I've been reading a very interesting book which I highly recommend called "Power Up, How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life".

Anyhow, I'm reading a chapter on Localzation of Japanese games to America and found it very interesting that in the old days, a lot of the "cute" Japanese games were altered to appeal to the American audience more by removing the cuteness in either the opening screen, the box art and instructions, or even altered all the sprite pics in the game itself, sometimes with HORRIBLE RESULTS! (See Mega Man 1 NES box art)

For example: Satoshi Tajiri's (Creator of Pokemon) first game is one of my favorite NES games. However, in Japan, it was called Quinty and had very cute opening screen and graphics to match the cute game. However, most US companies rejected it as too cute, until Hudson Soft US picked it up and released it as Mendel Palace. They replace the cute opening graphic with a "realistic" look graphic. Yet all the graphics in the game were still really cute.

My question: What do you think of cute character designs and cute games? Do you avoid a game if it looks "childish"? Do you think Nintendo is childish?