10 Times Mortal Kombat Was CENSORED

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00:00 Welcome to Mojo Plays, and today we're taking a look at 10 times Mortal Kombat had to be

00:15 censored for reasons beyond the meat.

00:18 Sounds wrong, but that's the truth.

00:28 Before we begin, we publish new videos all week long, so be sure to subscribe to Mojo

00:32 Plays and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos.

00:37 So real, it makes you sweat.

00:46 By this point, if you know anything about Mortal Kombat, you'll know of the tumultuous

00:50 debate among parents in the 90s about video games invoking violence.

00:55 Mortal Kombat's then-realistic visuals frightened Nintendo's bank account and policies.

01:01 Back in those days, Nintendo enforced a strict family-friendly policy.

01:05 So if Mortal Kombat wanted to be on SNES, it had to tone down the violence.

01:16 Midway did so by removing finishing moves completely and coloring the blood grey.

01:22 Despite this, a Game Genie easily allowed players to bypass this with a code and revert

01:26 the blood back to its true colors.

01:28 It's whatever, though.

01:30 The SNES version sucks anyways.

01:32 Why would you even play that?

01:41 Alien Kombat

01:49 The abysmal sales of the original Mortal Kombat's shoddy SNES port didn't discourage development

01:54 for MK2's SNES port.

01:56 Funnily enough, it actually prompted Nintendo to give Scorpion Infos a pass this time around,

02:01 meaning MK2 would be completely uncensored on SNES.

02:06 Except if you lived in Japan.

02:15 Japanese players were given a version where the blood was given a green recolor, making

02:19 it seem like everybody was reptile in disguise, or just straight-up a xenomorph or predator.

02:24 Odd considering the CERO, Japanese Ratings Board, hadn't been formed yet.

02:30 Perhaps this was something enforced by Nintendo HQ instead of Nintendo of America this time?

02:41 Too violent for pockets

02:50 Can you believe Mortal Kombat was ported to Game Boy?

02:53 Look at this.

02:55 What even is this?

02:56 Obviously, none of the Mortal Kombat Game Boy games paled in comparison to even the

03:01 home console versions.

03:03 Case in point, the "Finishing Moves."

03:06 We know what they're called, but we can't say their actual names.

03:15 Call it a form of censorship or call it a simple case of technical limitations in showing

03:19 a spine, the finishers they did include still failed to capture the brutality that Mortal

03:24 Kombat was bringing in other platforms.

03:27 Again though, was this really where anyone wanted to play these games?

03:32 Just look at this.

03:33 How is this playable for anybody?

03:38 Ain't that the pits?

03:47 Okay, we've been ripping on Nintendo quite a bit in this video, but don't worry, Sega.

03:58 Your time has come.

03:59 The Genesis version of Mortal Kombat went through a small bit of censorship as well,

04:03 and we all seem to forget that.

04:05 Admittedly, it was not as big of a change as anything we had seen on SNES, but even

04:10 so, why change the pits?

04:13 The pits is the coolest stage in the entire game.

04:23 Without the blood and all the bodies lying around, it's just a dumb little forest of

04:27 spikes that look like they couldn't even chop celery.

04:30 What is this, man?

04:36 Again with the pockets!

04:46 At least the Game Gear version had some finishing moves, but once again, Mortal Kombat's handheld

04:51 counterparts failed to capture any of the spirit of the console and arcade versions.

04:56 Many finishers were heavily altered for the Game Gear version of MK2.

05:08 The sprite work is so awful that most of the time, your enemy looks like a jumble of pixels,

05:14 if not a shoddy animation of bones flying everywhere.

05:17 It winds up making the game more cartoony than it should be, not that we expect something

05:22 incompletely realistic from something as absurd as Mortal Kombat, but just saying.

05:35 Mortal Kombat BYT, before YouTube.

05:47 You know how we're not allowed to call Mortal Kombat's finishing moves by their actual

05:51 names?

05:52 Well, there was a time where Mortal Kombat wasn't allowed to call them that either.

05:57 Let us backtrack to the SNES days of the first game.

06:00 Not only did Nintendo restrict the color of blood, they also had some of the language

06:05 changed.

06:12 Now you performed finishing bonuses, and the death of Shang Tsung was now known as "The

06:19 Destruction of Shang Tsung."

06:21 Mommy YouTube would have been very proud had it shown up roughly a decade earlier.

06:39 The first and second Mortal Kombat games were not the only ones of Mortal Kombat's first

06:44 decade to have their finishers completely removed.

06:46 MK4 saw every single finisher cut from the game.

06:56 This is because Germany does not view video games as anything more than a children's

07:01 toy.

07:02 So for a game like Mortal Kombat to show so much gore, even by N64 standards, it wouldn't

07:07 sit well with most folks over there.

07:12 ESRB's wrath continues.

07:25 The biggest complaint everyone makes about MK vs DC is how the finishers are nowhere

07:30 close to the brutal nature we'd expect in a game with Mortal Kombat characters.

07:34 However, there are two finishing moves that were specifically altered here in the West,

07:39 one of Deathstrokes and one of Joker's.

07:46 The finishers both involve a gun being fired with the camera zooming in before the trigger

07:51 is pulled.

07:52 Both were censored as a means to keep the game T for Teen.

07:56 Everywhere else, the finishers were completely unaltered.

07:59 Even uncensored, they are just as unsatisfying as the others.

08:11 Nerf or nothing.

08:16 MK11 had some particularly gruesome finishers.

08:24 You would think almost half of them were bound to get censored in some way, right?

08:28 Well, none of them did.

08:31 It was actually the ladies of Mortal Kombat that had to get nerfed.

08:45 While North America got to see Katana, Mileena, Sindel, Sonya, Cassie, and Scarlet as NRS

08:51 intended, the rest of the world wasn't having it.

08:55 Every woman in MK11 had their cleavage nerfed, and some even had to be covered.

09:00 Guess some regions felt it was skirting the line of dead or alive.

09:10 Showing chunks.

09:20 Shaolin Monks is one of the most savage beat 'em ups you can play.

09:25 However, the viscera and gore went a little overboard for Germany.

09:29 There is quite a laundry list of changes that were made just for Shaolin Monks to release

09:33 there.

09:34 Several scenes had blood removed entirely, and just about any instance of dismemberment

09:38 or some visual of limbs or organs were blurred out or completely cut.

09:50 As we said earlier, Germany still views video games as toys for children, so the censorship

09:55 here isn't all that surprising given what went down with MK4.

10:07 Did any of these moments of censorship surprise you?

10:10 Let us know down in the comments, and don't forget to subscribe to Mojo Plays for more

10:14 great videos every day.

10:32 Peace out.

10:33 [Music]

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