What did Hisoka do now?
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a fighting game itself get outright banned, and the usual suspect isn’t even connected to the latest incident.
The Australian Classification Board recently blocked the upcoming anime team-based fighting game Hunter x Hunter: Nen Impact.
Hunter x Hunter was slapped with a “Refused Classification” by the ACB when Bushiroad Games and Arc System Works submitted the title to be rated by the board.
This effectively means Nen Impact currently could not be published, publicly exhibited or sold at all in Australia, and the ACB does not give specific reasons as to why.
The most common reasoning for games to be refused in Australia over the past decade or so are either for “promoting” drug use offering benefits or inappropriate content involving minors or a character who appears to be under 18 years old.
So we presume it may be the former unless Hisoka is getting extra weird in this fighting game or something.
Or perhaps someone just made a clerical error during submission or something and needs to be corrected for classification.
The current refusal would also make Hunter x Hunter the only notable fighter banned in Australia now.
Mortal Kombat 9 was famously banned in Australia from 2011 until 2013 when the country introduced its R18+ due to the game’s “high impact bloody violence.”
More recent entries in the series have not faced similar bans in Australia, but Mortal Kombat 11 was blocked in countries like Indonesia, Japan and Ukraine though not exactly for the violence and rather for featuring communist symbols and iconography.
Hunter x Hunter’s case will likely change at some point before the official release by altering its contents slightly to achieve classification.
Nen Impact was originally supposed to launch here in 2024, but the game was delayed to add rollback netcode and more polish to the title.
Now, the Hunter x Hunter fighter is set to come out for PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and PC sometime in 2025 (unless you’re in Australia for now).