Merchants to Blame???

Arrrrrr, 'ere's an interestin' tale. Me boy (Who's 9 yrs old) went to Best Buy the other day, he had got some money saved up and was going to buy a movie and PS2 game. He picked out Scary Movie 2, and Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Okay, fer all of ya out there keeping score Scary Movie is rated R, RE:CV is a MA rated game. I stood behind me boy in line and pretended I wasn't with 'im so ta see what happened. Best Buy wouldn't sell 'im the movie (which I knew) but they sold him the game!

Now I asks all of ya, isn't a MA game pretty much the same as an R rated movie? How can a store sell MA games to 9 yr olds, but not R rated movies??? It just doesn't make sense, so it doesn't. What good do yon ESRB ratings on games do if they are not bein' enforced?

SO, we tried another experiment. We went to BlockBuster and tried to have him rent GTA:VC and Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. They let him have MK, but NOT GTA!!!! WTF!!!

I'm a curious, any other parents (or younger members) have problems with renting/buying R movies and MA rated games???

Agh! You really want to try something scary, go to the liqua sto and have him try to buy a 40 and a pack of cigs!

Anyway, yes, the MA game is equivalent to the R rated movie.

http://www.esrb.org/esrbratings_guide.asp

More than likely the clerks were just not aware of the content of the game. But they should be aware of the ratings on them.

The really tragic thing is the parent who buys the games without even considering the content rating....

Wal-Mart runs a PSA constantly trying to get parents to look at the ratings before buying them. Ran like every 5 minutes at Christmas. Damned annoying script, but it is important to increase awareness on this topic.

Don't blame the gaming industry for supplying the sex and violence if you get the game for them (or allow them to get them for themselves).

Kudos to you Cap'n for not ignoring the obvious. You're living up to your name once again!

Raist