It's rare to see DS titles being held responsible by the mainstream media for society's ills. Usually, such treatment is reserved for home console releases, but in the last 24 hours two DS games have triggered a bout of misguided bleatings, both from British papers that amazingly
aren't the
Daily Mail. That's right, readers:
two titles. Welcome to a special, double edition "Outrage!" post. Double the horror! Double the controversy! Double the irrational fear!
We'll start with the obvious one, then. We
sensed there'd be a backlash against
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars as soon as we saw
these shots, but even we were impressed by the speediness of
The Sun's error-strewn report. Next to an incorrectly captioned picture of
Grand Theft Auto III, the paper reveals how a game about selling drugs will soon be playable on the "family-friendly" Nintendo DS, and remarks that, "Experts predict the final edition is unlikely to feature explicit criminality." They're in for a surprise, then.
Next up in the stocks is a far more surprising scapegoat: the rather innocent
Advance Wars. According to the
Daily Telegraph, police investigating the stabbing of a 20-year-old who was also
a massive fan of the game (to the extent that he ran an
Advance Wars fansite) are now investigating whether the killer was a fellow "internet gamer." Of course, that's just one of several potential links being examined by the authorities, but the newspaper still leads with the
Advance Wars angle. Why?
OUTRAGE!
Source:
Grand Theft your child's INNOCENCE [Via Game Politics]
Source:
Advance Wars: Murder Weapon [Via Game Politics]