Anti-gaming advocates like Jack Thompson love to point to the violence in today’s games and claim that it’s responsible for the increase in violence among today’s youths. On one level, this fails given that violent crime is on the decline, but who are we to let facts get in the way? What truly is impressive about these claims is that they also fail on another level, as violence in video games is nothing new. Only recently were we given the chance to beat zombies with two-by-fours in deathlike detail, but violence in gaming is as old as gaming itself, as evidenced by these standouts from the pre-Playstation era.
#5. Mortal Kombat series (1992, 1993, 1995)
The grand-daddy of violent fighting games, Mortal Kombat took the Street Fighter style of hand-to-hand brutality, and added what was sorely lacking – gallons of blood and the ability to remove your opponent’s entire central nervous system with your bare hands.
Let’s see Ryu do that.
The formula proved to be infinitely successful, and spawned countless sequels on the 16-bit consoles which thrived despite relatively few mechanics changes and the fact that nearly every character was a pallet-swapped ninja. Admittedly, the fact that said ninjas were the coolest characters in the game likely also played a key role.
What truly set Mortal Kombat apart from its less-violent predecessor wasn’t the blood from each punch, of which there was plenty, but rather the implantation of post-fight fatalities. Surprisingly enough, they did not go over well with anti-violence activists. Fatalities were there to stay however, eventually spiraling out of control to the point of the bizarre animalities and downright sad friendships, the use of which was sure to get any gamer made fun of by their friends.
#4. Doom (1993)
Much like Mortal Kombat , Doom made its name by taking a violent emerging genre and deciding that its current form was severely lacking in blood and gore. Id Software made waves by releasing Wolfenstein 3D in 1992, then took first person shooters to a bloody new level by changing Nazis to hellspawn, and adding a slew of overly gory weapons.
”Oh, fuck yes!” – every seven-year-old who owned Doom.
Doom put you in the shoes of a lone space marine left to take on the legions of Hell all by himself in a time where a space marine was actually a unique and original concept for a character.
While it had its share of standard weapons to take out the demons with, Doom also put the most dangerous weapon in gaming history at every child’s disposal – the BFG 9000, also known as the Big Fucking Gun. All you had to do was think about firing the BFG and everything on screen turned into a gory, bloody soup.
#3. Weaponlord (1995)
The success of Mortal Kombat led to a market flood of gory copy-cat efforts, but only Weaponlord took the initiative to actually add new elements instead of just offering MK without the hassle of all those fun-to-play characters. Instead, Namco decided that while punching pints of blood out of people was fun, slicing it out with swords and battle axes is infinitely better. We have to say it’s a pretty sound line of reasoning.
Weaponlord ’s crowning achievement in the field of gory deliciousness comes in its complex death combos. Through a series of well-timed combo moves, you could finish off your opponents in ways that would make Freddy Kreuger say “honestly, that’s a bit much, guys.” Among the tasteful things you could do to your friends was the ability to split skulls down to the brain and the always crowd-pleasing disembowelment, for when killing a guy that’s not looking at his own shit just isn’t fun enough.
Adding some naughty icing to the youngster’s violence cake, Weaponlord also allowed you to slice your opponents clothing off with certain attacks, which, in a time where you couldn’t find porn at any conceivable Google image search, was pretty awesome.
Even an innocuous word like “balls” returns porn on today’s internet.
#2. Splatterhouse (1988)
Splatterhouse is probably the least surprising candidate to find its way onto this list. The title alone gives you a pretty fair estimate of what’s ahead (an entire house worth of splatter) and if anybody is still lagging behind, designers saw fit to spell things out pretty clearly with the advertising flyers.
Fun for the whole family.
The game box also contained a parental advisory warning, but at that point it seems about as necessary as a “Caution: Flammable” warning on a flame thrower. If a parent isn’t able to figure out that the above may not be good for six-year-old Jimmy, they probably aren’t likely to raise a success story anyways.
Splatterhouse has a backstory (something to do with a power mask and a lost girlfriend) but Namco doesn’t hold any delusions about why their game was purchased. Splatterhouse didn’t include pregame cutscenes to illustrate the backstory, opting instead to place this information in the instruction manual and, let’s be honest, there wasn’t a child alive that read those. Time spent on pointless things like “story” was simply time that could be better spent cutting the hell out of everything that was stupid enough to get in your way.
#1. Death Race (1990)
The Grand Theft Auto of the generation currently rallying against Grand Theft Auto , Death Race doesn’t earn the top spot for its level of violent content, but rather for its contribution to the field of video game violence. The original arcade version of the game, dating all the way back to 1976, is the Adam of outcry-inducing games, from which all future gore is born.
Taking the helm of a killtastic car, the player is tasked with running over as many “gremlins” as possible before inevitably dying themselves. Parents seemed to think the gremlins were strikingly human in appearance, and that the game was programming their children to be murder factories. In defense of those parents, the graphics were earth-shatteringly impressive.
It’s like you’re actually driving a car!
Ever wise to the “violence = sales” concept, publishers remade the game for the NES in 1990, ensuring that another generation would enjoy the glory that is running down living beings with a terrifying death machine. As an added bonus, no-doubt in an effort to ensure its eventual place atop this list, the NES version did away with all the ambiguity and made it perfectly clear that it was a development-dwelling human being’s life you were ending with every smash.
Suck on that one, humanity.
ThegreatGatsby(8 months ago)
I don't know what the name was but there was a pre MK arcade game where the player had 5 buttons, one for each limb and the head. there were no special combos, but well timed moves could sever limbs and even decapitate. Never got to play it much but there you go. Anyone else remember this?
And BTW FIRST
RisingPun(8 months ago)
I believe you refer to Time Killers.
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