Neowin.net

The first real movie trailer for Star Wars Empire at War is now online, showing the sci-fi 3D real-time strategy game by Petroglyph Games in motion. This movie features three and a half minutes of enticing gameplay footage with both space and surface-based combat scenes.

Video: Star Wars Empire at War
News source: 3D Gamers

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ESRB president Patricia Vance states the situation rather differently, saying that: "After a thorough investigation, we have concluded that sexually explicit material exists in a fully rendered, unmodified form on the final discs of all three platform versions of the game."

She did note, however, that "the material was programmed by Rockstar to be inaccessible to the player and they have stated that it was never intended to be made accessible."

The "Hot Coffee" mod saw players taking their girlfriend home and then having sex with her in a mini-game that, while present on the game DVD, only came to light after a PC modification unlocked the code. The data was subsequently found to be resident on the PS2 and Xbox discs and could be unlocked on PS2 using Datel's Action Replay cheat-finder product.

The ESRB and another industry body, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), have come under increasing pressure to act since Hot Coffee came to light, with widespread coverage in the American media and proponents of a ban receiving support from the likes of senator Hillary Clinton, Californian assemblyman Leland Yee, and anti-videogame activist Jack Thompson, who recently compared ESA president Doug Lowenstein to Adolf Hitler over his role in the affair.

Indeed, just last week the BBFC said that while it didn't know about Hot Coffee at the time of rating the game, it wasn't going to update it. "Even if we had been aware of it, we would not have had a problem," a spokesperson told this website. "From our point of view the hidden material does not contravene the 18 rating and so the rating stands."

In Australia however the game could well be banned altogether, with Australia's Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) - a notoriously strict organisation - having previously refused to classify titles including Manhunt and NARC, effectively banning them from sale. There the OFLC had said: "The Classification Board is compelled to revoke a game's classification if it is found to contain undisclosed contentious material, whether activated through use of a code or otherwise."