The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
Please vote in the Forum Structure Poll. Polling will close at 2PM EST on January 21, 2025.
When did games start using naughty language?
emnmnme
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm trying to put my finger on it but I can't figure out when videogames started using four letter words. Back in 1994, violence was starting out and people can easily point to Doom and Mortal Kombat and say, "Aha! That's when it became acceptable to use violence in popular games, not just niche titles." But it's harder to figure out when dirty words were allowed by publishers for games intended for adults. I would suspect cussing started when games came out on CD-ROMs and voice actors were hired. By then, the budgets for scripts would be large enough to allow for experimentation with dialog. But I don't remember any Sega CD or 3DO games with foul language included.
The first game I ever noticed a four letter word used was Fallout, with 'Fuck' and 'Shit' written in text. Fallout 2 had Myron swearing like a sailor, actually speaking his obscenities. Metal Gear Solid used 'Damn' a few times but that's a huge leap between what's in MGS for the PSX and what's in, say, GTA: San Andreas or that car combat game Midway put out a few years back.
The first game I ever noticed a four letter word used was Fallout, with 'Fuck' and 'Shit' written in text. Fallout 2 had Myron swearing like a sailor, actually speaking his obscenities. Metal Gear Solid used 'Damn' a few times but that's a huge leap between what's in MGS for the PSX and what's in, say, GTA: San Andreas or that car combat game Midway put out a few years back.
emnmnme on
0
Posts
Wait...maybe that's why I never became an Avatar?
I was young and thought that was awesome because I had never really seen it before.
Somebody needs to call the jehovas, they need this update.
Splatterhouse too.
This is what I was going to say. The black guy with the gun on his hand swore a lot, and it was a really big deal at the time.
Errr videogames, right. I'm not really sure but I think it's been around in PC games for a lot longer than consoles. I remember when I was younger my cousin showing me some pretty crude games he'd found for commodore.
I've only started noticing it recently in some console games. In the SNES days a damn or hell might have slipped by but that was about it. Games like FF7 had lots but it was almost always censored. I'm not sure when I noticed it on consoles for the first time..Probably around the time games like Manhunt started coming out. Not saying that's what started the trend, just when I personally noticed it.
MineCraft: Menetherin
Steam: Vloeza_SE++
Me: Gasp.
I do distinctly remember a "sh!t" or "sh'it" or something though.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
It was in x3. I remember that and thinking it was awesome. Some guy at my school told me there was a special code to make X say a lot of curse words such as "fuck" and "shit." He was lying. Soon after, he died from an acute asthma attack.
Yep. And then Hitler's head exploded in slow-motion.
I was scarred for life.
Shazbot is my favorite word ever to exclaim. More games should attempt to create words.
Not to mention the fact that you could give money to a stripper who would take her top off.
Duke was certainly a potty-mouth, the MP taunts were great though: "Your face, your ass, what's the difference?"
I think Duke Nukem had some racy language and themes, if I'm remembering correctly.
When I think back on it, most of the swearing I've seen and rememeber being kind of shocked by was in the PSX/N64 generation in some of the RPGs. For some reason Final Fantasy VII (with its many flavors of "damn") and Ogre Battle 64 (which hits on a surprisingly large number of cuss words) stick out in my mind.
Then, of course, there was Conker's Bad Fur Day. Oh, Conker's Bad Fur Day.
The first big game I know of that used more than the occasional damn and was just an all-out swearfest was Kingpin: Life of Crime. A pc game that came out in 1999, it was very violent and heavy on profanity. It was also pretty damn good, and hard. It actually bears more than a few similarities to Deus Ex, in that you can approach missions in a variety of ways and there are a whole bunch of side quests that can be done. No RPG elements though. It was pretty good way back when. Also one of the first games to have detailed hitboxes on NPCs so you could see precisely where you hit them and whatnot. Anyone else play this?
Well obviously it was the Capcom ninjas. You don't lie about Megaman.
As silly as this sounds, I would almost exclusively ask the question for consoles since haven't there been like underground porn games and all kinds of crazy stuff for PC since the dawn of time?
One of the earliest games I remember was Monkey Island with damnation.. For some reason I remember it being in the first one, but I have no idea which one in the series said it first.
It didn't pick up until the SNES/Genesis/PSX years. Especially with all the imported games with rough translations.
EDIT: Wolfenstien 3D had some stuff in it, from what I hear. I just never played too much of it to remember.
fisrt mainstream game to do it.
there were FAR more offensive PC games that go back earlier, like Custer's Revenge.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Indeedy-do. In fact, you'd only ask the question for post-NES consoles, as the Atari and other stone-age consoles didn't need licensing or approval to make a game. But yeah, I remember there were certainly old Zork-like text adventures that didn't skimp on the language.
Other notable uses of swear words:
Condemned
Protagonist: 'Come out with your hands up!'
Villain: 'Fuck you'
I remember being pretty shocked by the cussing in snatcher, so I'd say around 1993 is when cursing started creeping in.
Not an early game by any means, but I was kind of surprised by the swearing and innuendo in The Longest Journey. It seemed really unnecessary.
kingpin was awesome. that aside I couldn't really say when games started using more curses simply because I never noticed. They're so mainstream in culture now I still don't know that i've ever encountered a game that uses them more often than quite a few people I know use them every day
simpler times eh, simpler times
if we're talking recent swearing...
fear had loads of random swearing, like when you're quietly wandering through a fear level and all of a sudden there's a raucous and pointless scream of FUCK as the enemy sees you from across a room.... it had me in giggles every time... just that one sound effect playing again and again in almost every room.
oh and prey when
When I think of early naughty games, I definitely think of Custer's Revenge. Of course there was always Leisure Suit Larry as well, though when I think about it, they don't really swear in those games, do they? just use a lot of lewd innuendo.
Just played some of Liberty City Stories on the PSP - that game has the most excessive swearing I've heard in a game in a good while (maybe ever?), in a good way.
Almost positive it was the first, becuase it was on the N64...
His first line was, "I hate this shit," and it just got better from there.
They say shit on network TV. Does that mean shit isn't a cuss word either?
Damn is a curse word. Literally. It's THE curse word.
Here is the game's intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvnYAQ2PeDQ
Remember people, this was from 1999. Certainly the first game with this much swearing. Other games may or may not have used to occasional F-bomb, but I still don't think any game does it more than this one. There's like 10-15 instances of fuck in the intro alone.
edit: Haha, apparently Kingpin beats Shadowman by a month. I personally don't recall 'fuck' in Shadowman, but it did have more swearing in it than most games at the time.