Tai-What?

So... a funny thing happened on the way to Reddit earlier today.

Reddit member LilMaker noticed after a software update that his Playstation 4 copy of Baseball Stars Professional 2 had a curious omission. The Taipei Hawks and Taiwan Dragons were now simply "Hawks" and "Dragons," while the other teams were unchanged. I decided to verify this by booting up the DotEmu version of Baseball Stars 2 in Steam, and found this:

One irksome thing about the DotEmu versions of Neo-Geo games is that you can't play them straight... they're presented in a wrapper that swaps out the original menus for homely modernized ones that detract from the overall experience. Look, I want the original Neo-Geo game, rough edges and all. I'm not nostalgic for... whatever this is.

When you get past the unwelcome new menus and get to the actual game, this is what you'll find...

Oh, so this is what John Lennon meant when he sang "Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do!" Unlike the Neo-Geo original, none of the teams in the Steam port of Baseball Stars 2 have a national affiliation, so you're just stuck with generic titles like "Hawks" and "Monsters."

This leads to the question, "what the hell is going on here?" A more cynical person would suggest that since SNK currently belongs to China-owned 37Games, the company has been "gently persuaded" into removing all references to Taiwan from its games, as the Chinese government doesn't recognize the country as separate from the mainland. 

Actually, I'm exactly that cynical, so that's what I'm suggesting, yeah. It's not that far-fetched, considering that signs supporting the oppressed Ugyar people have been blurred out in live broadcasts of sporting events, and Activision pulled the prize money out from under Hearthstone champion Blitzchung after he demanded Hong Kong retain its autonomy from the Chinese mainland.

There's been a lot of hate thrown at people of Chinese descent thanks to COVID-19, so let me make clear that's not the intent of this post. Chinese people are fine. The mainland Chinese government led by Xi Jinping is the problem here, and it needs to keep its damn historical revisionism on its own shores. For what it's worth, I support both Taiwan and Hong Kong, and I take umbrage at being held to China's standards, seeing its propaganda, and being affected by its censorship. Frankly, nobody should have to put up with this, but Chinese authoritarianism is one export Americans in particular can do without. We have our own bloated, self-serving liar-in-chief, thank you very much.

ADDENDUM: But wait, there's more! Dave "Foxhack" Silva discovered that some hasty changes were made to a publicly distributed ROM of The Art of Fighting 2 earlier this month. The game, originally available in an SNK 25th Anniversary bundle, changes the Land of the Rising Sun flag in Takuma's stage to something a bit more tasteful. I guess I can't blame 37Games for this, since Japan had previously flown that flag while trying to occupy China during the Nanking Massacre. Yes, the very same massacre the musician from Dragon Quest refuses to admit happened.