No kidding. I still tell people in certain online communities about the European censorship-- Probotector, TMHT-- lowest common denominator censorship because companies didn't want to produce per-country as opposed to per-region. (Not saying I can't see why they didn't, mind!)
The kids of today are often shocked at just how INANE the 80s censorship issues were. When it wasn't censorship, it was cheapness-- NES Contra and Castlevania 3 in the US were nowhere near their original Japanese versions.
If the internet had existed in this form back in the 80s, there'd have been a lot of rioting kids!