Mortal Kombat: 10 Craziest Features We STILL Can't Believe
6. No Blood Code
If there is one thing that Mortal Kombat is known for above all else, it's over-the-top gore. The game was built not on precise, tight controls or engaging gameplay, but for being a shockingly graphic experience. The first game saw gallons of blood spilled, decapitations, spines and hearts forcibly removed from bodies....and Liu Kang's cute windmill kick.
The backlash was so significant that the original game had the blood removed when it was released on the Super Nintendo, instead being replaced with a gray spit/mist effect. Fortunately, with the creation of the Electronic Software Ratings Board, a warning label on the front of the game allowed the developers to put the gore back into the game for its sequel.
This makes the following entry all the more peculiar. Mortal Kombat 2 introduced a cheat mode that could be entered, allowing for a number of different game augmentations to be made. Among them was the ability to...remove blood from the game.
Here we had a perfectly faithful port of the arcade hit, and now the power to sterilize the content lay in the hands of the players. While the freedom of choice was a vast improvement over having censorship foisted upon the game itself by a ratings board, it's doubtful many players bothered to take away one of the star attactions of the game.