Those ******* Aussies.

I've scoured the whole Internet, from Wikipedia to Yahoo! to the Australian Ratings board, and I am finding incredibly wide gaps in the consistency of Australian censorship. Apparently, it's OK to broadcast The Osbournes uncensored and have full frontal nudity in their SOAP OPERAS as long as you don't show someone's head exploding in a video game. Their music industry has three different "obscene" ratings, yet F-bombs are just fine on TV, as long as it's after 8:30 p.m.?! Ridiculous. And it's alright to have porn, as long as you import it. It's illegal to buy it in the country. Plenty of games are banned, too, then later reinstated after a particular bit is removed or edited (see: any GTA game). But they don't remove all the offensive stuff, just enough to make it a M15+ game. Like in GTA IV, you can pick up a hooker, but you can't swing the camera around and look in the windshield to see what she's doing. But it's still completely fine to chase her with a baseball bat and beat your money out of her afterwards.

There are so many weird things to get censored for in Australia. Fallout 3 was banned because it blurred the line between sci-fi drugs and real drugs. Bethesda took out the word "morphine" (it's called Med-X in the game) and removed the shooting-up animation and Fallout 3 was reinstated. It was also edited for Japan (they don't like atom bombs much over there) and it was not released in India at all (there are two-headed cows).

The average gamer in Australia is 30 years old. If they are going to censor TV, video games, movies, books, music, and all other art forms, both passive and immersive, the Aussies need to find a more consistent method of going about it. If you don't want boobies on TV destroying their child's innocence, fine. Get rid of them from everywhere. Picking and choosing where it's OK to see them just confuses children, grown-ups, and foreigners like me. I'm getting mixed messages, Australia! Can I swear and see violence/nudity or not? It seems that I can, as long as I stick to the appropriate format. Network TV, here I come!

Catalog THIS in your Dewey Decimal System.

Now that video games are becoming more recognized as "art," there is a growing movement amongst some of the geek elite to preserve their legacy for future generations to enjoy. And why not? Gutenberg Bibles are worth millions. Old Disney VHS tapes are worth hundreds of dollars each. The Beatles' White Album can't be found at a used record store for less than $50. Games start off being pretty expensive, and the price has never really changed much. Final Fantasy III (or VI, whatever you call it) was $80 when it first came out on Super Nintendo. Today, Fallout 3 is $60. But games decrease in value after a time, and a select few eventually become more valuable. Especially RPG's - Dragon Warrior IV, Shining Force, Phantasy Star, Final Fantasies, etc. But why does the enjoyment of old games have to be confined to the few people that can actually afford to drop a Benjamin on an original NES cartridge?

Let's get games into public libraries. Books are in libraries and people still go to bookstores. A lot of newer movies are free in libraries and yet people still rent movies. Old games, for some reason or another, have no forum in which they can be rented or played without actually owning them. Blockbuster and Movie Gallery have the entire center section of their stores dedicated to older movies, all the way back to the silent film era. Why can't there be a place we can go to enjoy classic games for $1 a week? Is this more viable than getting games into libraries, there's a profit to be made now! Sure, it can be hard to get many old NES carts to work... but that definitely doesn't mean that they're broken. Blow in it, slide it into the system so it barely makes it past the edge, pop the cart halfway up, turn your NES upside down, there are all manner of getting these old classics to boot up. If there was a mom and pop retro game rental store in my neighborhood, you can be sure that I'd be one of those kids hanging out there after class, waxing nostalgic with other gamers who also recall the good old days when "graphics" were a luxury and a "soundtrack" was synthesized MIDI beeps and boops. Sweet memories... would someone please get on this?

Soundtrack of my life. Or at least my games.

When you repeatedly hear the same music with the same actions, you forever associate them with each other. I always listened to Sugar Ray's self-titled CD when I mowed the lawn or played Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 on the Game Boy Advance. Now, certain songs on that CD make me feel like I'm out mowing in the hot hot heat or skating around the rooftop level as Tony Hawk. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was a sublime game, but the music was... lacking. The minimalist soundtrack with a heavy emphasis on ambient nature sounds and footsteps was a huge turn-off for me. Luckily, 360's let you import your own CD's onto it to make a custom soundtrack for your games. I would travel all across Cyrodiil while bumpin' Cold War Kids. Now, whenever I hear their music on the radio or play their CD in my car, I picture the beautiful landscapes of Tamriel and the often ugly faces of the hundreds of NPC's in the game. It's like a subconscious music video. It's hard to hear Nirvana's "Smells like Teen Spirit" and not picture the dark gymnasium from the music video. I have unintentionally linked Oblivion and Cold War Kids in my mind, and it's not a bad thing. It gives imagery to the songs, even if the images conjured up are not the intended ones.

Another game I've remixed is Fable II: Pub Games. Barely a game at all, Pub Games' tedium is almost eliminated by listening to Beck's Modern Guilt while spinning the slot machines ad nauseum. Almost. Also, I want the prizes and achievement points! Anything that helps me mellow out after a long hard day is a winner in my book.

Fallout 3 is an improvement over Oblivion, I guess. There is a radio on the game that constantly loops often-humorous reinterpretations of old-time music. If I would hear that music in real life, I would be transported in my mind back to the world of Fallout 3, the way the game makers probably intended. Still, I wonder how long before I started playing some Radiohead in its place...?