Steven Spielberg tried to replace the guns in a Minority Report video game with puke sticks
Way back in the year 2002, Steven Spielberg made the decision to remove all guns from his family-friendly masterpiece, E.T., and replace them with CGI walkie talkies for the movie’s 20th anniversary home video release on DVD. Why? Well, he apparently felt bad for having a bunch of cops aim guns at literal children on bicycles. Spielberg ended up regretting that decision, righting his wrong for the movie’s 30th anniversary.
But Spielberg’s fixation on guns wasn’t just limited to E.T. He saw the release of his sci-fi action whodunnit Minority Report the same year he made the walkie-talkie swap, and, despite the movie being packed with guns, the director wasn’t too happy about them being featured in a video game adaption of the movie. According to an interview on Game Informer’s GI Show, Alex Hutchinson, creative director of games like Far Cry 4 and Assassin’s Creed 3, revealed that Spielberg had taken issue with guns being in the Game Boy Advance adaptation of the movie. Apparently, he wanted all the guns to be replaced with “sick sticks,” which make people vomit upon getting hit.
From the interview:
“The only interesting part of that development was getting an email at some point from Steven Spielberg’s assistant, who said, ‘I see there are lots of guns in your Game Boy game.’ And we said, ‘Well, there are a lot of guns in your movie.’ And they said, ‘Steven feels that maybe kids shouldn’t see those guns.’ … And we were like, ‘It’s a three month production, four month production on a Game Boy game.’ We’re just like smashing it out basically. It was lucky that it booted. And we were like, ‘We can’t change it.’ And he’s like, ‘But he has one idea. There’s another weapon in the game called the Sick Stick, which makes you vomit. Can you replace all of the guns with this since kids love vomit?’ And we said no. That’s the only good part of that entire development.”
The weapon in question can be seen below. Be sure to watch it with your kids since they apparently love vomit.
[via Go Nintendo]