Banned PS2 Game May Be Making a Comeback

A controversial PS2 survival horror game from 2006 may be making its comeback soon. In the year 2006, gamers were treated to a variety of generational classics and great games, such as: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Gears of War, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Bully, Company of Heroes, Okami, Final Fantasy XII, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Medieval II: Total War, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas, Viva Pinata, Dead Rising, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, Resistance: Fall of Man, Just Cause, Saints Row, Prey, New Super Mario Bros, Need for Speed Carbon, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, and a plethora of great sports games. It was a great year in gaming history.

When you reflect on the year of gaming that was 2006, one game you probably don't think of is Rule of Rose, unless you're a horror fan. The PS2 exclusive from Sony and the now defunct studio Punchline, was released in January of 2006 in Japan before coming west in September of the same year. 

Upon release, the game only garnered a 59 on Metacritic. This combined with weak sales to create essentially a flop, which may explain why Punchline closed after it. That said, the game's reputation was greater than this score suggests. Not only was it an exclusive from Sony, but it created a bit of moral panic. Most of this moral panic was in Europe, where it actually got banned from release in some cases. The most prominent example of this was the United Kingdom. 

Much of the outcry was based more on rumors and scuttlebutt about the game and its content rather than its actual content, but there is no doubting it also had some dark and violent content that took inspiration from the likes of Silent Hill and and Haunting Ground.

It's been a long time since Rule of Rose has been spoken about, but it has randomly popped back up in 2024. According to a well-known, fairly reliable industry insider, who specializes in reporting on horror games, market research has been done on a potential remaster or port of the game. 

This tidbit comes the way specifically of Dusk Golem, who recently tweeted the following: "The company that owns Rule of Rose as an IP a few years ago held a survey asking which titles people would like to see, one of the options there was a Rule of Rose Remaster."

Of course, some market research on the game doesn't mean it is going to return. In fact, Dusk Golem makes no mention of the results. However, what it means is that there are at least rumblings around the game, and where there are rumblings there are possibilities, and where there are possibilities, there are sometimes outcomes. It is hard to imagine there is much demand for the game to return, but this report suggests it is not out of the realm of possibility. That said, remember that this is an unconfirmed report, which means it should be taken with a grain of salt.