Front Mission: Gun Hazard is a game from Square
released in 1996 for the Super Nintendo, only in Japan.
The second title of the series,
Gun Hazard is quite different from its predecessor,
being more a shooter in the style of Contra and Cybernator,
but with RPG elements, like any good game from Square.
Despite being a good title,
something very strange is present in the cartridge:
digging through the ROM audio files with a specific tool,
you can find the following sound:
Again and translated.
We're gonna burn your building down, you fuckheads.
C18 is watching you, you communist, nigger-loving, Paki…
This audio clip can be heard in the game,
on this screen that appears after the final credits.
Right under the helicopter sound,
it is possible to notice the voice.
Check it out.
This sound in the game, in fact,
is an excerpt from an alleged telephone recording of a member of Combat 18,
a neo-Nazi political organization suspected of numerous killings of immigrants
and people whom they consider from other races.
The BNP's got your card marked, you bastards.
We're gonna burn your building down, you fuckheads.
C18 is watching you, you communist, nigger-loving, Paki cunts.
Fucking dickheads, we're gonna hang you for burning the British flag.
You'll hang from every fucking flagpole in Britain for burning the Union Jack, you bastards.
The problem is that this recording
is the introduction of a song of the British hip hop group Fun-Da-Mental.
The band had songs with lyrics full of political engagement,
and this track in particular, called Dog Tribe,
criticizes the various forms of racism and ethnic segregation.
So it opens with this controversial message,
in order to criticize the hate that the most conservative sectors and the Far-right
in our society have about the different ethnic groups and cultures.
In other versions of the song,
this introduction ended up being cut.
So why the hell it ended up in Front Mission: Gun Hazard?
Apparently, it was just an accident:
the musicians responsible for the sound of the game,
including there Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda,
heard the music of Fun-Da-Mental,
thought that this message would be a good sound effect,
since they do not understand English very well,
and put in the game like a voice talking on the helicopter radio,
without anyone realizing it was a message of hatred and racism.
This technique called sampling, that is,
removing sounds of music and other works,
was very common in old games,
but nowadays it stopped for a moment mainly because of the Internet,
since people easily discover the sound similarities
and this opens the door to a lovely lawsuit.
Two cases of this kind we know well here:
the free advertisement of Kaiser in the menu screen of Capcom vs. SNK…
Kaiser, a great beer. The beer of happy times.
…and a TV commercial in Parasite Eve II.
I suspect that is from C&A.
Each of these offers for just…
That voice was shortly after cut off from the American and European versions of the game.
So do not worry, Front Mission: Gun Hazard is not
a racist game with subliminal messages.
It is rather a great title from Square which unfortunately was restricted to Japan,
but thanks to the Internet, a group of fans made a translated version.
So, there is the hint, because it's worth checking out.