Harvest Moon: Hero of Leaf Valley is a farm simulation video game that was developed by Hyde and published by Marvelous Entertainment (JP), Natsume (US), Rising Star Games (EU). The video game was released on March 19, 2009, and was censored for the USA release to make it more politically correct.
Censorship[]
USA Censorship[]
- Gol Dodo's (known locally as Zann) skin color was changed to tan instead of it remaining black due to perceived negative stereotypes associated with the character.
Natsume explained in a forum post below:
"Normally, we’re happy to see ethnically diverse characters in Harvest Moon games. However, Zann had a lot of characteristics that in the West are sometimes associated with hurtful and outdated stereotypes of native African people. The skull on his head, the fact that he spoke in broken English, etc. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t possible to completely change his character design and rewrite all of his dialogue, so changing his skin color seemed to be the best fix.
Again, we’re happy to see ethnically diverse characters in Harvest Moon games, but not when they’re reinforcing negative stereotypes that a lot of our players will find hurtful and offensive."
Where to find it uncensored[]
Every other country has it uncensored. The European release has Zann's skin color unchanged from the original Japanese release.