Changes you have noticed in music from video games

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If you have played games for a while, you have probably noticed they sometimes will make changes to existing songs for the game. Those changes can be a variety of things including but not limited to censoring explicit lyrics, drug references, getting around licensing issues, trimming down the track to be a little shorter and many more.

Well here is where you can discuss the changes you have noticed developers have made to songs in video games in comparison to the original version of said song.

A quick reminder though, please make sure you follow the AUP in regards to profanity in songs and please do not attempt to bypass the swear filter.
You will not use profanity in the forums, nor link to content which contains offensive language without sufficient warning.
 
I've said it once and I'll say it again. Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2's soundtrack has the best example of this topic. You'd think censorship would botch up a song entirely, but Hot Action Cop proved that notion wrong - twice - by rewriting a lot of the lyrics, and somehow made the songs better (IMO)!





P.S. I don't think any warning would be sufficient enough for me to post the original lyrics here. :lol:
 
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You'd think censorship would botch up a song entirely, but Hot Action Cop proved that notion wrong - twice - by rewriting a lot of the lyrics, and somehow made the songs better (IMO)!
Don't know much about HP2, but Midnight Club 3 Dub Edition is another game I can honestly say has proved this notion wrong, not once, not twice, not even 3, but 4 times!




Their could be more examples of this within the game, but these also have rewritten lyrics and they're edited so well, you would never know their was a lot of foul language in them originally. The version of "Go DJ" they used is actually way better than the official one included on the clean version of his album "Tha Carter", I would know because I listened to it in my youth.

Oddly though, the version of "Roll On" used in the game actually censors the word "Playstation" by playing it backwards, I guess to avoid licensing issues and it's the very reason I put this in my OP:
getting around licensing issues,
Still, if you had to ask me how censorship of lyrics should be handled in video games, these I feel are some of the best examples you could ever find.
 
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I would just put the links there with a language warning instead of embedding them because I can see the word in question in the titles to both videos and in the thumbnail to the 1st one.

Edit: I see you changed it now. 👍
 
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They were originally just links. The forum software decided to embed them for me. Then I changed them into [ url ] tags. The forum software still decided to embed them for me. :ouch: Then I just broke the links.

EDIT - bloody hell this software is too smart for its own good. I had to break the tag description above too because it wanted to make the entire text an url, even without a closing tag. I get spoonfeeding people with no IT skills but this is taking it too far.
 
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Don't know much about HP2, but Midnight Club 3 Dub Edition is another game I can honestly say has proved this notion wrong, not once, not twice, not even 3, but 4 times!




Their could be more examples of this within the game, but these also have rewritten lyrics and they're edited so well, you would never know their was a lot of foul language in them originally. The version of "Go DJ" they used is actually way better than the official one included on the clean version of his album "Tha Carter", I would know because I listened to it in my youth.

Oddly though, the version of "Roll On" used in the game actually censors the word "Playstation" by playing it backwards, I guess to avoid licensing issues and it's the very reason I put this in my OP:

Still, if you had to ask me how censorship of lyrics should be handled in video games, these I feel are some of the best examples you could ever find.

I forgot that they edited "Real Big" too, what a banger of a song that was.
 
There's that censored version of Taxi Drivers in the Playstation version of GTA 2 where they censor the swear words with horns. I always thought that made the song much funnier.

Language warning, I guess.
 
I forgot that they edited "Real Big" too, what a banger of a song that was.
Actually, I got to thinking after posting that, but it's possible some of the songs I listed were not edited by Rockstar, rather they took the official clean versions and just used them as is without making any changes to them. "Real Big" and "Shyne On" I feel may be one of these, but I doubt "Go DJ" is since I used to have the clean version of the album it came from, though it's possible it could be just a radio edit not included on the album.

I stand by what I said about them being how censorship should be handled though.
There's that censored version of Taxi Drivers in the Playstation version of GTA 2 where they censor the swear words with horns. I always thought that made the song much funnier.

Language warning, I guess.
Okay, I don't even play that game and I find that one to be rather funny. :lol: The use of the horn is pretty clever and quite humorous in my opinion. I did notice at 0:26 however they didn't use a horn and decided to play the bad word backwards for some reason.
 
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She's My Queen by Diesel Boy in Test Drive Off Road 3. They just muted the profanities and left the instruments playing in game. Imagine my shock when I heard the actual lyrics many years later :lol:

Still prefer the "clean" version because I heard it so many times as a kid. Funny how our brain works sometimes.
 
No idea why I didn't respond to this.
She's My Queen by Diesel Boy in Test Drive Off Road 3. They just muted the profanities and left the instruments playing in game.
Not surprised, I see that sort of censorship a lot in music.

On a related and very strange note, Test Drive Offroad 2 has "Shock" by Fear Factory in there and that song has the F word in there completely uncensored and this game is rated E for everyone! :odd: Though the games soundtrack is so poorly utilized, you're not likely to ever hear it unless you just deliberately stay on the main menu for a few minutes. Still, it's strange to me this went unnoticed.
Imagine my shock when I heard the actual lyrics many years later :lol:
I don't know the song in question, but I know the feeling. After playing NFS Underground 1 as a kid, I thought the version of "Get Low" by Lil Jon & the Eastside Boyz used in the game was the only version of it, but then I looked it up one day and quickly found out that was not the case. :lol: It was then I learned the version of "Get Low" used in the game was a heavily edited and rewritten version of the song and the original was chock full of explicit lyrics. :boggled: Credits to whoever did this version used in the game because it's very well done, to the point some would never know it was full of foul language before. Lord knows I didn't! :lol:

Although it has moments where they silenced the vocals to the profanity and you can tell something is missing, the rest is yet another example of how censorship should be handled in my opinion.
Still prefer the "clean" version because I heard it so many times as a kid. Funny how our brain works sometimes.
Understandable. I feel the same for "Get Low" as well. Not only that, but the vocals in the chorus of this song sound so much better than the explicit version of the song in my opinion and it makes the original sound terrible. Plus, I never really liked explicit lyrics in music anyways.
 
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So something I have been meaning to post about for a while now is Twisted Metal 2012's soundtrack, while not bad at all (quite good actually), is handled very strangely. "More Human Than A Human" by White Zombie has a few mentions of the F word that are censored and "Champ" by Ghostface Killah has drug references, several profane words and several uses of the N word, which are also censored.

Reasons I find this strange:
1. I have played several mature rated games that had uncensored lyrics, which leaves me to believe censoring them is not necessary in games with this rating. Twisted Metal 2012 is rated M for mature, yet did this anyways. :odd: But that's not the weirdest part about this....

2, The part I REALLY find strange about this is the game has "Straight Outta Compton" by N.W.A. in there, a song known for being full of explicit lyrics, completely uncensored and the only change they made to it I am aware of is they cut the ending short after Eazy E's verse was done. It's not just that one though, "Mask" by Sepultura and "Natural Killer" by Avenged Sevenfold have a few bad words in there and they are also uncensored. :confused:

Okay, why would they censor explicit lyrics in 2 songs, in a game rated M for mature, but then leave other songs (one being WAY worse) completely uncensored all within the same game?! :odd: My only guess is maybe multiple people worked on the games soundtrack and they weren't fully aware of what was being done on this, but surely someone had to have looked at all this and noticed this odd inconsistency? Who knows, but I find all this to be very strange and out of place from other games I have played.
 
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