Bulger's mother complains over images in video game

Distributors have halted the sale in Britain of the video game Law and Order: Double or Nothing, following complaints from Denise Fergus, the mother of the murdered toddler James Bulger, that it appeared to include a CCTV image of her son being abducted.

The move comes as, for the first time in 10 years, a video game has been banned from British shops on the ground that it encourages extreme violence and "casual sadism".

Manhunt 2 has been made illegal to sell by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) for its "unrelenting focus on stalking and brutal slaying".

The BBFC said of Manhunt 2 that the game "constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing".

It is the first game to be banned in the UK since 1997, when Carmageddon was briefly kept off the shelves before an appeal overruled the decision.

David Cooke, director of the BBFC, said rejecting the work was "a very serious action" but its "unremitting bleakness and callousness" meant that, even with modifications, the game would be unsuitable for public distribution. Mr Cooke highlighted the game's obsession with stalking as another reason why the board thought Manhunt 2 would cause "a range of unjustifiable harm risks to both adults and minors".

The game would have been widely distributed in this country, as it was to be made available in both a PS2 and Nintendo Wii version.

The Manhunt series has courted controversy before. The parents of 14-year-old Stefan Pakeerah, who was murdered in 2004, claimed his killer was influenced by the game, although the trial found no grounds for the allegation.