Kids today have it easy. Thanks to the power of the internet, today's gamer doesn't even need to drive to the store to buy new games. And yet those entitled little brats still complain about everything. Back in my day, we had real problems. To prove my point, I would like to take you on a trip back to the 20th century. Don't cry to me about optional DLC and $15 games that are too expensive, because we had real problems. Here's an example ...


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Although we often talk about how controversial Mortal Kombat was in 1993, we rarely discuss the ripple effects it had on the industry. You might think that critics were objecting to realistic characters ripping out an enemy's spine, but apparently any hint of blood was objectionable.

A good example of this was Samurai Shodown. Despite featuring characters wielding deadly swords, this SNK fighter was tame when compared to Mortal Kombat. It not only featured a decidedly more animated design, but didn't let players chop off heads or pull out their opponent's beating heart. But even though it was not even 1% as gruesome as Mortal Kombat, the blood had to go. Or did it?

As EGM2 pointed out above, observant players will spot the faintest hint of blood in Takara's Super NES port. The Electronic Gaming Monthly spin-off devoted a quarter of a page to show off still images of a split second of blood that appears every so often. Going frame by frame, the editors of EGM2 turned Samurai Shodown into the Zapruder film.

By 1993, the video games industry was so paranoid of blood that a paper cut would have started a congressional hearing. Today's developers don't walk on the same zero-tolerance eggshells, and that's a good thing.


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Curiously, the games press didn't always feel the need to point out every drop of blood. Even with an absurd amount of violence and gore, Razorsoft's Techno Cop was largely ignored by the magazines of the era. And just how gruesome was this side-scrolling action game? The two-page commercial (see above) featured a bad guy literally exploding into a bunch of tiny, bloody pieces. And it's not like I took that advertisement from Video Games & Computer Entertainment or Playboy Magazine, this scan came directly from GamePro.

Like it or not, people bleed. It's not the sight of blood that makes a game violent, but rather the actual act of violence.. Removing the spray of blood from Samurai Shodown doesn't make the act of slicing an enemy less violent, it simply removes the realism. Then again, a realistic Samurai Shodown match would last ten seconds and involve somebody dying.