Needless to say, these sorts of titles and their violent content tend to be locked behind age ratings, determined by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board similarly to movies. Interestingly, there’s a ranking above Mature (17+), dubbed Adults Only (18+). This highest ranking is given out only in rare, extreme cases; Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo do not allow AO games on their platforms and their sale is heavily restricted. From Hatred to Leisure Suit Larry, let’s take a look at some of the few games that earned this most dubious of ratings.
Updated April 23, 2022 by Mark Sammut: AO games are a rare sight since any project stamped as such cannot be sold on consoles. Consequently, most developers looking to craft mature games will try to stay within the limits of an M rating to avoid seriously hampering their commercial potential. However, exceptions exist to every rule, and there are a handful of Adults Only games out there, including some recognizable names. This article has been expanded to include a few more titles that are just for adults, or at least were once considered as such.
9 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Now, this one was all but inevitable. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas made the list for a certain piece of content by the name of Hot Coffee. This dialed up the already adult content of the game to the limit, and so San Andreas was slapped with the AO rating.
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Curiously, though, said rating was actually rescinded later. Rockstar responded by deleting all traces of Hot Coffee from the title, and, in turn, the game’s rating was revised to Mature. Of all the awful things someone can see and do in a GTA title, it’s interesting to think that it was Hot Coffee in particular that pushed a series entry over the edge.
8 The Punisher
Hard as it is to believe, a Marvel game once was stamped with the AO rating; that said, anyone remotely familiar with Frank Castle would probably not be too surprised to learn that he stared in an unapologetically violent game. Now, to be clear, 2004’s The Punisher was later toned down to an M rating, so the version on the market is not the one that was considered too much for consoles.
The developers did not change a great deal to get the game over the line, largely opting to present the death and torture scenes in black and white rather than color. Most of the brutality is still on display for the whole world to see, it just looks like an old Hollywood film now. Although far from a masterpiece, The Punisher is a pretty decent game, and one of the more accurate adaptations of the Marvel character.
7 Manhunt 2 (PC Edition)
As many gamers will know, Manhunt 2 is one of the most controversial video games in history. It was created by Rockstar (no strangers to this sort of notoriety, as the creators of Grand Theft Auto), a stealth game that reveled in its astonishingly gory and brutal content.
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The game’s an unusual case, as it was actually rejigged by the team to meet the standards of a Mature rating (executions were changed to be less graphic and the system that glorified more theatrical assassinations was removed). It was the uncut PC release that pulled no punches and was condemned.
6 Singles: Flirt Up Your Life
In some of these cases, the title alone tells someone all they need to know about the direction a game’s going to take. After all, this is the Adults Only rating, there’s no room for subtlety here.
Essentially, Singles: Flirt Up Your Life is a very similar prospect to The Sims. The player has to care for their little human charges, keep them fed, and so on. The primary difference is that WooHoo (as The Sims euphemistically puts it) is one of the key goals here. It’s a relatively solid imitation of the classic life sim, all in all, but its racy content led to the AO rating.
5 Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude
The Leisure Suit Larry series has developed quite a reputation for itself. Gamers of a certain age will remember these tongue-in-cheek titles, which present adult content in a comedic sort of way.
Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude is an adventure title starring Larry Laffer’s nephew, Larry Lovage. Lovage’s goal is to charm the women on his college campus, to varying degrees of success. Much like Manhunt 2, the game was initially given an AO rating, before being amended to Mature after certain adult scenes were cut or censored. An uncut version was also released just the same, however.
4 Hatred
Most typical games try to avoid getting the AO rating, but Hatred looks like it was specifically designed with that goal in mind. This release is basically Postal without anything really resembling a story or much in the way of nuance; it is a murder simulator, a game that unleashes players onto society and tells them to kill everyone.
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Unsurprisingly, Hatred garnered a pretty terrible reception upon release, but ultimately that hardly seemed to be the point of the game. This is a title that appeared to want people to be outraged and to react as loudly as possible. More often than not, the AO rating is given out to games that are obviously targeting adults, especially in the form of sexual content; amidst projects like Seduce Me and Wet: The Sexy Empire, Hatred stands out since it shares far more similarities with traditional games that one might find on most store shelves.
3 Playboy The Mansion: Private Party
Playboy: The Mansion is a title not unlike the many, many business sims that have been released before or since. The player’s goal is to make the magazine successful, by developing relationships and contacts, employing photographers and writers, and making sure everyone’s doing work that plays to their strengths.
Needless to say, though, the subject matter landed this particular sim with a Mature rating. What’s interesting is that it was just the game’s expansion, Private Party, that earned itself an AO rating.
2 Agony
Born out of a Kickstarter campaign, Agony drops players in hell and challenges them to make their way to the Queen in pursuit of salvation. Along the way, they will see plenty of horrifying visuals, all the while engaging in first-person gameplay revolving around stealth and possessing other inhabitants of hell.
Agony has a bit of a unique history in relation to the ESRB rating. Initially, the game earned itself an AO score, prompting Madmind Studio to tweak the project so that it could receive an M rating. The latter version is the one found on PC and consoles. However, towards the end of 2018, the studio released Agony Unrated on Steam, a version presumably closer to the one that garnered the infamous AO. Currently, this iteration is not available to purchase.
Agony is not generally considered to be that great, but its spin-off Succubus is vastly better. Although it does not have a profile on ESRB, this side game could probably earn an AO, or at least an M rating.
1 Thrill Kill
One of the earliest games to be given an AO rating for violent content, Thrill Kill, ultimately never saw release at all as a result of its notoriety.
Paradox Development’s fighter revolved around the idea of a group of damned individuals, who had been vicious killers, battling for a chance to be reincarnated by the Goddess Marukka. Thrill Kill promised four players could hop in simultaneously, but bad press ultimately led to the title being canceled. For an idea of how the experience may have been, imagine Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style with demonic characters and some of the most hideously brutal execution moves imaginable, and that’s basically Thrill Kill.
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