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GTA: San Andreas fans all know the NSFW Hot Coffee minigame whose content was cut, or rather hidden in the files, before the game's launch but restored by a modder. If you prefer to have your experiences pristine, unsullied by mods, here's the gist: Hot Coffee lets CJ have explicit, interactive fun with his girlfriends.
This, as GamesRadar noted, was supposed to solidify GTA's fame for controversy, but the developers decided to disable such content to avoid losing the ESRB rating.
Former Xbox boss Peter Moore said that sexual themes in this once-PlayStation exclusive reflected changes in the industry:
"Getting that franchise on the platform ... was starting to drive a more mature consumer. It was starting to take full advantage of obviously the graphical power of the high definition of Xbox 360. And I think it was the stickiness of GTA, it said to gamers, 'We see you as mature adults. This is no longer content that you will pass through in a phase and get on to more mature things.' GTA, as controversial as it obviously was at times, if anybody remembers Hot [Coffee], I think it signified a maturing of the industry, no pun intended, and put us on par with movies and music," he said during Danny Peña's Gamertag Radio podcast.
Video games were not for kids anymore; they covered serious topics that only adults would understand and relate to. It was a revolution of sorts, aimed at staking its claim in the entertainment industry.
"During that period ... we were fighting for respect, we were the root of all evil in society, 'we' being gaming. I spoke in Senate hearings in Washington DC on behalf of the gaming industry to make sure people understood this isn't some polluting of young boys' minds, this is a legitimate entertainment medium that is interactive in nature and was about to be taking full advantage of the internet in ways even movies and music weren't."
Of course, GTA has always talked about mature things: violence, drugs, and whatnot. Still, sexual themes had been, and still are in many ways, a taboo that not many companies are ready to embrace.
Did you know that San Andreas developers created a whole font rendering system for the game? Find more interesting facts about it here.
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