A bloody ode to video game violence, in honor of Mortal Kombat’s 30th anniversary
The original Mortal Kombat first started ripping out spines in arcades 30 years ago today
Games Features Mortal Kombat
Since the first player-controlled pixel first killed another pixel, there have been concerns and debates and legislative action about video game violence. Does it inspire real-world violence? Does it make people less violent by giving them a safe outlet? Does it desensitize players to real violence, or does it make them more aware of it, by creating distinct barriers between what is and is not acceptable?
No one may ever come to a satisfying answer to any of those questions, but since today is the 30th anniversary of the debut of Mortal Kombat in American arcades, we think it’s only appropriate to temporarily put all of the discussion aside and surrender to our basest impulses and most animalistic desires by admitting—if only just for today—that video game violence is fuckin’ cool.
Enemies exploding into gooey piles of guts, photorealistic zombies, swords hacking off limbs with cybernetic precision. Maybe seeing stuff like that isn’t good for you. Maybe it’s actively bad for you. But so are chicken wings, and sometimes it’s just fun to get sauce all over your face as you approximate what it must have been like when our ancient ancestors hunted and devoured some bone-filled, barbecue sauce-covered beast.
Pulling a fake trigger and watching a fake person turn into red mist is the video game version of that. It’s all about simply taking a moment and pretending to be a kind of human we’ve evolved beyond. If anything, it’s really a testament to how far we’ve come as a species, since we used to have to kill to survive, but now we can pretend to do it as a distraction from the pressures of soul-sucking jobs and ever-dwindling bank accounts.
Even before Mortal Kombat articulated the appeal for the first time in 1992 (intentionally or not), video games and violence have been so inexorably connected that even older games often have some violent streak if you look at them the right (wrong) way. Outside of the familiar context, an Italian plumber jumping on turtles is animal cruelty. In a video game, it’s fun for all ages. The benefit of that context has even been actively capitalized on recently, to the point where it’s perfectly fine for Ariana Grande to be pointing a shotgun at Spider-Man if—and only if—it’s happening in Fortnite.
Games make violence fun and accessible for everyone, and for the purposes of this essay, on this day, we’re going to insist that that is a good thing. It’s a form of expression that you can’t really get anywhere else because of the active role that a player is able to play in a video game, as opposed to a movie or a book or a TV show. Games like BioShock use that to add weight to player choice, specifically “kill this child” or “don’t,” in that particular game. And while it seems like a pretty obvious decision, the fact that you have to watch the outcome happen in first-person with the knowledge that you chose it has more weight than it would in another medium.
Even setting aside player involvement, there’s artistic value to video game violence. Movies and television have done stylized brutality before, softening the actual gore onscreen by making it aesthetically interesting in some way (like the Crazy 88 fight in Kill Bill, or the lobby shootout in The Matrix). But where else can you see the well-choreographed mayhem of Grand Theft Auto car carnage? Or the simplistic beauty of a 360 no-scope? Or, more relevant to today’s festivities, a man dressed as a blue ninja rip off the head of a man dressed as a yellow ninja with the spine still attached?
The over-the-top murders of Mortal Kombat’s famous Fatalities (in which you get a chance to destroy your opponent in some absurd fashion after winning a match, provided you know the arcane button combination required) are one of the big selling points of the franchise, with more recent entries embracing the absurdity of them by throwing all decorum and semblance of reality in the trash with graphic bisections and impalements and sending someone to the future to be killed by Terminators.
But the childish appeal of watching somebody get killed real bad isn’t what makes Fatalities good. It’s that they’re the punchline to a joke; the ultimate, explosive escalation of the comically gruesome fighting that happened before—like something out of a slasher flick or Sonny Chiba’s The Street Fighter (an obvious point of inspiration for modern Mortal Kombat, despite the irony of the name).
Video game violence can be funny, like in Mortal Kombat. It can make you think, if only slightly harder than usual, in something like BioShock. It can even force you to recognize (and then promptly ignore) the horrors of war in something like Call Of Duty. Everyone has a different opinion on how much of it is too much, but—again, if only for today—we can admit that it’s pretty cool.
19 Comments
The escalation of violence in Mortal Kombat games was inevitable to keep it fresh for 30 years. They’re always fun, but MK11 was the first time the Fatalaties felt… desperate… to me. As if to stay relevant they have to be as graphic as possible, and now it’s more gross-out than funny. Even from an artistic standpoint, they lack variety; Most of them are some variant on a character losing their face and an eyeball flying towards the camera. Mix it up
MK 10 was the last one I could really get into – it heightened the stuff from MK 9 by leaning into the silliness (Cassie Cage’s “Selfie” fatality is probably my favorite of the series, partly because the violence is so graphic in such a silly context). MK 11 felt like a retread with worse characters. But the series goes through waves. MK 1 and 2 are classics, MK 3 is only interesting as a prototype for MK Trilogy on PS1 (still a highlight of the series), and you have a decade-long blob of 3D games that ranged from okay to terrible, before they knocked it out of the park again with MK 9. Even more than Resident Evil, it’s the series I feel compelled to check out, even when it’s not working.
My favorite Fatality is probably where Noob Saibot’s, but you’re preaching to the choir, since I think MK9 and MKX might be the franchise’s two best games.
I think 11 still manages to be more entertaining and goofy than outright unpleasant, but I do think it’s gone about as far as it can go before crossing that line.
A stylistic switch-up or fresh concept that gives new life to the Fatalities like how they reinvented Brutalities would be very welcome in the next MK.
My big problem with MK11’s fatalities is that I really like the concept of pausing at the “gore shot” but its potential is utterly wasted, as a lot of the ending shots are just boring. This shit could be directed a lot better.
To my understanding, actually developing and animating the fatalities has become pretty awful for the devs responsible. They keep having to up the ante and do all sorts of gruesome research, to the point where working on the game has actively become traumatizing for them. So I’m not surprised if things have gotten to a point where they’re phoning it in.
Yeah , I’m not squeamish , but the what was funny when it was rendered on a 2D fuzzy digitised game engine is just disturbing when its done in crisp 1080p + . I mean Kung Lao’s “drag them screaming though a circular saw” from 9 is just messed up .
Yea, there was something about 16-bit limitations that made the violence almost cute in a way. I actually miss the digitized art style. Really gave MK a unique look.
MK3 was the beginning of the end for fatalities. A fatality where I can drop the MK3 arcade machine on my opponent? Uh ok.
Also everyone just exploded into bones.
Haha too true
Wonder if they get royalties everytime the porn industry says Finish Him
Does it inspire real-world violence?No.Does it make people less violent by giving them a safe outlet?Yes.Does it desensitize players to real violence, or does it make them more aware of it, by creating distinct barriers between what is and is not acceptable?
Neither. I love various forms of pretend violence, but I cannot tolerate seeing real life violence. I’ve seen enough pig cops murder unarmed people on Twitter to last me forever. I got mad at a friend who posted a gif of someone supposedly dying after hitting the ground hard from the top of the Eiffel Tower. And those horrifying football injuries where you see knees bend the wrong way. I don’t even like seeing ear gauges, no form of significant destruction of a real human body is pleasurable.
With film and TV, it all depends on context. If you see something like Hitler get machine gunned in the face, it’s awesome. And while probably not the director’s intent, I kind of get a sick thrill watching Jack Black’s arm get blown off in The Jackal. And that would be rapist getting Auto-9’d right in the dick, that’s a hell yeah moment.But if it’s like the Red Wedding, what happened to Oberyn Martell, the realistic violence in The Green Room, or Prowl’s eyes going bright yellow before smoke comes out his mouth, it’s hard to watch. The worst horror movies are the ones where the script does none of the characters any favors, so you don’t care when they inevitably get butchered.My first brush with video game violence that had an emotional effect on me was Ninja Gaiden II. Irene gets stabbed in the back, neither gratuitously or ambiguously, but you see her blood drip from the sword and she’s in bad shape for the rest of the game. Robert is bleeding from the mouth the last we see him, trying to hold off a hoard of monsters with his peashooter, the implication being he went down fighting. But the moment that stands out the most to me is after Ryu kills the Jaquio.When I first saw this, I was shocked. Look at all that blood. What the fuck did we even do to him? Video games taught me that, even though this bitch needed to die, killing him is extremely unpleasant and horrifying.More modern games occupy a sort of in-between space if it’s done well. I remember in Fallout 3, if you shot someone in the head in VATS, their entire heads would pop off like their neck was a pretzel stick, and it was too stupid and funny to take seriously. There’s a place for over the top violence that can make a brutal kill amusing, even gratifying. But when something is treated seriously with impeccable presentation, it’s like you’re seeing a real person and the last thing you want to see is them suffering.Depictions of violence, in all mediums, have made me more empathetic. When we see violence, it should make us recoil and say something like, “Oh, god!” It’s supposed to make us uncomfortable. If it doesn’t, something’s wrong with you.
This conversation is very much stuck in 1980s and 1990s, and it leads to endless elaboration on the same basic, irrelevant points. Violence is our default mode of entertainment, and while fictional violence doesn’t create real world violence, it does contribute to a broader cultural belief that violence is a compelling way to solve problems. When you talk about pig cops shooting people, it would be helpful to wonder where they developed their love of violence, and what facets of our culture they find most significant. And when you credit yourself for being empathetic, you should question why your frame of reference on everything in your post (including police brutality) is anger and a desire for additional violence, rather than empathy. For example, you name the Ninja Gaiden character whose death deeply affected you but not one of the people who died at the hands of the police.
I think people are just the sum of their experiences. I read this woman’s story where she bumped into someone who raped her years earlier on the bus, and when he saw her, he had a full crying break down, expressing so much remorse and shame. I had my share of bullies in school, but I also had some bullying moments of my own. I remember throwing soda in this kid’s face just to feel like I was better than him. I hate that I did that, it was pointless and he never did anything to me.Similarly, I feel like cops fit the profile of the school bully. They just want to feel better than everyone and never grew beyond childhood arrogance, never had experiences that humbled them, never developed their empathy. It’s like a muscle, and cops have that Jimmy Garoppolo noodle arm in their brain.And like I said before, I think stories go a long way to developing empathy. Being exposed to other people’s experiences makes the idea of something like that in real life, something that was probably drawn from real life experiences, making people more open minded and sensitive about them. I’m not saying people are violent because they don’t read enough books, but maybe police watched too much copaganda, where the uniformed “heroes” never have the kinds of colossal fuckups that make the news. And without exposure to media that humanizes non-white males, they get caught in a bubble where it’s easy not to consider others. And old media, oh boy. “Indians” were all evil, women got spanked on screen all the time, James Bond rapes Pussy Galore so expertly that she joins his side. The fact that things change and stuff like that becomes unacceptable, and even stuff from the 90s rapidly aged, it’s proof that society grows. It’s just that some people refuse to change and are nostalgic for the times we treated people like shit.Anyway, of course I don’t think Jaquio is more important than victims of police violence. He’s not even a good character and the story in those games are convoluted bullshit. I can name Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, and George Floyd off the top of my head, but I didn’t because this is a discussion about video games.
Then I’ll save you the time: Cops don’t shoot people because they see hero cops shooting people on TV. They become cops for that reason, then shoot them because they’re a) racist and b) scared.
Happy 30th Anniversary to MK. Here’s to another 30.
Just want to say the top image makes me a little queasy.Not fun seeing that any time I scroll about on this website!No qualms about the article though, just a little feedback on top image using lol.
I think content warnings are generally a good thing and I have absolutely no issue with them appearing at the top of articles. However, I think it’s a mite hypocritical when you also post articles with a dude’s face literally getting ripped off as the headline image.
Some violent games / moments that stick out in my mind:-PS2 Manhunt definitely pushed it. Executions cut to security camera views and were so brutal. Such a grimy game.-Dead Space – can’t remember if it’s in the first or second entry, but there’s a scene with a needle that’s going into an eye that had a lot of people squirming.-Prodeus – currently playing this new retro FPS on gamepass and the amount of blood is impressive.-Most memorable MK fatality is probably MK4 Quan Chi ripping the victim’s leg off and mercilessly beating the victim. Never stops, camera just eventually cuts away.