10 Iconic Video Games Banned For Ridiculous Reasons

The Pokémon series has taken a long time to come to the country of Malaysia in most capacities. Whilst various anime have aired there over the years, the core part of the property didn’t make it over from Japan for quite some time. The first Pokémon games released officially in Malaysia are 2014’s OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire.

However, when it comes to putting their foot down, it was a particularly successful spin-off that caused the Malaysian authorities to make genuine statements about the game.

Senior religious official Zulkifli Mohamad al Bakri said of the AR-driven phone app that “Pokémon Go and all the Pokémon characters should be avoided as it can bring harm”. More specifically that “the game promoted a search for power and deities with certain powers which could lead to gambling”.

It seems a pretty extreme reaction to have about a spin-off that gamers worldwide spent at least all of the summer of 2016 playing, using it as an excuse to go outside and drag their fingertips repeatedly over the screen to catch 300 Pidgeys.

Now, concern that the game might lead to accidents from players not paying attention to the world around them? Fine. “A search for power” makes it sound as though your hunt for rare Pokémon may one day lead you to megalomania.

Though... come to think of it, that's pretty much how Team Rocket came to be, so they may have a point.