Porn | Nintendo Skirting Child Porn Laws With 3DS Game?

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 31 May 2011 13:15

Your IT - Entertainment

A Nintendo 3DS fighting game, featuring scantily clad fighters, of whom three are described as being under 18, has been banned in Sweden but is still on sale in Australia as a PG game.

The news has come forth through Fairfax Media's Asher Moses, who in a detailed story entitled " Nintendo child porn game PG in Australia ", explains that the 3DS game "Dead or Alive: Dimensions" has been banned in Sweden because of potential breaches of Swedish child porn laws.

Mr Moses goes on to explain that three of the game's female characters are described as being under 18.

Now, while the young ladies in question are not naked, they do appear to be dressed in the skimpy Japanese Manga/cartoon style, something that is very popular and common in Japan and among fans around the world.

The SMH article quoted a Nintendo Australia spokesperson saying that: "The game contains a wide variety of fictional characters which depict Japanese style cartoon images some of which are female fighters. This is not classified as child porn".

However, if that is the case, then why was it banned in Sweden, and what action might be taken next?

While child porn can never, ever be condoned, and is a blight on the world's children, there's clearly no clear answer to whether scantily-clad teenagers actually constitutes child porn or not, especially seeing as Australia's classification body gave the game a PG or parental guidance rating.

So, as Nintendo and the Dead or Alive: Dimensions game gets some very unexpected and likely unwelcome publicity, and potentially a nice boost in sales, the debate will likely continue for some time, with games makers likely to think twice about how they graphically depict people, especially if they are under 18.

After all, child porn is definitely no game.

See Asher's Moses story for more details .