Sure, the game was kind of like Pac-Man featuring Bibles, Satanic imagery, and the hooved one himself, so of course Nintendo of America was never going to localize and publish it in the ‘80s like Nintendo of Europe did in 1987 three years after its initial release. Which is one reason why North America has never seen a release of one of Shigeru Miyamoto’s early console games: Devil World. The Sanctuary Link and Zelda escape to after the game’s opening sequence is the Church in Japan, and Cathedral in Germany-this really was just a North American policy, specifically. Agahnim, the initial villain of the game, was a priest in the Japanese version, but that identification was cut. Religious imagery was just not something they would allow in the North American localizations of Japanese videogames, whether it took the form of overt messaging, symbolism, or even something as casual as saying the word “praying.”ĭid you know that The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is known as Triforce of the Gods in Japan? And that changes like this were common, even though the title wasn’t referring to capital-G God? It was a mostly blanket policy that even extended into the game’s locations and character identities. Oh, you think you’re oppressed now because the skirts are a hair longer in the international version of a JRPG? Consider that the poor children of the ‘80s and ‘90s had to deal with Nintendo of America’s fear of anything religious. It’s a little difficult to remember now-or maybe you were never aware at all, depending on your age-but Nintendo of America used to be known for quite a bit of censorship.

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