A controversial video game for the Nintendo 3DS has been pulled from sale in Sweden, Denmark and Norway due to child pornography concerns, but will continue to be sold in Australia with a PG rating.

The latest instalment in a long-running tactical fighting series, Dead or Alive: Dimensions is famous for its well-endowed, scantily-clad, cartoon warriors. Three of the game's characters — Ayane, Koroke and Kasumi — are described in the game as being under 18 years of age, which resulted in the game's launch in several Nordic countries being cancelled amid claims it may breach Swedish child pornography laws.

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Sexualised depictions of children — even in cartoons — are prohibited by law, and because the in-game photography mode enables players to look up characters' dresses in certain poses, some people have considered the game potential child pornography.

In 2008, a Sydney man was convicted of possessing child pornography over a cartoon showing characters from The Simpsons engaged in sexual acts.

In a landmark finding in the NSW Supreme Court, Justice Michael Adams ruled that a fictional cartoon character could "depict" a "person" under law, and said cartoons could "fuel demand for material that does involve the abuse of children".

He said that had the cartoon depicted real children, the man would have been jailed. Instead, he was fined $3000 and placed on a two-year good behaviour bond.

Nintendo has disputed claims that the scenes in the game constitute child porn and pointed to the Classification Board decision to give the game a PG rating.

"The game contains a wide variety of fictional characters which depict Japanese style cartoon images some of which are female fighters. This is not classified as child porn," a Nintendo Australia spokeswoman said.

The Classification Board gave Dead or Alive: Dimensions a PG rating with consumer advice of "mild violence and sexualised gameplay". It said that in accordance with the Classification Act, it must not reclassify a game within two years and to date, no requests have been made to review the rating of this particular game.

The classification system has received harsh criticism in the past, with former board members claiming that the current system is broken and that the constant stream of new content is overwhelming censors.

Now under review, one option raised to solve the issue of potential misclassification was to allow game publishers to come up with their own ratings, with a board of censors only called upon to resolve disputes.

What do you think? Have you played Dead or Alive: Dimensions? Do you think the PG rating reflects the game's content? Should game publishers to come up with their own ratings?

Have your say below…