Mature audiences only: Nintendo grows up

The Associated Press

Even Nintendo Corp., home to such kid-friendly games as "Super Mario" and "Pokemon," says it's feeling the pressure to produce more adult-oriented games, a company executive said Monday.

With the video game and entertainment industries under fire by the government for marketing such games to children, Nintendo recently released "Perfect Dark," an action thriller in the "first-person shooter" genre - meaning that the player usually must shoot his or her way out of danger in the game.

Nintendo defends "Perfect Dark" - rated "M" for mature by the industry's own Entertainment Software Ratings Board - saying that more than half of today's video gamers are 18 or older.

"This is the way the demographic's been going for some time," said Perrin Kaplan, vice president for corporate affairs at Nintendo's suburban Redmond headquarters. "But we are very careful in marketing this game to adults and adults only."

Kaplan said Nintendo abandoned its usual television advertising in promoting "Perfect Dark," instead relying on well-placed ads on the Internet and in print.

The Federal Trade Commission issued a report Monday, claiming that the movie and video game industries are marketing R-rated movies and M-rated video games to children, circumventing the independent protections that each industry has in place.

Kaplan defended the ESRB's ratings system. According to Nintendo, up to 85 percent of all games are purchased by adults for children.

She said the key was to educate adults on the ratings systems.

"We're a young industry, but I believe we can enforce these ratings without having the government do it for us," Kaplan said.

"Perfect Dark" is the only game produced by Nintendo that has been rated "M," though there are some 20 other M-rated games produced by independent studios for Nintendo's game consoles.

Most of Nintendo's games are rated "E" for everyone, while there are another 25 or so games for the Nintendo 64 that are rated "T" for teen-agers 13 and up.

Kaplan said the company does not have content guidelines for the studios that publish games for the Nintendo 64, though she said there was some "informal review" of products as part of quality control and testing.

Most of the video game industry's most notorious M-rated games, including "Resident Evil" and "Quake," are available on the Nintendo 64.

Photo courtesy of Nintendo Corp.

Joanna Dark, the digital heroine of Nintendo's "Perfect Dark," is rated "M" for mature.