10 Unbelievable Reasons Why You Can't Play These Video Games

If you were a teenage boy in the late '90s, you were probably pretty hype about Thrill Kill, the ultra-violent PS1 beat 'em up developed as a gnarly spiritual successor to Mortal Kombat, with up to four players battling on-screen at once.

When development was effectively finished and sequel plans were already being hammered out, publisher Virgin Interactive's North American branch was acquired by EA, and mere weeks away from Thrill Kill's release, EA decided the PR headache the game would cause simply wasn't worth it.

And so, Thrill Kill was scrapped at the eleventh hour, because EA didn't want to address why they were selling a game featuring brutal murder, BDSM, and bodily dismemberment.

If you had a chipped PS1 back then, though - as so many of us did - pirate copies of Thrill Kill were soon enough posted online, confirming it to be as nauseatingly over-the-top as the hype suggested, if also a little rough around the edges.

Its legacy today is as a cult relic, with its engine eventually repurposed for games such as Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style and X-Men: Mutant Academy.

Sadly, though, EA's reactionary hand-wringing meant more straight-laced players never got the chance to play it for themselves. Almost 25 years on, some are still holding out hope it might one day get an official retail release.