One of the early examples of a video game scandal was always going to come from one of the most gratuitously violent beat-em-ups of all time. Mortal Kombat was bloody, weirdly realistic thanks to its digitised graphics, and a grim contrast to the colourful, cartoonish Capcom fighters that were so popular back then. Parents and politicians were outraged in particular by the game's beloved Fatalities, which let players tear their opponents' spines out and make the kind of gibletty mess made by Sub-Zero in the above picture. The violence of the original Mortal Kombat caused such a moral panic, that solutions for the game's shocking content were discussed at length by scientists and political candidates. Eventually, the video game rating system that exists in the US to this day, the ESRB, was created in 1994. Nintendo - fearful of ruining its child-friendly image that made its SNES so popular - turned all the blood in the game green, and made all fatalities black and white (as if that somehow confuses our eyes into not seeing anything). Gamers' desire for Mortal Kombat's gore was evidence by the fact that the uncensored Sega version sold far better than the SNES one. Mortal Kombat was the first time a game really ruffled the feathers of society at large, putting games under the spotlight as a degenerative and dangerous medium that was capable of 'corrupting' the world's youth - a stigma that still gets trotted out every now and then to this day.
Gamer, Researcher of strange things.
I'm a writer-editor hybrid whose writings on video games, technology and movies can be found across the internet. I've even ventured into the realm of current affairs on occasion but, unable to face reality, have retreated into expatiating on things on screens instead.
