of the worst games of all time, it became infamous.

Berzerk is a multi-directional shooter video arcade game, released in 1980 by Stern Electronics of Chicago.

The player controls a green stick man, representing a humanoid. Using a joystick (and a firing button to activate a laser-like weapon), the player navigates a simple maze filled with many robots, who fire lasers back at the player character. A player can be killed by being shot, by running into a robot or an exploding robot, coming into contact with the electrified walls of the maze itself, or by being touched by the player's nemesis, Evil Otto.

Berzerk was the first video game known to have been involved in the death of a player. In January 1981, 19-year-old Jeff Dailey died of a heart attack soon after posting a score of 16,660 on Berzerk. In October of the following year, Peter Burkowski made the Berzerk top-ten list twice in fifteen minutes, just a few seconds before also dying of a heart attack at the age of 18.

An article in The Patriot Ledger, the local paper of developer Irrational Games, argued that the game is "testing the limits of the ultraviolent gaming genre with a strategy that enables players to kill characters resembling young girls."

The game presents an ethical choice to players, whether to kill 'Little Sisters' for extra abilities or save them and receive less. President of 2K Boston Ken Levine defended the game as a piece of art, stating "we want to deal with challenging moral issues and if you want to do that, you have to go to some dark places".

Jack Thompson took issue with advertisements for the game appearing during WWE SmackDown's airtime, writing to the Federal Trade Commission and stating that M-rated games should not be advertised when large numbers of under-17s are watching.

After successfully managing to replicate the fun of the Tony Hawks Pro Skater series with two enjoyable Dave Mirra BMX titles, publisher Acclaim decided to go in a slightly different direction with the third entry of the series – presumably coming to the conclusion that there was a severe lack of tits.

Full of raunchy humour and uncensored nudity, the questionable change in direction forced Dave Mirra to walk from the franchise after legal action against Acclaim to have his name removed from the title. Without the backing of Mirra and the loss of ties with earlier games in the series, BMX XXX had an even harder time convincing gamers that it was anything but a childish attempt to shock and titillate. Most credibility is lost when your unlockable content consists of clips of real strippers – gyrating for an audience of spotty adolescent gamers.

Fox News Channel called out the title as the "Worst Video Game in the World" due to the extreme amount of violence; claims made in the original article were dispelled by video game journalists including Rock Paper Shotgun, but Fox News continues to assert the game as too violent.

Rockstar’s superb open-world school sim garnered controversy more for its title than its relatively inoffensive content. Taking control of frequently expelled rapscallion Jimmy Hopkins, the game unleashes players in Bullworth academy – a hard edged boarding school where only the strongest survive. While it’s true that you can pick fights and wield weaponry, Jimmy spends most of his time defending the bullied rather than being a bully himself. The game even encourages good behavior to impressionable players, offering fun unlockables for good grades in lessons like English, Maths and Geography.

Rockstar found themselves on the end of so much pre-release outrage they changed the name to the almost cryptic Canis Canem Edit – dog eat dog in latin. Most of the time this is pretty harmless stuff, focusing on nostalgic school japes like sticking rude notes to the teachers back or setting off stink bombs in the cafeteria. Aside from the occasional tasteless moment, the actual game has about as much chance of offending anyone as an episode of Grange Hill.

Activision managed to garner themselves a considerable amount of unnecessary controversy in 2009 with the infamous ‘No Russian’ level featured in Modern Warfare 2’s campaign. Touted as a thought provoking look at terrorism through the eyes of its perpetrators by Inifnity Ward, it didn’t stop many from seeing it as an attempt to purposefully hit the headlines, receiving free publicity in the process.

Playing No Russian, there’s no doubt that the on-screen massacre is depicted as stomach churning and horrific. There’s also the option to skip it all together, following a warning over its graphic and distressing content. Sadly it also feels needlessly sensational in a game which has nothing of worth to say. The whole sequence clashes tonally with the rest of the game, which has all the tact and subtlety of a Michael Bay film. It simply furthered the unpleasantness of a game already questionable in its propagandist U.S invasion storyline.

Residents of Ciudad Juárez and Mexico protested the announcement of the game, believing it to highlight the Juárez Cartel, who are believed responsible for over 3000 homicides in the city in 2010.

Inspired by Death Race 2000, Carmageddon caused outrage for the way it encouraged its players to drive carelessly into pedestrians with glee. Slamming your car into someone would result in a satisfyingly bloody explosion of flailing limbs and screams, offering bonus points and increasing your score. Your driver could also be seen smiling and laughing at the carnage in the corner of the screen.

Preceding GTA’s hit-and-run gameplay, Carmageddon’s gore was unashamedly outrageous and graphic, resulting in questions over the increasing realism of video game violence. In many countries including the U.K, the game was refused certification in its uncut form – resulting in the pedestrians being altered to shambling green blooded zombies. After months of appeal, the BBFC certified the uncut version of the game with an 18 certificate.

Chiller is an Exidy light gun arcade game released in 1986. An unlicensed port was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990 by American Game Cartridges in the US, and in Australia by HES, with the option of using either the standard controller or the NES Zapper. The player takes on the role of an unseen torturer who must maim, mutilate, and murder helpless victims in a variety of dungeon settings. Few of the enemies in the game are capable of fighting back, with the challenge element lying in how quickly the player can cause each of the victims to die.

Chiller often criticize for its senseless violence and encouraging the torture and murder of apparently innocent people, as opposed to the gamer fighting enemies capable of defending themselves.

Command & Conquer: Generals is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game and the seventh installment in the Command & Conquer series. It was released for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS operating systems in 2003 and 2004.

Generals takes place in the near future, with players given a choice of three factions to play. In Generals, the United States and China are the world's two superpowers, and are the targets of the Global Liberation Army (GLA), an omnipresent borderless terrorist organization, fighting as a fanatical irregular force. The United States and China are depicted as allies in the series who occasionally co-operate against the GLA, whose goals is the elimination of the military forces of China and the United States.

The Generals series is banned in mainland China. Throughout the Chinese campaign, the player is occasionally made to utilize heavy-handed tactics such as leveling the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre after it becomes a GLA base and destroying the Three Gorges Dam to release a flood on GLA forces. Chinese forces also liberally use nuclear weaponry in-game, albeit restricted to the lower tactical nuclear weapon yield range. Furthermore, in the introduction of the game, Tiananmen Square and its surrounding areas in Beijing is decimated by terrorist nuclear weapons.

Initially, the game was released in Germany under its international title "Command & Conquer: Generals". However, due to the then imminent war in Iraq, the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons) placed the game onto the "List of Media Harmful to Young People" two months after the initial release, which, by law, forbids further public advertising and any sale for persons under 18 years of age. The BPjM stated that the game would give underage people the ability to play the war in Iraq before the real war had even begun.

Additionally, the player would be able to kill civilians. Based on these two points the BPjM put the game on the Index, because they believed it glorified war. Therefore, sale to minors and marketing the original version of the game were prohibited throughout the Federal Republic of Germany.

Counter-Strike faced controversy in April 2007 when Jack Thompson, a now-disbarred attorney from Florida, predicted that the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech Massacre had been trained to kill in the game, well before Seung-Hui Cho (the shooter) was identified. News sources originally stated that Seung-Hui Cho only played the game in high school, however no video games whatsoever were found in the gunman's dorm room, and there is no evidence that he ever played Counter-Strike. Thompson also blamed Counter-Strike for the February 14, 2008 Northern Illinois University shooting perpetrated by Steven Kazmierczak on the day after the shooting. It is reported that Kazmierczak did play Counter-Strike in college.

On January 17, 2008, a Brazilian federal court order prohibiting all sales of Counter-Strike and EverQuest and imposing the immediate withdrawal of these from all stores began to be enforced. The federal Brazilian judge Carlos Alberto Simões de Tomaz, of the Minas Gerais judiciary section, ordered the ban in October 2007 because, according to him, the games "bring imminent stimulus to the subversion of the social order, attempting against the democratic and rightful state and against the public safety."

As of June 18, 2009, a regional federal court order lifting the prohibition on the sale of Counter-Strike was published. The game is now being sold again in Brazil. However, Retail sales are still not allowed

Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (CZ or CS:CZ) is a multiplayer firsp persen shooting video game and the follow-up to Counter-Strike. The game was released in 2004 using the GoldSrc Half-Life engine. CS:CZ features a multiplayer mode, which features updated character models, textures, maps and other graphical tweaks. Unlike other Counter-Strike games, Condition Zero also contains a single-player mission pack with the player playing as counter-terrorist alongside bots.

In Condition Zero deleted scenes, there was a controvercial weapon, alongside M60 machine gun and machete, a terrorist suicide belt.

As primitive as Custer’s Revenge seems now, the unlicensed ‘adult’ Atari cartridge made use of advanced graphics for its time. Therefore you probably have to imagine the image of an erect cowboy waddling towards a tied up girl with today’s modern graphics to truly understand why it was so shocking. Maybe it was just as laughably shoddy then as it is now, who knows.

Sold unofficially in sex shops and down dark alleyways by men in trenchcoats, the game was only one of the many Atari sex cartridges produced by Mystique. Seeing as one of the others is titled Beat’em and Eat’em, Custer’s Revenge seems somewhat tasteful. The main reason for its ability to offend then and even now was the casual depiction of rape, with the box even stating that “she’s not going to take it lying down”.

A highly controversial advertisement regarding John Romero's involvement with the game, which caused a highly-publicized outrage.

After a development build of the game was released on Steam by mistake, it was revealed that the skill 'Gender Wars' (which the character Purna uses) was called 'FeministWhorePurna' within the game's code.

Developer Deep Silver apologised and released a patch for the game to replace the offensive name.

Kung Fu fighting girls playing volleyball with big breast count me in. But no, on a serious note, this is Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, the spin off the not perfect, but pretty good fighting game series Dead or Alive.

Now what could be so wrong about this game. I mentiond Kung Fu fighting girls playing volleyball with big boobs right? Yeah, older people don't like women with big ta ta's playing volleyball.

There are sexual themes in the game according to the people who trash on this game, but to me it's just the characters of Dead or Alive playing Volleyball while their boobs are shaking when they hit the ball.

Death Race is a controversial arcade game, released by Exidy in 1976. While not the first violent video game to appear, it was the first video game to inspire a great deal of protest and controversy in the United States.

In the game, designed by Howell Ivy and inspired by the 1975 cult film Death Race 2000 by Paul Bartel, one or two players control an on-screen car (two cars if two players played) with a steering wheel and an acceleration pedal. The object was to run down "gremlins" who were fleeing the vehicle. As the player hit them, they would scream or squeal and be replaced on-screen by tombstones. This increased the challenge of the game as the screen cluttered up and the player had to avoid the tombstones.

The controversy increased the game's sales, causing another product run, but the game inspired so many protests—including the first-ever organized protests over a video game, led by Ronnie Lamm—that in the end only about 500 units were made. There were even stories about the stand-up consoles being dragged into parking lots and burned by protesters.

While Doom will forever be known as the game which popularized the first person shooter, it was just as groundbreaking for its gore. For many it remains one of the earliest instances of being both impressed and sickened by such a high level of violence in a video game. I must have been about 8 years old when I first saw Doom in action – the hellish world and its bloody and gruesome visuals were a tad different from Sonic The Hedgehog.

It was this visceral violence which made the game an immediate target, especially in the wake of 1999’s Columbine School Massacre. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two perpetrators of the mass killing were huge fans of ID’s seminal shooter, with home tapes and recordings alluding to the game and stating that their atrocious school shooting would be “like fucking Doom”. The media immediately jumped at Doom along with anything that could offer a reason for the carnage, rather than facing the sad truth that Harris and Klebold were psychologically tormented long before they started playing violent video games.

Just this week, Doom was finally released in Germany after being banned for 17 years due to its “drastic portrayals of violence directed against human or human-like beings”. It’s hard to believe its taken this long, but it goes to show just how controversial and shocking Doom was back in the day.

The game has been heavily attacked by some critics, who allege that it promotes pornography and murder. Media Watch made the following comments about the game:

“Duke Nukem 3D moves the 'shooter' through pornography stores, where Duke can use XXX sex posters for target practice. Duke throws cash at a prostituted woman telling her to 'Shake it, Baby' his gun ever ready. In the game bonus points are awarded for the murder of these mostly prostituted and partially nude women. Duke blows up stained glass windows in an empty church or goes to strip clubs where Japanese women lower their kimonos exposing their breasts. Duke is encouraged to kill defenseless, often bound women.”

However, the game does not have a scoring or rewards system of any kind, either for killing women or doing anything else. Instead, the game spawns even more enemies if the player kills a woman. No weapons, items or power-ups are ever given to players in return for violence towards women of any kind, though a cosmetic shower of dollar bills appears after killing a stripper. These cannot be collected and provide no gameplay or score bonus. The only exception is the "Fusion Station" level, where killing a certain woman will yield a shotgun as well as spawn an enemy.

As a response to the criticism encountered, censored versions of the game were released in certain countries to avoid having it banned altogether. A similar censored version was carried at Wal-Mart retail stores in the US.

In Australia, the game was originally refused classification on release. 3D Realms repackaged the game with the parental lock feature permanently enabled, although a patch available on the 3D Realms website allows the user to disable the lock and revert the game back to its original uncensored version. The OFLC then attempted to have the game pulled from the shelves, but it was discovered that the distributor had notified them of this fact and the rating could not be surrendered. Six months later, the game was reclassified and released uncensored with an MA15+ rating.

In Germany, the BPjM placed the game on the List of Media Harmful to Young People, thus prohibiting its public distribution.

In 1999, Duke Nukem 3D was banned in Brazil, along with Quake, Doom and several other violent first-person shooters after a violent rampage in and around a movie theater was allegedly inspired by the first level in the game.

Despite such concerns from critics, legislators, and publishers, Scott Miller later recounted that 3D Realms saw very little negative feedback to the game's controversial elements from actual gamers or their parents. He pointed out that Duke Nukem 3D was appropriately rated "M" and had no real nudity, and speculated that that was enough to make it inoffensive to the general public.

Was banned and refused to get a rating in Australia and Germany for extreme violence and disturbing images which included copious blood spray in the game, decapitations, partially dismembered corpses, and numerous scenes of attacks, fights, torture, and death."

Endorfun is a single-player, arcade-style computer game released in 1995. It is notable for its use of new age movement's messages throughout its soundtrack.

The premise of this game is to control either a skin-headed white supremacist or a member of the KKK, moving through the ghetto, shooting and killing any black and Latino people you find. You then descend into the subway and kill Jewish people, before finding a Jewish Control Center, and killing the former Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon.

I found out about this game by watching a Louis Theroux documentary on white supremacists, and being shocked by this game being the only game a mother allowed her two young daughters to play and them both claiming to enjoy it. The game was released in 2002 by an underground record label specializing in Neo-Nazi and white supremacist music, called Resistance Records.

The game has been protested over, and the game engine that was used to create it, Genesis3D, has even been encouraged to change their licensing to prohibit the creation of racist games.

The game’s description is as follows: “The Race War has begun. Your skin is your uniform in this battle for the survival of your kind. The White Race depends on you to secure its existence. Your peoples enemies surround you in a sea of decay and filth that they have brought to your once clean and White nation. Not one of their numbers shall be spared….”

Grand Theft Auto (abbreviated as GTA) is a 1997 action-adventure open world video game created by games developer DMA Design (now Rockstar North) and published by BMG Interactive.

The game allows the player to take on the role of a criminal who can roam freely around a big city. Various missions are set for completion, such as bank robberies, assassinations, and other crimes. It is the first title in the Grand Theft Auto series

Of all gaming franchises politicians love to hate, Grand Theft Auto takes the cake. And none managed to do so in the way that Grand Theft Auto III did when it first arrived on the scene.

Considered an open world masterpiece by many, Rockstar’s romp through Liberty City allowed people to literally do whatever they wanted in a real life setting in a fictional major city. Everything from running red lights to mowing down pedestrians on the street with an assault rifle was playable in the game without any of the real-world consequences of jail time. Sure, the cops come after you, but you can just as easily steal their cars or turn your guns on them as well.

Of course, being that it is set in a modern imagining of a real city and allows you to assume the role of a violent criminal, Grand Theft Auto III was condemned for inspiring real-world violence and teaching kids that it’s ok to steal and commit violent acts of crime.

That being said, the game does have a Mature rating and isn’t for kids. But hey, that’s a different story.

Grand Theft Auto remains the number one video game series synonymous with controversy. So much so that it’s almost impossible to pinpoint a single entry. Every game in the series has been subject to media condemnation of some sort – from Vice City’s depiction of Hispanic gangs to GTA IV’s drink driving mini-game. The series has also been used frequently as either a scapegoat, being blamed for real-life murder and theft - cited in a number or trials and court cases, as well as tabloid headlines.

But while every entry of GTA is controversial for its core gameplay, GTA San Andreas is perhaps the most controversial entry due to the Hot Coffee scandal. Hidden within the games code, hot coffee had been developed as a sex mini-game, with Rockstar having removed the content through fear of outrage. That turned out to be a very good call, but it wasn’t hidden well enough. Tech savvy gamers soon managed to dig out the mini-game and make it playable through the download of a simple mod.

Discovery of the mini-game led to outrage, with many declaring Rockstar’s game as pornographic and even encouraging rape. It was soon pulled from shelves, with the ESRB changing the games rating from Mature (M) to Adults Only (AO) - a rating usually reserved for seedy porno titles like Lula 3D and All Nude Nickki. The scandal led to the industry taking particular care with hidden assets in future games.

Like Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has been labeled as violent and explicit, and is considered highly controversial by many special interest groups, some of whom suggest that parental supervision is necessary when young people play this game, since children were never the game's intended audience. The ESRB rated this game "M" for Mature. In Australia, it was censored in case of it receiving a refused classification rating in which the ability to pick up a prostitute was blocked, so the game could be given a MA15+ rating. In 2010, these small cuts were added back and the game still retained its MA15+ rating.

Attacking a Haitian gang in Little Haiti. The game was accused of inviting people to harm immigrant Cubans and Haitians, and of featuring anti-Haitian and anti-Cuban phrases.

In November 2003, Cuban and Haitian groups in Florida targeted the title. They accused the game of inviting people to harm immigrants from those two nations.

The groups' claims of racism and incitement to genocide attracted a good deal of public attention towards Vice City. Rockstar Games issued a press release stating that they understood the concern of Cubans and Haitians, but also believed those groups were blowing the issue out of proportion. Under further pressure, including threats from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to "do everything we possibly can" if Rockstar did not comply, Take-Two (the game's publisher) did agree to remove several lines of dialogue. This seems to have largely satisfied the groups who raised the complaints, although the case was then referred to a state court, downgraded from the initial decision to refer the case to a federal court. In 2004, a new version of the game was released, removing and changing those lines of dialogue.

In February 2005, a lawsuit was brought upon the makers and distributors of the Grand Theft Auto series claiming the games caused a teenager to shoot and kill three members of the Alabama police force. The shooting took place in June 2003 when Devin Moore, 17 years old at the time, was brought in for questioning to a Fayette police station regarding a stolen vehicle. Moore then grabbed a pistol from one of the police officers and shot and killed him along with another officer and dispatcher before fleeing in a police car. One of Moore's attorneys, Jack Thompson, claimed it was GTA's graphic nature — with his constant playing time — that caused Moore to commit the murders, and Moore's family agrees. Damages are being sought from the Jasper branches of GameStop and Wal-Mart, the stores from which GTA III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, respectively, were purchased and also from the games' publisher Take-Two Interactive, and the PlayStation 2 manufacturer Sony Computer Entertainment. The case Strickland v. Sony was heard by the same judge who presided over Moore's criminal trial, in which he was sentenced to death for his actions. In May 2008, he was criticised by Judge Dava Tunis for unprofessional conduct during the Strickland v. Sony case.

In September 2006, Jack Thompson brought another lawsuit, claiming that Cody Posey played the game obsessively before murdering his father, stepmother, and stepsister on a ranch in Hondo, New Mexico. The suit was filed on behalf of the victims' families. During the criminal trial, Posey's defense team argued he was abused by his father, and tormented by his stepmother. Posey was also taking Zoloft at the time of the killings. The suit alleged that were it not for his obsessive playing of Vice City, the murders would not have taken place. Named in the suit were Cody Posey, Rockstar Games, Take-Two Interactive, and Sony. The suit asked for US$600 million in damages. The case was dismissed in December 2007, as New Mexico held no jurisdiction over Sony or Take-Two. Jack Thompson was later disbarred.

In late 2012, the PC version of the game was temporarily pulled from digital stores, including Steam, due to a music licensing issue with one of the songs in the game. The song in question is believed to be "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" by Michael Jackson, though Rockstar Games has not confirmed this.

Harvester contains various scenes of violence and gore; implied sexual intercourse, masturbation and S&M; murder; suicide; child abuse; profanity; cannibalism; prostitution; pedophilia; molestation, serial killing; geronticide, vandalism, sexually transmitted diseases; and stereotypes of homosexuals, Native Americans, Italians, and others. This caused controversy when the game was first announced, as early as 1994 at that year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES). At the time, several television news programs like CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News included the (supposedly upcoming) new game in stories focusing on the link between video games and violence, as well as the need for a more established rating system.

The game was banned from stores in Germany. It was considered for release in Australia, but the local distributor for the game backed out, believing it would probably be banned there, as well. The game was released in Great Britain, albeit with numerous scenes removed from the game by the BBFC.

Few titles at that time had managed to match Harvester's volume of gore - a distant contemporary would be Phantasmagoria. However, despite the extremely graphic content, the game only received an M rating in the USA instead of an AO. Much of the violence consisted of crudely animated blood and gore superimposed over rotoscoped live-action actors - as opposed to realistically rendered makeup effects. Gilbert Austin has stated that his ambitions for the game were much higher (including live video during conversation, instead of simple close-up photos), but that he ran out of both time and money.

For whatever reason, the game was not actually released until 1996, and wound up being largely ignored: the victim of lukewarm reviews, having missed its initial window of notoriety, and graphics which appeared already outdated by the time of its release.

Hitman 2: Silent Assassin is an action-adventure stealth game developed by IO Interactive and published by Eidos Interactive. In the game, players assume the role of an assassin known as Agent 47. The game advances as players carry out contract killings by solving puzzles to arrange for stealthy, untraceable assassinations.

The game's release sparked controversy due to a level featuring the killing of Sikhs within a depiction of their most holy site, the Harmandir Sahib. An altered version of Silent Assassin was eventually released on all the platforms with the related material removed from the game.

Despite the fact to be the most violent game of the series yet, the magazine ads for the game generated more controversy than the title which spawned them. The ad that drew the most attention and protest depicted a woman lying on a bed in lingerie, seemingly asleep but with a bullet hole in her forehead.

The caption above the picture read: "Beautifully Executed", a pun regarding the woman's appearance and her fate. Other ads were "Classically Executed", featuring a cellist with a slit throat, "Coldly Executed", showing a man in a freezer, and "Shockingly Executed", depicting a woman in a bath who has been electrocuted by a toaster.

Hooligans: Storm Over Europe is a video game recreating the hooliganism which often accompanies international football matches throughout much of Europe.

The game was released in 2002 on the PC platform to immediate controversy due to its violent content and the perceived promotion of criminal behaviour in football, with some politicians calling for it to be banned.

A similar media and political reaction had occurred on release of other controversial video games at the time such as Grand Theft Auto, Postal and Carmageddon. The Dutch producers of the game, Darxabre, defended the title stating that it rewarded strategic thinking rather than violence

The game generated some controversy for its reference to a fictional, unsolved rape. As Donn Nausert stated, "I don't think this is a subject that the American public is comfortable with in a video game, even though it's not dealt with graphically..."

In their review of the game, Dragon also criticized it for not including "a warning on the box about the mature subject matter in this game" in reference to the unsolved rape case.

This game was released for download in 2004 by Scottish company ‘Traffic Games’, the release date coinciding with the 41st anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, in 1963. The game puts you in the position of Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, as he attempts to assassinate Kennedy. The playability of the game comes from a points system, where you must try and accurately recreate the actual bullet path of the assassination, and the events described in the Warren Commission report. It has been argued that JFK Reloaded isn’t so much a game, as a historical simulation. Either way, the company ran a competition in 2005 to see who could get the highest score and get closest to a 100% accurate simulation of JFK’s death.

A man from France won $10,000 with a score of 782 out of 1000. A spokesman for Edward Kennedy, John Kennedy’s brother, has been quoted as calling the game, “…despicable. Why would someone make this game? This should have never been allowed on the market.”

Kakuto Chojin, though heavily hyped and praised for its graphics, received unfavorable reviews from both critics and gamers, who citied its shallow gameplay, weak Story mode, and lack of bonus material. The game averages a 52.54% rating on the aggregate game review website Game Rankings. Game Informer magazine described it as a Tekken ripoff; ironically, a portion of the Kakuto Chojin development team were indeed ex-Tekken developers.

The game was pulled off the shelves in early 2003 due to accusations of containing offensive religious content. Verses from the Quran were allegedly being chanted in the background of the song "Love/Hate Chant", which serves as theme song for the character Asad (a Muslim himself). To date, Kakuto Chojin has not been re-released. The initial intent may have been to reissue the game without the chant, but its sales were so poor that Microsoft presumably decided a reissue would not be profitable.

In fact, Kakuto Chojin is not found on any official game list published by Microsoft, further suggesting that there was no reissue and Microsoft has decided to erase the game from its records. Ironically, the game was touted as the first first-party fighter developed for the Xbox.

Kingpin: Life of Crime is a first-person shooter developed by Xatrix Entertainment (now a part of Treyarch) and published by Interplay Entertainment in June 1999. The game begins with the player character wounded and beaten up by the Kingpin's henchmen, and the story follows his thirst for revenge.

Released shortly after the Columbine High School massacre, the game attracted controversy which led it to be dropped from various retailers, despite receiving moderate critical acclaim.

Numerous versions of KZ manager have been made since 1990 on the Commodore 64, Amiga, MS DOS and on Windows. The game is a text-based, resource management game which simulates the construction and running of a Nazi Concentration Camp. Many other management sims are hugely successful, such as the Sim City series, but instead of resources like water, electricity and food to manage, KZ Manager has the player manage the prisoners (Jews, Gypsies or Turks – your choice), poison gas and money, as well as monitoring public opinion and the camp productivity.

Money can be made by forcing the prisoners to work, with public opinion being raised with regular killing of these prisoners. More prisoners can be bought, with the corpses of those you have killed being put on a garbage pile.

Most versions of KZ Manager are in German, which is strange considering the modern day German regulations against the uses of Nazi symbols and practices. KZ Manager is freeware, and the latest Windows version, called “KZ Manager Millennium” is available through the internet.

The cover art in the UK had to be altered due to a potentially offensive hand gesture being depicted.

The game was banned in Australia for its excessive violence and gore. The game's New Orleans setting so soon after Hurricane Katrina was considered "a bad call".

Left Behind: Eternal Forces is a real-time strategy game, released in 2006 for Windows. It is based on the ‘Left Behind’ series of Christian novels and features the ‘Tribulation Force’ – a Christian group whom the player fights for in New York, as they combat Global Warming and a world government run by an Anti Christ. The game can be likened to other strategy games such as Age of Empires, or Command and Conquer.

However, in Left Behind, the Christian mass fight various enemies using their faith as you try to convert everyone in order to be saved. Conversion is encouraged first; however lethal force is authorized when necessary. This provided the basis for the negative reception the game got, with it being accused of inciting a “convert or kill” message.

It was branded as a “violent Christian video game” that promoted “Religious bigotry, intolerance and warfare”. The Anti Defamation League – a Jewish organization defended the makers of the game by stating “Conversion to Christianity in the game is not depicted as forcible in nature, and violence is not rewarded.”

Leisure Suit Larry started out as a text adventure starring the sleazy Larry as he traveled around town hitting up bars and trying to seduce women.

It was a goofy game rife with sexual overtones and blatantly adult content that was warned about even at the start of the game.

And while it isn’t necessarily the best game ever made, it is no less important to the discussion of how we should go about handing themes of sex in video games.

Lethal Enforcers saw you taking the role of one of the last Chicago cops tasked with stopping a major crime organization that had moved into the city. It was a pretty standard shooter that allowed you to obtain more powerful weapons and included a light gun peripheral in the game that served as the game’s controller.

It didn’t have Doom levels of violence, but the fact you held a gun and shot at virtual people ruffled more than a few feathers, making this game one of the more controversial entries in history.

Lyrics from a licensed song, "Tapha Niang", were removed due to fears that Muslims would be offended as it allegedly contained words from the Quran. This led to controversy about the removal itself.