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[ness io kain]

Well it's surely better than mine.
I was three.

[kinnas]

But I don't think that's a good rating for the game, because it's very dark and deals with some pretty serious issues that would either alarm a ten year old kid or go over his head completely in a somewhat unhealthy fashion. Granted, I've met some very mature ten-year-olds, but on average...

Actually I think giving children access to more mature themes in video games would be for the better. The general culture that children live in is quite bright and pink and blue which results in these carefree 'not very mature' characters. And this is fine, a happy childhood is great. But as they said in Ed, Edd and Eddy "A little childhood drama builds character."

Final Fantasy 6 was pretty good at this, I myself was 11 or 12 I think when I played it. You have these characters who are fun and exciting and you have this adventure storyline and as a child it is quite easy to connect with the silly epicness of it all. Then every now and then you are faced with these dramatic events which change the tone of the game to something quite serious. Suddenly start to feel with the characters on a different level, building empathy and all that. You generally become a better person for the experience.
Of course the latter Final Fantasies went beyond all taste with this.

But have a kid play Cave Story and they will connect with it even more when Curly dies. (and to be a real bastard tell them they could have saved her)

[John Lee]

I have a copy of the original FFVI, or should I say FFIII, and the box has not ESRB rating on it.

I also played it when it came out in '94, and I was seven then. Didn't warp me appreciably. I didn't really notice that anything was amiss compared to other games, I just... well, I knew what sex was, and death, and evil, so it didn't strike me as odd that teenagers could have sex and get pregnant, or that someone would try to kill themselves, or that Kefka was such an evil bastard.


Although my first time through, I didn't see the suicide scene. I saved Cid, like a good caretaker.

[nihilocrat]

The internet is a great thing, guys...

The ESRB was established in 1994 by the Entertainment Software Association (formerly Interactive Digital Software Association) ... One of the reasons the ESRB was founded was due to violent content found in video games such as Mortal Kombat and Doom, as well as other controversial video games portraying overly violent or intense sexual situations at the time.

Ah... memories. Mortal Kombat and DooM were those games I had to go to a friend's house to play because my parents wouldn't let me get them.

[Shade Jackrabbit]

Ah... memories. Mortal Kombat and DooM were those games I had to go to a friend's house to play because my parents wouldn't let me get them.

My mom's argument for violent games is "only if you buy some different, less violent games as well."

[Μarkham]

I wasn't even allowed to have a game system until I was 12, and I had to save up my allowance to get my GameBoy Pocket.  It took another year of saving and convincing to get my N64, and even then, I had to sign a parent-child contract thing that restricted the time I could play, what TV set I could even play it on, etc.

I couldn't even have anything resembling a gun until I turned 18.  No squirt guns, no Nerf guns, nothing.  I also couldn't watch things like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (), or read X-Men comics.

So what did I do in my little no-violence shell?  I wrote and illustrated stories of X-Cat, a Siamese kung-fu gunslinger cat who shot aliens in their head(s), after which they'd spurt out copious amounts of red Crayola pencil!  I think the best one was in third grade where I wrote a story called "History" where Elmo when on a killing rampage and ran down all the Sesame Street characters with a semi truck.  I don't know what was worse: that story, or the fact that my third-grade teacher found it funny.

[Alec S.]

I remember I was at a summer camp when I was a kid.  They had a computer period, but they didn't allow you to play any games with any violence (even cartoon network games about kids attacking robots).

Everyone else struggled with these restrictions.

I played a java version of Rogue and Adventure.

[Chris Z]

Computer time at school for me was Conan the Barbarian and Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego on the Apple IIe.  Oh, Karateka, Moon Patrol and Burger Time, hell yea.

[Shade Jackrabbit]

I remember I was at a summer camp when I was a kid.  They had a computer period, but they didn't allow you to play any games with any violence (even cartoon network games about kids attacking robots).

Everyone else struggled with these restrictions.

I played a java version of Rogue and Adventure.

I guess you never mentioned the part where you kill the giant snake with the sword, or the dwarf throws axes at you?  :D

[Radix]

I wasn't ever allowed to play anything 'violent' besides Wolfenstein. Then one day I got caught with Carmageddon 2, and after that blew over they pretty much left me alone.

[aeiowu]

wall-e is rated G. it's one of my favorite movies because of the mature themes in it. kids don't latch onto these and that's ok. Wall-e should be rated G.

[deetus]

Aether's still a pretty fun game sans theme, and I'd have to say that it's G rated fun for the whole family.