I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it.

So I've been 17 for a month now, and of course I bought my first rated M game. If you must know it was No More Heroes, and it's awesome, but that is not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about the insignificance of game ratings. So I'll start by taking you back to my first video game ever.

It was Christmas, I was 8 and my brother was 6. We both wanted an N64, and what do you know? Santa (My Aunt)brought us one. Not only that but he got us a game called Glover (Rated E) and Get Force Gemini (Rated T) So back then I was young, my brother was even younger, and we grew up blowing heads off of drones in incredible graphics for the time. Did it leave an impression that I should go around killing people? Nope, but was it fun? Yes. My parents may have found it a little strange that we enjoyed the game so much seeing as it was for teens, and we weren't even 10 yet, but we didn't understand plot or anything, we just liked going around shooting what looked like ants, which is what I'm sure a lot of little kids felt that played that game.

Fast forward a few years, I'm about 12 and my brother's 10. Again it's Christmas, and we ask for an Xbox and Halo which,as all of you know, is rated M. Again Santa brought it to us (in fact he got us Halo 1 and 2) and we loved it. Being older we understood the plot more, we understood the concept of killing and all that, but it was a video game, and it was fun. Did we go around doing crazy things? Nope, we just played our first rated M game, and had fun.

Now, fast forward another few years, I'm 16, my brother's 14. I want to buy a rated M game for his birthday. I get my mom to go to the store and buy P3FES (Don't know how much you know about the game, but its an RPG, and to summon stuff the characters shoot themselves in the head.) So we still have that game, and it's really got a deep story, awesome characters, a ton of swearing and suggestive themes, basically everything that would make a rated M game mature. But it's a game, fun at that, and a cool experience.

One more year ahead. I'm 17, and just a few days after I turn it, I go out to buy No More Heroes. My little cuz knows I'm 17 so he asks if he could tag along. So I buy my game, and I buy (with his money) Modern Warfare (Rated M.) My cousin is 13, but his mom let him, so I wasn't about to argue anything.

So where am I going with this? Well, what's the point of ratings if my entire life I've been surrounded with games way too "Mature" for me. Who is ESRB trying to protect? Now, I'm not saying don't warn about content, but ratings have become just so over analyzed, it's just a waste of time. There should be warnings like "May be inappriote for..." but stores shouldn't have to card or anything, just give the kid the game. It should be up to the parent to chose what games are best for kids, not ESRB.

Now, I'll quickly mention a few things, first off, where did the rating KA come from? In the 90's it was on a lot of games, mostly sports games. It meant Kids-Adults, but there was also an E rating on games as well. Does E mean little kids, well no, since there's EC. What's the point of EC anyway, I think it should be obvious if a game is for Early Childhood. Why make a rating for that? A few more points. What's up with the rating E10+? It's absolutely the most pointless rating ever imagined. If you must rate it, either rate it E, or rate it T. Most kids can handle T games. That's not to say there aren't scary games out there that are rated T or M, but why not just say "Frightening for children" on the box or something where game ratings are? Instead "Violence" is shown on the back of boxes. Now, on to my last point, what is up with the AO rating? It's just as pointless as the E10+ rating. I mean, whats one year have to do with anything? Why 18, and why aren't M games 18, who decided 17? Now I'm sure it's for pornographic reasons, but wasn't Max Payne pushed up to AO, or is that just my imagination? Anyway, the only reason a game should be carded is if it's for something pornographic. One last true point. In arcades there are little signs on games that say "Lifelike Violence" or "Approite for everyone" and stuff like that. Why not just do that for video games instead of actually ratings?

Now, I'm not really saying get rid of ratings, I'm saying people shouldn't interpret them as law. Why MUST you be 17 to buy M rated games? Most people will get their hands on multiple M rated games before they're 17, so what's the big deal? E10 should have never been created, just bump it up to T if you have to put something like E10 on the case. There should be guidelines, but it should always be up to the parents to choose what their child plays, and in my opinion, if a parent can't trust a 13 year old child with an M rated game, there is something up with that child.

Before I start to say anything I'd like to explain a few things about my systems. At this moment I have a Wii, DS, and a PS2, all of which have some sort of hack on them. I have a soft modded Wii with the Homebrew Channel on it, an R4 for my DS, and Free Mc Boot (FMCB) for my PS2 as well as a flip top cover. So, as long as you know where my bias opinion comes from, I'll begin to discuss why these are not a bad thing.

The Homebrew channel in all it's glory!

So I'll break it up into sections based on system. The PS2 will come first, since it's the most recent I've done. So I finally decided to hard mod, and soft mod my PS2. Why? I don't know, mostly because I can. I discovered much more than I thought I could get. So I joined a few forums to decide what's best for me. I was directed to a thing called Swap Magic. Many of you have probably heard of this, some of you may have this. For those of you that don't know what it is, it's a disc that will allow the PS2 to read backups and out of region games. There are so many good things that can come out of this. Region restricted gaming doesn't allow us gamers to get the full experience of gaming we deserve. Now on to piracy. Yes, piracy happens when we are given the opportunity to run "backups" but people who actually want to run games that are backed up so they don't scratch their game are easily able to. Now maybe running backups makes the big corps sweat a little, of course there is a chance to loose profit, but there is a lot more that can be done with hacks that normal people crank out. I mentioned FMCB, which is a soft mod to a memory card for most of you that probably don't know. What it includes is nearly limitless. Yes it can again run backups, but it can run things like emulators and media players. Now having a full media player on something like a PS2 is incredible. Not only can you play burnt DVDs, but play movies and music from a USB card. Why didn't publishers come up with something like this? It seems like a great opportunity for someone to sponsor this, or at least support this. But it was always pushed underground and things like this were frowned upon.

On to the DS. Now there are a lot of cards out for the DS, and already for the DSi. It is incredible how fast they crank these things out. Now cards such as the R4 and M3 are a lot more touchy, especially because one of the sole purposes of these cards is piracy, but the card can do much more than that. These cards have an in depth media player and picture viewer. This was on the original DS, and Nintendo finally made it a function with the DSi. But media was available to anyone that owned a card long before the DSi came out. If some third party developer teamed up with Nintendo, or even Nintendo itself came out with a card that could play media, people would have bought it, and Nintendo could have made money off of yet another crazy accessory. But games were released with patches on them, only for people to find a way around it. Let it be, or create your own is what I say to Nintendo.

Take your pick, there are plenty to go around!

I'll now move on to the most complex hack with the Wii. Now for a few years now... maybe one and a half, I'm not sure, the Homebrew channel has been around. For those of you blissfully unaware of this channel it is a custom channel created by Team Twiizers that used a hack to install a custom channel. I was amazed at the programming that went into making a channel, and the fact that non devs could make something like this was astonishing. What amazed me more was the fact that people could even make their own games and apps for this channel. There are actually some good games out as well. Some games are simple such as tic tac toe or chess, and some can be immersive even building their own 3D world. Once again, piracy came into play, and Nintendo tried to step in and block updates, but of course programmers found a way around it. Again, if Nintendo sponsored something like the Homebrew channel they could monitor it, and even let people make their own games. Hell, even now there is something on the Homebrew channel that lets you download games and things from the internet to your SD. But all Nintendo cares about is their games not being pirated, yet what they should do is help make a community out of it, and encourage people to make their own content for the Wii, creating a new immersive experience.

Let us have our fun!

Now there's 3 systems I didn't mention, pretty much because I don't know much about the development but I'll talk a little bit about all of them. The PSP has a hack for it that allows people to play games directly off their SD. Sony (to my knowledge) hasn't done much about this since really, there is nothing they can do. Maybe the Go fixes this, but I can't be sure. While on Sony, the PS3 doesn't have any sort of hacks at all on it. Well, not exactly true. I've heard that people have gotten Linux to run on it, and even some homebrew, but there hasn't been any piracy. In fact, Sony may even encourage user created content in the form of hacks and mod, as long as there is no piracy, which Sony has monitored well so far. Finally Microsoft's XBOX is not as perfect as the PS3. While I'm not aware of any soft hacks, the 360 does have a hardware hack. Microsoft (to it's credit) has been attempting to block this sort of behavior, and not doing horrible at it either. But Microsoft isn't giving homebrew a chance either, which is a shame, since people could probably crank out much more than what they could on the Wii.

Now, with developers all over trying to protect the PC from pirating games, many developers worry about consoles being hacked. I say put the big three in charge of their systems and allow homebrew to be created, and hey, piracy will always happen, but if you control at least a little bit, people may not want to pirate games, but enjoy the fact that they can play user created content.

Well, after a while of being on the site, I figured if you somehow get to this page I'd write a bit about myself. First of all, I'm still just a teenager, but I can get my hands on plenty of games, with work and stuff. Primarily I'll review DS games, but I have a PC and Wii as well, which I review when I get new games. My reviewing style is to review the game after I've either beaten it, or played it a lot. Iunno, just figured you'd like to know where my opinions come from. I get a tonna wii-ware games andI can get imported DS games as well, so you may see me review games not out in the US way before it does. So thats me.