Rule of Rose, a survival horror game, has now officially been canceled due to the pressure put on publisher 505 Games by Italy and more specifically the mayor of Rome, Walter Ventroni. You may recall I had the pleasure of reviewing the game last month when it was released stateside by Atlus USA following Sony’s refusal to publish it outside of Japan.
From a gameplay standpoint, Rule of Rose was hardly anything special, but what really made the game shine was its excellent social commentary on the so-called innocence of children, the likes of which we have not seen since Lord of the Flies.
The game followed a 19-year-old British girl named Jennifer who chased a young boy off a bus and straight in to the orphanage from hell. With no adults to be found, the children formed their own twisted social hierarchy that worked much like the nobility system from days of old. The nobles at the top lived happy lives, but the commoners, Jennifer and a rather fat, socially inept girl named Amanda, were mere surfs unfit to live amongst the higher class or even be treated as people.
It was a weird cross-breed between the aforementioned Lord of the Flies and The Twilight Zone. All it was missing was a smooth voiceover from Rod Sterling.
Originally the game was only released in Japan because SCEA thought that some of the actions of the young girls, like Eskimo kisses, would be deemed sexual, even though any sane person knows that’s just what little girls do.
Atlus USA Inc. picked up the ball Sony dropped and released Rule of Rose in the US without so much as a whimper from long time anti-gaming activist and general alarmist, Jack Thompson. Maybe that was because he was too busy working on his almost personal feud with Rockstar to notice.
Oddly, the complaining never started until the game was due for release in the EU by 505 Games.
Apparently someone had given the mayor of Rome some information on the content of the game, and he decided to make it his mission to keep the game from entering Italian homes. And he did.
Article comments
1 - rx
luckily, uk boys and girls, you can order an EU copy of this, which will not only play on any PAL ps2, but also has a full english option. huzzah and hurrah.
too bad it's not getting as much exposure though.
2 - Wordstar
Sorry, but the game was sold in Italian Blockbuster stores at the normal (high) retail price. And it was bought, indeed! At the time I got a copy from eBay and it was a regularly licenced copy with cover descriptions in Italian and Italian in-game localisation. Still available through eBay.it, both new and second-hand for about 20 euros. Much ado for nothing, typical of this disgraceful country. It cannot be casual that the game is juxtaposed with books about Mussolini, right at the end of the article...