For our youngish gamers *Shock me* with the age you completed some M-Rated titles.

Sometimes I have a hard time with sharing my hobby with people that might not even be teenagers yet. Hearing about older gamers playing Mortal Kombat when they were 14 or 15 or Grand Theft Auto III isn't really the same as someone that played Red Dead 2 when they were 14 or 15. So this question is mainly for folks that would have been elementary school age during the 360 era. Games before then were mostly tame and really didn't have story or difficulty impediments that could keep someone that young from progressing. Plus the content of your average M-rated game was lame in contemporary terms. If your unsure what i'm asking for, don't post until the thread gathers steam.

I'm not in the age group you're looking for, but my younger sister is, and she would frequently whine to my parents until they let her play GTA IV. She was probably 6 or 7 at the time.

@brian_: I mean beat the game. If she is mainlining the story tell me more. As far as people playing the GTA games I think people were just impressed that computers could do that stuff. Her just blowing up stuff for 5 minutes and getting 5 stars is probably the majority of people's experiences at that time versus the exception. Plus you only had 1 or 2 tvs at the time. So it's not like she was actively enticed and seeking out the ballad of gay tony in her own room and having conversations at school about the content. She mimicked somebody else's behavior in the household (you, mom or dad). Now if she got that for christmas.. i'm all ears.

@sometingbanuble: She didn't beat it, but she made it pretty far. She was playing through missions and all that. It wasn't just a one time "play for five minutes" type a thing. She was probably playing a couple hours a day.

Older gamer here. Let's derail this thread. What. The. Hell. Do you mean by: "...difficulty impediments that could keep someone that young from progressing."?

@anderswarming: criteria are m-rated. So your list of m-rated games pre360 are about 10. None of which were anything but other games with an adult skin. I get it leisure suit Larry had some age-gating with questions about music or movies. But you know. In the 40 years since that game was out those conversations have been HAD.

I'm having a pretty hard time even thinking of any games that would meet that criteria. Like honestly you've listed the one example I can actually think of in ANY era which is Leisure Suit Larry and it was in that game because it was a Joke.

Well, I was 8 when I played a whole lot of Eternal Champions: Challenge From the Dark Side. Which was the goriest game I ever played at the time, but that didn't stop us from seeing all those finishing moves over and over and over again.

I'm sorry but this thread is insane.

I beat Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards when I was in junior high… but that’s pretty tame by today’s standards.

Wait. You're not a teenager?

Strip Poker for the Apple IIe. I was maybe 10. Nothing destroys a young mind like a 5 pixel nipple.

I think I was eight or nine when I played MK2, and eleven when I played MK3. Both in arcades, with my mom cheering behind me.

Also my first non-kids movie I've ever watched (though it is my first movie memory, so it actually might be my first movie) was Robocop when it first came to VHS.

I turned out fine.

If I'm understanding things correctly: The OP is asking a question for those who were toddlers in the mid to late 2000's. But I'm pretty sure that no one who actively posts on this site is younger than 30.

This idea might be better suited for reddit due to the younger demographic.

@facelessvixen I am in the right age bracket, but I concur with @sethmode. I am unsure what the question even is as I thought @brian_ gave a pretty good answer, but apparently that doesn't count?

To attempt to answer the original poster, if anything, it should shock you more just how long it was till I beat an M-rated game. When everyone around me was playing CoD and GTA, I was a very obedient child who always avoided games I wasn't allowed to play based on the box. It wasn't till I was around 21 that I finally beat Hotline Miami 1 and 2, but before that I honestly don't remember beating any adult games.

Ahh, no. I beat XCOM: Enemy unknown when I was around 15 as my father was really into it, though I don't think that's particularly shocking. I loved reading game news and listening to podcasts even if I didn't play the vast majority of the games.

Resident Evil 4 when I was 12.

Yes, I'm an infant.

@facelessvixen: Wow, if this site doesn’t have folks under 30. The other options that appealing. This isn’t a retro site. That’s depressing and I will not make a poll. I will not make a poll.

@sometingbanuble: I don't know how this would come as a surprise to you given the entire history of the website.

OP clearly never played, I dunno, Contra? The idea that games prior to the 360 weren't too hard for teenagers, let alone pre-teens and younger, is hilarious.

If I were a gambling man, I might also wager that the youngest person who regularly looks at these forums and has any interest in ever clicking "submit" on a drafted post here is at the very least turning 30 years old this year, lol.

I was too old by the time the Rating system showed up. And, even in teh hayday of wildwest games I never saw an adult game until teh rating system existed. I didn't even know games like Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em or Custer's Revenge existed until the late 90s.

I think the one game I owned before the rating system even existed was "Leather Goddesses of Phobos" which was more like a suggestive game. I was a fan of ZORK, ZORK II, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for my Apple IIc, so Infocom games where what I bought as a teen. I actully liked Hitchhiker's Guide, as games far more. Even as a teen i though the junk in the box was more fun from Hitchhiker Guide, but I will admist that the name Leather Goddesses of Phobos was titillating. I wore the pin that said "Don't Panic!" printed in large, friendly letters from Hitchhicker Guide.

@monkeyking1969: the entire class is getting a zero. Please review the assignment and resubmit. Then everybody under 30 is boring AF (that’s as flark)

I just beat Cyberpunk 77 and I'm 6 years old. I enjoyed the penis and boob options.

I want to say I was 6 or 7 when I played Doom on PC at a kiosk in my local Micro Center. I was already exposed to the spine pulling in MK2 at an ice cream shop so no biggie? Hard to forget the Doom moment though since some lady that took a page out of Nancy Reagan's fashion article grabbed me and said something to me about video games and the devil. My Dad's a chill dude, but I'll never forget how loud he sounded when he told her to "let go of my child or I'm calling the police". Had a long talk with my parents with a Happy Meal on the side.

@innacces14: Perfect, this is what i'm looking for. Glad i could help conjure up a memory of yours. I don't know why everybody else is wasting space on this thread. Even though it doesnt fit the criteria. Time to unsubscribe from this boomer site.

You might have better luck at the Giant Bomb subreddit.

I also find it extremely confusing that you don't want input from people in their 30s, yet you wrote "Perfect, this is what I'm looking for" in response to someone who by admission is around 34.

@besetment: it's pretty clear they're being sarcastic while being pretty rude to innaccess. Unless there are any twenty somethings interested in chiming in which I'm interested to see if there are any, this thread might be dead in the water.

All of their topics are "interesting premise, mired in confusion".

@efesell: better than trite premise mired in obviousness

I'd say both are equally useless.

You're looking to be shocked by children who have beaten mature games? But it seems like you mean mature as in sophisticated storytelling and gameplay dynamics rather than adult content. You want to be surprised that someone so young would be interested in something so deep, it sounds like. My Dinner With Andre: The Arcade Game, rather than Bonestorm.

If the things said in these forums are largely from people in their 30's, it's worse than I thought.

Sincerely,
asshat

@eccentrix: it’s not really that complicated. There are stories for how they acquired the game. Did they appreciate the nuance of the game or did they just play it for the gameplay. Have they come back to the game etc. And no I don’t want to hear from the older gamers because as expected we are talking about (when posters stay on task *slow clap*) gta 4, doom, and mortal kombat. In a random google search there are 147 m rated titles. I bet everybody can name most of them before 2006. So this exercise was to hear about M rated games that aren’t the blatant and obvious ones. Ones that slipped into a Christmas present from a parent or sibling maybe because you were into reading Dante at 12 so you got the Dante’s Inferno game because their mom was an English teacher.

I am 27, so I guess I am disqualified here. :'(

But also, I was 5 years old when I gave tips to strippers in Duke Nukem 3D, and kicked cop-pigs in the face. My parents did not think video games were so interactive back then. Thank you, Duke, for pioneering.

The one post you said "Ah yeah see this is what I'm talking about" was Doom.

@sometingbanuble said:

Were people supposed to guess this from the original post or was it a secret goal you had for responses? The example you gave was RDR 2, so it didn't sound like you were exclusively looking to hear about more obscure games.

I'm sincerely trying to understand because every post of yours seems to contradict the previous ones in some way and I love how obtuse this whole thread is.

Oh my... this thread went places while I was gone. I am 25 for the record! But yes, it makes total sense how this site's members skew older, not sure how anyone is shocked at that.

OP is looking for posts from young people who played (before turning 18)

• M-Rated Games
• Games with stories children might have a hard time understanding
• Games with gameplay mechanics that might be difficult for children to master
• Games with shocking explicit content

OP doesn't want to hear from people who played Metal Gear Solid 3 when they were 12 because despite ticking all of these boxes, it came out too early, and so it's too obvious(?)

And he's disappointed that not enough teens use this site.

Am I getting all this right?

@lab392: Don't forget the part where the kid also has to go all the way through this game. And if you get it on Christmas, all rules are out of the window.

I'm still fascinated by the very first sentence of the very first post. Like, what does this even mean?

"Sometimes I have a hard time with sharing my hobby with people that might not even be teenagers yet."

@lab392: dang boomers. Yours is most spot on. And you’re right. I would post a list of all the m-rated games on ps2 and before but that list is FLARKING obvious. So please post about 24 the game and how that had some dark themes that you couldn’t get around. Or maybe max Payne. Or maybe def jam. M ratings didn’t really start pushing boundaries until the 360. But please tell me more about those assasinations in hitman that you snuck in before home room. All you boomers that played m rated games “early” were playing some of the lamest leap frog games out there. 8 bit m-rated. Must have read some salacious text cuz link sure as spark wasn’t cussing. Get the Flark out of here. Message boards.. huddle up!

I'm 33 but F it, the thread is already off track. I believe I was about 14 when Manhunt came out on PS2 and I was able to get a copy of that, which was absolutely M rated, and played it through to completion. I can't say I felt very good about it, it definitely felt like I was being taught how to efficiently murder people with random household objects to a degree I hadn't experienced before, but having been raised on fairly grotesque horror movies like Nightbreed and Hellraiser by my pretty young parents it didn't bother me too much. That being said, the shitty graphics probably blunted the effect compared to a young kid playing something like MK11 now.

Okay. So the Xbox 360 came out in 2005 and was discontinued in 2016. US elementary school age is between 5 and 11. So to have been in elementary school during this area you need to be between the ages of. . .10 and 27.

So who in this thread qualifies?

brian_'s sister qualifies with GTA4 at age 6-7. Except apparently she doesn't because she didn't take the game seriously enough and didn't play ballad of gay tony and didn't discuss the game with her friends, and also didn't get the game for Christmas. Also, she didn't beat the game.

Nuttism qualifies with XCOM: enemy unknown at age 12.

LapsarianGiraff qualifies with RE4 at age 12.

innacces14 qualifies with Doom and MK2...somehow. Wait! Never mind, those games are too obvious and also innacces14 didn't get those games for Christmas.

Okay, so that's two people who qualify! Congratulations, you win!

I guess I'm not really in the demo you're looking for (and most of the people posting here aren't), but I did play Doom and MK2 when I around 8-9 years old. By the time stuff like GTA3 was hitting, I was in high school.

I sold an 8-year old kid GTA SA in like 2007, does that count

I also watched Robocop at the right age. I've just seen Robocop 3, too. Now THAT is a kids movie.

As for games, I don't think I played anything wild at a young age. I didn't get a Playstation until I was 15 and my PC gaming was mostly all sports titles. I did have a copy of Sam Fox's Strip Poker for the Amstrad that my parents effectively banned me from playing. I played it as a kid but didn't know how poker worked so I saw absolutely nothing. I was probably 8 at the time.

This post is like those websites that are generated by an AI and you don't realize until you get a couple of sentences in.

I played Dead or Alive 4 when I was 12 years old. It didn't reinforce a realistic view of what actual women are like. My parents didn't care about that game, however, they were concerned about me playing GTA: Vice City, due to the news about "teenagers driving over people to win 'points' like in GTA..." or something.

Did I qualify?

@shindig said:

I knew kids who had to hide games and tapes from their parents. I wonder what the 2022 equivalent is?