If there’s one thing Nintendo takes seriously (besides running all their beloved IPs into the ground), it’s protecting the children. The company has taken great pains in the past to ensure their products are kid-friendly, even pulling the plug on the SpotPass compatibility with the Swapnote messaging system on the Nintendo 3DS to prevent exploitation and abuse. Unsurprisingly, a huge host of words are censored on the Nintendo 3DS, preventing players from adopting offensive usernames as a means to troll other players. The list of banned terms was revealed recently by members of the 3DS hacking and homebrewer scene who were digging through the system’s firmware files, and it was posted in full for the perusal of the community.
The list is divided up into seventeen parts, likely separated by region. The vast majority of the entries make sense. Most are curse words, references to drugs, slurs, and sexual terms or deal with controversial topics like anorexia. Many are related to email services like Hotmail and Gmail, likely to help prevent adult users from grooming children through their services. Others are hilarious and sometimes even disappointing. For instance, I’m bummed out that I am not allowed to use “buttnuggets” or the surprisingly-specific “analintruder”. I’m similarly let down at the restriction of the phrase “badwords”. However, I couldn’t find “fart” so, hope yet remains.
Much of the list is in other languages or focuses on variations of the same words. But a few are a bit eyebrow raising, like “chinaliberal” and “freechina”.
Also included on the list? The word “censor”. You really can’t make this stuff up. Browse the list in full over at the 3DS homebrewing Reddit subforum.
