UK Pressure Group Mad For MadWorld News

UK tabloid, The Daily Mail, has today once again jumped on the anti-videogames bandwagon â?“ but this time, Rockstar Games and Manhunt 2 are no-where to be seen. Instead, the focus is on Platinum Games and their Wii-exclusive title, Mad World, scheduled to arrive courtesy of SEGA in 2009.

Playing to type, The Daily Mail's fearful article of the game surrounds the opinions of Mediawatch-uk, an organisation that began as the NVALA originally headed by the infamous Mary Whitehouse. The extreme conservative group's president, John Beyer described Mad World as sounding â??very unsavouryâ?, adding that, â??'I hope the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) will view this with concern and decide it should not be granted a classification.â?

If the game were to be refused classification by the BBFC, Mad World would follow the original version of Manhunt 2, which was made illegal to market in the UK last year. Rockstar Games successfully appealed the BBFC's verdict of banning a more sanitised of the tense psychological title, with a belated release finally expected later in the year.

Despite the Frank Miller-style visuals, MadWorld is a wildly over-the-top and cartoony in its violence, a far cry from the defiling influences the game is described as having in The Daily Mail's piece. It's also worth noting some of the comments at the bottom of their article, which point out several other Wii titles left out of spotlight in the report, including Resident Evil 4, House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, and the upcoming port of Dead Rising.

But it's Beyer's consideration for the apparent perception of the Wii amongst the UK population that reveals his fanboy love of Nintendo's little white box: â??'I believe it will spoil the family fun image of the Wii.'

We're guessing that there's not much Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 loving going on in the Beyer household...