Dan Chiappini26 June 2006, 7:04 AM
UPDATE |The OFLC has now published itsreasoning for the banning of Reservoir Dogs.You've seen the movie, now don't play the game: the Office of Film and Literature Classification has banned the upcoming Reservoir Dogs game, despite allowing the movie to be released years ago.
UPDATE | The OFLC has published its reasoning for the banning [PDF]. As we suspected they specifically cite reasons such as: torturing hostages by cutting off their fingers, burning victim's eyes with lit cigars and pistol whipping characters to death. So it's not really a surprise then that we won't see it hit the Oz shelves.
Australia's censor has banned the upcoming
Reservoir Dogs game, announced just a little over a month ago by Eidos for Xbox, PlayStation 2 and PC.Atari, the Australian distributor of EIDOS’ major upcoming release, has had the title
scrapped after being refused classification by the
Office of Film & Literature Classification (OFLC).
The ban comes after Atari's application failed to comply with the strict categorisation guidelines into one of the four available standards (G, PG, M, MA15+) currently available.
Since Australia still has no restricted R18+ category for video games, Reservoir Dogs has therefore become unclassifiable and the title made illegal for sale or rental in Australia with strict fines and jail time available for merchants running the risk.
The decision follows closely on the heals of the denial of entry to Mark Ecko’s Getting up: Contents Under Pressure earlier this year and will no doubt be met with anger by the same game-going public who anxiously awaited its release.
Developed by Blitz Games (the company responsible for such wholesome titles as SpongeBob Square Pants: Creature from the Krusty Krab and Pac-Man World 3), the title was to closely mirror the 1992 cult classic movie of the same name and follows a diamond heist and the bloody carnage that ensues when it all goes wrong.
According to an Atari release about the game sent out last month it was also to try and develop additional plotlines from the movie including the mysterious whereabouts of Mr Blue and Mr Brown as well as clear up questions about what happened to Mr Pink and the missing diamonds.
Despite the movie carrying a restricted R18+ rating for movie rental and purchase, the OFLC has no equivalent classification for video games.
While Mark Ecko’s Getting Up was a game which The OFLC thought promoted vandalism and teen delinquency, from the looks of it, it's a fair assumption that Reservoir Dogs appears to have been canned for all out glorification of violence.
Ironically enough, you can go out today and buy the live-action movie on DVD without any questions being asked, but if you’d like to continue the adventure into the virtual world then you’re out of luck.
When asked if Atari planned to resubmit an amended version of the game for reclassification, PR and Promotions Manager David Wildgoose simply replied with “That’s the end of the matter.”
An OFLC representative was unavailable to comment at the time of writing, but we'll update as soon as more information comes to light.