Just after the ESRB was officially formed, it faced one of its first tests in Hideo Kojima’s gritty Sega CD crime adventure. Here’s a chronological collection of some of the most baffling ESRB ratings decisions we’ve come across over the years, ranging from too lenient to too harsh to just plain hilarious. Still, among the thousands of ESRB ratings issued over the years, there are quite a few that have us wondering what the group was thinking. Despite some concerns surrounding transparency and rating methodology, the industry-wide self-regulation of the ESRB has been a boon to those trying to hold off continual efforts at government restrictions on game content and sales. The ESRB should also be commended for educating the public about the meaning of its ratings-73 percent of parents say they check ratings before buying games, according to the ESRB-and of getting retailers to comply with voluntary age-based sales restrictions-87 percent of stores refused to sell M-rated games to minors in a 2011 FTC investigation. Since then, the organization has taken on the Herculean task of assigning a content-based age rating to practically every commercial video game released in the United States.įor the most part, the organization has done an admirable job of accurately evaluating the content of thousands of games based on brief video montages provided by publishers. On September 16, 1994, the newly formed Entertainment Software Rating Board handed out its first ratings certificates, including its first M rating for the 32X version of Doom.
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