Video game localizations and updates usually come with a few quirks, but a recent change to the port of Baseball Stars 2, a classic Neo Geo game released 28 years ago, has fans concerned about possible Chinese censorship making its way to SNK’s games after SNK was purchased by the Hong Kong-based company Leyou in 2015.
The Baseball Stars 2 port, created by Hamster Corporation, originally launched in March 2019, but scrubbed all references to Taiwan and Taipei in a recent update, as noticed by fans of the game on Reddit. Specifically, the update has removed “Taiwan” from the name of the “Taiwan Dragons,” and “Taipei” from the “Taipei Hawks,” both being teams found in the game. Apparently, Baseball Stars 2 isn’t alone in its censorship either.
On Twitter, players have discovered other SNK games apparently being censored, including Art of Fighting 2 which appears to have had the Rising Sun flag removed from it. The Rising Sun flag represents Imperialist Japan, which is considered offensive in many parts of Asia. However, the scrubbing of Taiwan and Taipei directly ties into the political drama between the island nation and China.
Taiwan’s status as a country is a hot issue in Chinese politics. Scrubbing the name Taiwan from media as a form of censorship is a fairly common practice, though a largely unpopular one in the west. Protests against the Chinese government can be found frequently in the games industry, with mixed responses depending on where they appear. For instance, a pro Hearthstone player was banned after protesting for Hong Kong’s independence in 2019.
Before its acquisition, SNK was a Japanese-owned company, but Leyou now owns the rights to SNK and its properties. Removing Taiwanese references from the game was like a way to avoid censors, or possibly to ease investor tensions, though it isn’t clear. Oddly enough, the Steam version of Baseball Stars 2 hasn’t been censored – yet, at least. It’s possible that version has simply gone unnoticed, or some outside factor is holding up the process.
It is strange that a 28-year-old retro game was changed in such a way, not to mention after already having been available for a year. It’s possible that changes have been made to other games as well, possibly ones that have flown under the radar. Undoubtedly, internet sleuths will likely be looking more closely at updates to retro game ports for changes, which may have some interesting results, all said and done.
Source: Polygon
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