A Sentimental Study in Censorship: Hammerin' Harry versus Daiku no Gen-San

Growing up in a small Canadian town in the era of arcades presented some unique issues for the budding gamer. For one, given the locals' love for a wholesome game of billiards in a proper public-house, any arcade that opened was named the town den of iniquity by default (otherwise, there wasn't anything iniquitous enough to really get properly riled over, except the bum hotel already accepted as a beloved/tolerated historic institution). Granted, they had the same coin-operated pool tables, video games and pinball machines, but the ratio was wrong - corruptingly wrong. This naturally led to arcades and the games therein having near-mythic status among grade-schoolers, with any bizarre rumour seeming believable. The fact that domestic arcade-to-NES ports were sometimes noticably sanitized made us even more credulous.

Also, there was always the possibility that the town simply wouldn't get a game. If there wasn't an arcade in business at the time, you either hoped it made its way through Beckers or appeared at the local theme park arcade that summer. If it didn't, you were limited to waiting for the often-unrelated NES port or begging a trip out of town (a hard sell at best), imagining what you were missing in the meantime. It was inevitably made worse, too, by friends lying to your face about experiencing it themselves. This applied particularly to games one knew would never be played - the Japan-only releases EGM or Gamepro would occasionally show a glimpse of. Despite said glimpses not really supporting the theory, these games - either never released here or the "originals", and especially arcade games - were purported to be nonstop "swears, blood, and even boobs". If someone told me that in the "Japanese Arcade Castlevania" you played as Satan himself and whipped the enemies with your very dong, I'd at least want to believe - of course this was only grade five, before I'd grown entirely cynical.

This climate made possible one of the more bizarre gaming legends of my youth - that the Japanese version of Irem's cutesy 1990 action-platformer Hammerin' Harry was "the bloodiest game ever made!". I forget whether it was at the aforementioned Beckers or theme park, but Hammerin' Harry made it to my town not long after its release, and my friends and I burned ridiculous volumes of allowance on it (although a fraction of what we spent on the original TMNT). With input from acquaintances less-than-reputable on such matters, we came to accept that "in the real one", "blood goes flying" on impact, "when you hit someone with the big hammer, their guts barf out!", and, of course, "Harry swears when you get hit!". Despite the fact it was still two years before Mortal Kombat and we'd never actually seen a game like that, except possibly as a shady computer homebrew, my entire circle took to the myth like ducks to duck food. I mean, some frames of the hit flash were red, obviously a clumsy attempt to "delete" blood - that was all the evidence we needed. Looking back, what I had in mind was a fusion of Metal Slug, Bloodstorm and Night Slashers - all of which were a few years off at least - and the already-legendary Splatterhouse, which Japanese Harry was supposed to put to utter shame. I have to pause and  give a shout-out to VGJunk here - I had never even heard of Night Slashers until last month, and it's probably the closest to the sensational horrors I imagined populated this unattainable game.

I hadn't given this much thought for over two decades, until I took it upon myself to comment on Luftrausers (coming soon) and had to fire up MAME again to confirm I actually have some clue what I'm talking about. This sparked memories of Harry, and thanks to the dual wonders of emulation and MS Paint, I was able to play through both versions and create an approximation of how I envisioned (what I now know to be named) Daiku No Gen-San. MAME in particular merits thanks - this would not been possible without excessive use of save states to compensate for twenty years difference in reflexes. Anyone who's played any version will know exactly what I'm referring to - and cringe - when I mention "the hooks", "the pipes" and "the construction elevator".

Sadly, my jaded modern suspicions proved correct and the legends of my youth were utter bunk - the actual differences between Hammerin' Harry and Daiku no Gen-San are subtle and few. At least now I can appreciate that the English title is probably a dirty joke.

Compare and contrast the censored, ruined US version...

...with the intense and shocking original.

The one thing that (looking back with modern sensibilities) I'd expect to see censored, flagrant tobacco use, is even completely unmodified between the two. I ask you, how many children is this game directly responsible for addicting?

 

At least my disappointment wasn't total - there were a (very) few (vaguely) salacious (for the time) elements  that were removed from the Japanese version.

The rage-inducing, rotary-hammer-enabling powerup is clearly sake in Daiku no Gen-San...

...but this is Hammerin' Harry, serrano drinks here. While the weird tank-tread boss is no longer affiliated with Satan...

...in an odd case of the content being made more risque for the export version, the crates of nebulously defined "IKE1" visible in the background of stage 2...

...have been replaced with containers of what I can only assume is moonshine or pornography.

As usually occurs when revisiting old arcade games, playing Hammerin' Harry and Daiku no Gen-San left me slightly more nostalgic for my youth, and also much more disillusioned with it. At least, like Stun Runner, you can properly curse on the high score screen, here given twelve characters to create with. Note the asses, punctuating the ASSes.

Granted it's not exactly how Kana works, but in Daiku no Gen-San you can also make it sort of look like your high score says "shit".

To end on a completely unrelated note; I'm not Irem, but personally I think it would have been more than worth risking a lawsuit from Capcom to have one of these helmet pickups pop up and shoot you, just to be evil.