12 Dirty Jokes Hidden In Your Favourite Video Games

4. The Sentient Books - Secret Of Mana

Mass Effect Joker Earphones
Square-Enix

In the SNES classic Secret of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 2 in Japan) there are a pair of enemies you fight called the Mystic Book and the National Scar. They are sentient books who float around and flip themselves open to random pages that then fire off a variety of spells.

One of the pages they can land on, however, does not contain a thunder spell, or a fire spell - but no it must be some sort of charm spell. Sometimes the book enemies will flip open to a centerfold style page of a nude blonde woman with a heart just above her buttocks, the book will then get flustered and flip itself closed before trying again.

This little tidbit is funny because this came during a time when Nintendo was super-conservative with its censorship levels, especially for English ports. The theory is that, because the books flip to that page so rarely, none of the censors ever saw it occur when testing the game.

Contributor
Contributor

Author of Escort (Eternal Press, 2015), co-founder of Nic3Ntertainment, and developer behind The Sickle Upon Sekigahara (2020). Currently freelancing as a game developer and history consultant. Also tends to travel the eastern U.S. doing courses on History, Writing, and Japanese Poetry. You can find his portfolio at www.richardcshaffer.com.