Oh dear. Here's some news that's surely going to send mainstream newspapers (and Nintendo's PR department) mental. It's emerged that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for DS features a full-on drug-dealing mini-game.
Revealed in the latest Edge magazine, the drug-dealing feature lets you flog heroine, cocaine, weed, ecstasy, acid and downers. Selling the six type of drugs makes you a ton of in-game cash and help you gain experience of market conditions, says the mag.
"We wanted to have a drug-dealing minigame in lots of the GTA games," Rockstar VP Dan Houser told Edge. "We played with it a little in Vice City Stories, because it worked really well juxtaposed with the main story.
"It works well with what GTA is, with driving around the map, and it gives you another thing to think about - another layer or piece of the puzzle to keep you motivated."
But according to Houser, the drug-dealing aspect does have relevance to China Town Wars' plot. "It does intersect with the main story," he explained, "and things you learn from it work with the story, but it mostly runs on its own."
Maybe it'll work like the garden in Viva Pinata to supplement your main income, you'll have to tend the weeds 'up in the attic' and make sure that you turn the lamps off when the copper chopper flies over. And if you get any Sour Pinatas munching your crop just give them a bad mix and watch them O'd.
As long as the law is enforced in terms of shops selling to over-18s only, I can't see this being a problem. Too much is made out of things like this. As long as you are an adult, you should be allowed to decide whether you want to purchase something containing violence, drugs, etc. The problem arises, when stores who stock these items, failed to adhere to the laws which limit the age of the customer.
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