Nintendo of America has gained notoriety for its formerly strict censorship policy, particularly with regard to video games bearing religious symbols (for instance pentagrams), violence, profane language and so forth. The reason for this policy is attributed to its attempt to make its video games more family friendly.
Nintendo has discontinued the policy with the advent of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board; however, the company does still perform self-censorship in its own games to some extent. An example of this being the "Angel" ability in recent Kirby games (2003 onward) changed to the "Cupid" ability in the English versions due to religious references. The advent of console emulation, coupled with the rise of foreign ROM images, revealed Nintendo of America's censorship policies in practice to North American gamers.
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