Hideo Kojima has revealed that the Western version of upcoming PSP based stealth-actioner Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is, much to his dismay, the 'uncut' version - as the Japanese version has unwillingly had to undergo an edit.

Kojima, a regular user of micro-blogging service, Twitter, last night revealed that the Japanese version of Peace Walker has had to have a scene removed in order to keep it from receiving the equivalent of an M rating in the country.

He went on to explain that the PSP is supported by a younger audience, so the staff at Kojima Productions made every effort to avoid grotesque scenes. However, there was "a certain scene," a "standard element that's "absolutely necessary for MGS," that apparently could not make it under the desired rating, and had to be cut.As you can expect Kojima isn't particularly happy with the decision to make cuts to the game, he wrote:

"There's tolerance for fantasy games, but for games where you show war or real violence between people, you apparently can't complain about anything. With this, it seems impossible to communicate something through games."

The North American & European versions of the game will be the original 'uncut' version without any of the edits the Japanese version received - they will be rated T and 15 respectively.

As to what the edited scene will entail, we'll have to wait and see, but Kojima did suggest that people try to compare the versions if they get the chance. I'm sure that a fully detailed comparison will surface online as soon as the game is released, if not before - watch this space!

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker will sneak into stores in a cardboard box on June 8th in North America & June 18th for Europe.

Source: Andriasang, Twitter