Rockstar was forced to censor parts of its controversial game Manhunt 2 a few months ago to get around the ESRB's "Adults Only" rating, a virtual kiss of death in the gaming industry. It would now seem that the censored parts where merely "disabled" rather than completely taken out, as Matt Martin at GamesIndustry.biz reports that Manhunt 2 hackers were able to restore the censored parts of the game.

"The PSP version of the controversial title has been exploited less than 24 hours since the game was officially released in North America. [...] The illegal exploit of the original PSP code indicates that the scenes that were cut in order to secure an M rating were not removed from the full game, rather disabled, much like the Hot Coffee mini-games in Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas."

There is already much speculation that this will prompt the ESRB to return the game to its original "AO" status, as has already occurred with such games as Oblivion, GTA:San Andreas and Halo 2.

At the time of this posting, neither the ESRB nor Rockstar have issued any official comments regarding this issue.

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