Edmund McMillen– who you may know as half of Team Meat– hopes that his next game will get Nintendo’s stamp of approval. Super Meat Boy was a Steam and XBLA exclusive on a legal level, but McMillen’s The Binding of Isaac was denied a home at the 3DS eShop by Nintendo for “questionable religious content.”
The original roguelike paid great homage to the first Legend of Zelda.
Gamasutra recently published a postmortem of the game penned by McMillen, where he adds a few details about the sequel, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. Here he shares his opinion that “the new look might soften up a few people at Nintendo for a possible Wii U/3DS eShop release.”
We could call that a victory– I for one am a huge fan of McMillen’s games– but shouldn’t we sooner take a look at Nintendo’s low tolerance for mature content?
Nintendo loves mature games (Resident Evil, Eternal Darkness, Madworld); it’s their tolerance (dare I say, compassion) for religious groups. During the 80’s, they turned the other cheek while religious groups pirated their games. Now with BoI, it was the theme rather than the blood & gore. Nintendo didn’t want to offend anybody.