Normally I do three games in this feature but this game has such a unique history, I dare not leave it out.
Carmageddon
In the entire history of video gaming in the United Kingdom, only five games were ever banned.
Manhunt 2, The Punisher and Carmageddon were all banned on extreme violence while Sex Vixens from Space and Omega Labyrinth Z were banned for sexual content but even that is debated.
Punisher and Manhunt were let off with censors while Carmageddon was censored temporarily until the developers challenged the age ratings board and won, getting the game reinstated to it's original form.
Sex Vixens from Space was quietly destroyed by customs meaning it never had an official ban as in the eyes of the regulators it never existed, that leaves Omega Labyrinth Z which was banned on the grounds of being a borderline Hentai game with ambiguously aged characters making it the only officially banned video game.
As to why Carmageddon was banned in the first place, it's a game that borrows heavily from the Death Race film franchise as the object of the game is to either win the race, kill all your opponents or kill every pedestrian roaming about the sandbox style race track with a host of colourful psychopaths in equally ridiculous cars and weapons, this was released back in the late 90s when a few years after Mortal Kombat opened the flood gates for violent games with age ratings and Doom created a darker more gritty era of video gaming, everyone was trying to push the boundaries to what was acceptable in terms of violence, however Carmageddon found itself becoming a scapegoat when a real incident of a driver killing a number of pedestrians made national news, leading to the BBFC, Britain's regulatory body to ban it unless the violence was removed, this led to a time where the pedestrians were replaced with zombies, some time passed and Carmageddon did get it's original content back mostly because the BBFC saw how ridiculous the concept was when stuff like Grand Theft Auto had you do just as bad if not worse, this is because Carmageddon is a pretty shit game and it only had popularity through it's own controversy; I was too young at the time to get the original Carmageddon and finally played it in 2021 with Max Damage, a crowdfunded reboot of the franchise, but other than graphics, nothing really changed, the cars are still just as janky to drive, the physics seem to stop trying at times and all that violence that got it banned in the first place was tame compared to even death scenes in 12 rated games, in the 90s it would be a B-Tier game but it's now a D-Tier Game bordering on F-Tier.
Whether were all de-sensitized to violence, or we kinda want more meat with our blood and guts, but even after the first game, it was already sliding down the ratings and out of the eyes of the people in barely a year.
It's probably why, when I did a case study on this subject back in 2004 when I was learning work skills that the instructor mentioned how much she hated the game and how vitriolic that hatred was, and all I can think of at the time was. "No one talks about that game anymore? Have you even seen what's on the market these days (2004) I'm pretty sure I alone have played worse"
It's too easy to use a scapegoat whether it be heavy metal, video games or even anime (Thats it's own story in the UK) but there is something else at work in a psychotic person's brain than just their interests, the silly pixel blood fest isn't the one with the knife, firearm or vehicle in this case and the trigger for such violence could be something as mundane as not liking Mondays.
This is why you need to better fund mental health services.
