The New York Times web site media section posted a story (nytimes story) yesterday about Holocaust themed game Imagination Is the Only Escape, claiming that there had been disgust following the announcement of the game and that the game would not be coming to shop shelves in the USA as Nintendo of America had stated that “At this time, there are no plans for this game to be released for any Nintendo platforms in North America.â€
The clear implication in the story is that there has been widespread criticism and that Nintendo won’t be allowing the game on their systems. The truth (a depressingly alien concept to many in the media) is nothing of the sort. What Nintendo actually meant was that the product isn’t on any release schedule yet. Hardly surprising for the simple reason that it isn’t far enough into development by the UK developer/publisher Alten8 (www.alten8.com).
With depressing predictability the story was then picked up by other sites such such as Videogaming247 (incorrect story) but posted with the even more misleading title “Nintendo refuses to release Holocaust DS game in US“. Thankfully Eurogamer (Eurogamer story) checked with Alten8 who confirmed that Nintendo were in no way blocking the release of the game. In a statement to Eurogamer they stated stated “Imagination is the Only Escape is only in its early stages. No one has blocked it, and it has no definitive time scale for release.”
So, no one has banned anything or even made anything yet for that matter… guess I’ll post a review of the game tomorrow then.
