Why did GBA Doom include 'green' blood?

[MTF Sergeant]

Now that's a really weird choice. Why did they implement green instead of red? It feels so mundane to play Doom if blood displayed as green instead of red.

 

After all, Doom is SUPPOSED to be violent. Was this their attempt to bring the game from Mature to PG? That's what I think.

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

Same reason as this:

Quote

Instead of the story text screen being after MAP11 it was moved to MAP12. The text also makes a few references to the creatures that invade Earth in the game as "aliens" instead of "demons", presumably in an attempt at censorship (this is likely the same reason why the GBA port of the game lacks the "Hell on Earth" subtitle). However, there still exist several references to demons throughout the game, and "evil spirits" are said to be among the alleged "alien" invaders in the same text.

From http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Game_Boy_Advance.

[Man of Doom]

Chiefly, censorship reasons. 

 

See, the GBA port of the games were released back in 2001/2002, and back in that day, Nintendo was still very restrictive of what could be allowed on one of their consoles. 

I suppose the reason why this applied to something like the GBA and not something like the SNES was due to the fact that the former was a far newer product. 

[Equinox24]

Its basically because Nintendo was leaning against its older audience but not by far. They still wanted it to be kid-friendly. Still ran better than the SNES port.

[amackert]

Yeah, it's likely it was for censorship reasons. However, it could have also been a deliberate design choice. The GBA screen was extremely dark and so green blood would have been a lot easier to see than red.

[The Nate]

Actually, it wasn't Nintendo requiring the censorship, but instead Activision. Nintendo had dropped their shitty policies a few years before.

[Roofi]

The GBA was mainly designed for kids.

[Memfis]

Hmm, do players also have green blood in that port?

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

Quote

The monsters' blood is green, as is the blood produced when the player takes damage.

http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Game_Boy_Advance

[SaladBadger]

Nintendo was definitely a lot more open to this kind of stuff by the GBA era on their normal consoles, but with the game boy line in america they definitely were trying to push a more kid friendly image, so I believe it was cut down to try to obtain a T rating. I think only a relatively small amount of GBA games ended up with M ratings.

[kb1]

Not sure how green blood is more kid-friendly. And, it seems to me that shooting demons is less morally offensive than shooting aliens, but, what do I know?

[MrSkeltal]

It had absolutely nothing to do with Nintendo and they stopped caring about that by the late 90s, people need to stop repeating this. Basically it was an Activision publisher mandate to get a T rating for more sales (parents buying it for their tweens/teens) and therefore more profit, same for other similar games that were "censored" to avoid the M rating.

[Deleted_Account]

They didn't like raspberry jam.

[Knee Deep In The Fan]

I guess it's better than turning the blood into "sweat" like what happened with the original Mortal Kombat on the SNES.

Edited May 15, 2018 by Knee Deep In The Fan
clarification

[Blastfrog]

On 5/13/2018 at 10:36 AM, Aquila Chrysaetos said:

[horribly incorrect info from a horrible source]

It's bad enough what Wikia did to so many communities and continue to make money on their content, let alone the fact that it's devolved to such low quality. I'm assuming you're not aware of doomwiki.org, that's the proper community-maintained version. Wikia is basically a thieving tabloid, low quality crap that only exists to get eyes on ads (worse still, they don't even write their own swill).

 

PC Doom 2 text referred to them as 'aliens' too, not sure why they changed that over Doom 1 but it had absolutely nothing to do with the GBA port.

 

On 5/14/2018 at 12:49 PM, InsanityBringer said:

I believe it was cut down to try to obtain a T rating

Bingo. Could've easily left it uncensored, but they probably made more sales than they otherwise would've, given the times. GBA Wolf was uncensored, and that game has more potential for controversy, for obvious reasons.

Edited May 17, 2018 by Blastfrog

[VGamingJunkie]

 

Just to dash the claims that it was Nintendo's doing, the GBA port of Wolfenstein 3D had an M rating and was completely uncensored. Ever since Mortal Kombat did poorly on the SNES, they stopped caring about blood and gore in third party games. Furthermore, the SNES version of Doom also retained the blood and gore.

Edited October 31, 2018 by MetroidJunkie

[Quasar]

Nintendo didn't *require* the censorship. But they also weren't keen on putting a lot of M rated games on the GBA either. IIRC, there are something around exactly TEN of them out of the system's entire library. So, given all of the marketing efforts for the system were focused squarely on the pre-teen demographic, and Nintendo being more likely to push through E and T rated projects (in case you don't know, Nintendo has historically kept very strict control over third-party releases on the system - if they don't like your idea, you don't launch, period), other publishers like Activision wouldn't see the point of pushing M rated titles to it. Doom was T-rated precisely because it would sell more copies that way and get through the Nintendo "engine" a bit easier too.

 

Also, I see zero reason for wikia to be linked above.

Edited November 26, 2018 by Quasar

[printz]

I don't see a problem with the green 'blood'. It actually looks even more gross.

[Cacodemon345]

Quote

As a result, monster blood is green instead of red, and most instances of extreme gore, such as gibs, were removed. Additionally, if the player is damaged, a bullet puff is produced instead of a blood splatter.

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_II_for_Game_Boy_Advance

Also, Quasar's post sums up why green blood is in GBA Doom 2.

Edited November 28, 2018 by Cacodemon345

[A Nobody]

There's fan patches that make the blood in GBA Doom 1 and 2 red, with the Doom 2 version removing all censorship the port had and fixed animation errors with things such as the power ups and Combat Shotgun (Double-Barreled) reload.

[diosoth]

I think the Doom II shotgun shells from the super reload animation were also green, because they may have shifted the palette itself rather than edit sprites. But I haven't played it in years, and with my RS-97 handheld loaded with CFW(necessary as the default firmware on them is trash) I have a better portable option, though the GBA ports were actually decently playable and still are if you have no other portable option.

[Avoozl]

First time I've seen someone ever mention the RS-97 on here.

[SaladBadger]

so far as I can tell, the palette wasn't shifted, just the colors used in the images, they might have used a really crappy process to replace colors for the sprites. there are oddities that have arisen, like the pipe texture with leaking blood having a red stain at the bottom but a green fluid pumping out. heh...

Edited December 5, 2018 by InsanityBringer

[Jon]

It wasn't a palette shift. See green.wad inside gib zip at https://jmtd.net/doom for what that would look like. A lot of textures, skies etc would change