12 Things You Didn't Know About The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
9. Nintendo's Most Heavily Censored Game
Nintendo’s censorship practices were widely noted during the NES/SNES era, imposing wide restrictions on sexual content, excessive violence, religious imagery and more. Many games fell foul of this, from Mortal Kombat to Punch-Out!
Nintendo relaxed these rules with third party developers following the ESRB’s establishment in 1994 but by that stage, the damage was done. Nintendo’s image became kid-friendly and older gamers saw these tactics as patronising. They still practiced censorship in their own games however and Ocarina Of Time was chief amongst them.
This mostly relates to religious elements and originally, the Fire Temple theme featured Islamic prayer chants before being later removed. Furthermore, the Gerudo tribe used symbols closely resembling the Islamic Star and Crescent and whilst those remained in the N64 version, they were also changed in later releases.
This wasn’t the end however and the climactic battle with Ganondorf saw the Gerudo King coughing up red blood. Seeking a lower age rating, Nintendo then changed his blood to green. Curiously though, the Shadow Temple still features a bloodied floor beneath its cross, so this policy wasn’t universally implemented.
