Doom sales ban in Germany lifted this summer

[MrFlibble]

Recently I've read that the ban imposed on Doom and its sequel by the German BPjM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BPjM) agency had been made void this summer. Now both games can be legally sold to anyone of 16 years or more. Here's a couple of articles about this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14748027
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/doom-sales-ban-doom-2-fps-ego-shooter,news-36346.html

It is my understanding that only selling the game was illegal, but not owning it. Also, a person mentions here (http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/31/doom-and-doom-2-now-acceptable-in-germany-berlin-renamed-e1m1/) (in the comments) that the version of Doom II that is sold in Germany is still censored to remove the references to Wolfenstein 3-D in the secret levels.

[holydiver95]

That's right, now we germans can play DOOM 1 & 2 without any thoughts of the law. It's rated now USK 16. But still the US Version of DOOM II is forbidden and we get a version without the Wolfenstein Levels.
Anyway, I hope I see it one day back in Store :)

[MrFlibble]

In one of the articles it is mentioned that any ban imposed by the BPjM automatically expires after 25 years, but I wonder if the reasons other than depiction of violence that lead to the ban on Wolfenstein 3-D would be still taken in consideration to prolong the ban..?

BTW, I just checked your YouTube channel :) I love the music from Age of Empires and its expansion (just as the games themselves, of course!). In fact, I first downloaded the Rise of Rome MIDIs from Microsoft's websites before I even got the expansion itself :D Oh, and have you tried playing MIDIs with high-quality soundfonts through TiMidity++ (http://timidity.sourceforge.net/)? Here (http://ocmnet.com/saxguru/Timidity.htm)'s a nice pre-installed package with some public domain soundfonts that are quite good, and here (http://en.sourceforge.jp/projects/twsynth/releases/)'s a version that will also install a MIDI driver that can replace the default Windows MIDI synthesizer device and will use custom soundfonts for MIDI music. IIRC, not all MIDI songs in AoE have their CD audio counterparts, so it's kind of nice to get a better sounding version of them :)