


Tekken, Street Fighter, Virtua Fighter, Marvel vs. The 1990s belonged to games like Mortal Kombat that seemed almost desperate to distance itself from the 1980s and create something that felt fresh and “in the now.” The rating system proved to not even dent the games’ success, especially if 4-year-old me was able to play Mortal Kombat: Trilogy thanks to my generous parents.īut cheesy one-liners and a near-constant barrage of blood and guts can only feel cool and edgy for so long and before the new millennia came, so did a swarm of fighting games that aimed to make their own respective marks in history. Though some may bemoan the game as one of the unlucky ones that inspired a rating system designed to limit the access of explicit games to minors, the controversy created cash, as the famous saying goes. A large percentage of video game fans have likely heard of and/or experienced the period in which the ultra-violent fighter helped usher in the birth of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) back in 1994 as a response to the game’s bloody content. Mortal Kombat was once among the hottest and most controversial commodities in the video game community and for how much the franchise has grown since its inception, the implications surrounding its roots feel forever understated.
