Ed Boon has said he thinks Nintendo did the right thing by censoring the first Mortal Kombat on consoles, because back then, there wan’t a ratings system in place for games.
Speaking with Euroamer, Boon recounted how the blood spurts present in the arcade version of the game were converted into grey sweat puffs, and how fatalities were also altered.
“The controversy with the game originally was because there was no rating system in place, and people were objecting to the fact that a game that was as violent as it is, did not have a rating,” Boon said. “I agree with that idea. The rating system is great. The censorship with the SNES version was a response to that. Nintendo felt like they had an obligation to not offer something like this to a system that’s played by many young players.
“But after we had the rating system in place, they felt, OK, if there’s a rating on the box and people understand it’s a violent game, then it’s OK to sell it because it’s intended for an older audience.”
Boon also tipped his hat to the Street Fighter series, as it was what helped get Mortal Kombat off the ground.
“Back then, in 1991/92, fighting games were one of the biggest categories of games that were out there. Street Fighter II was getting into its stride,” he said. “We felt we wanted to do something that was an American-made fighting game with the latest technology, which was digitised graphics at the time.
“We felt we had something to contribute in that field. I don’t think anybody was expecting the level of success the game had. It would be arrogant of me to assume that something was going to perform this well. It was a big surprise to us.
“We hoped we would reach some level of success and pay for the development of the game. But I would have never have guessed that almost 20 years later we would still be making Mortal Kombat games.”
Mortal Kombat is out now and the consensus is that it is very good.
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