Gasp! Do you mean to tell me that, after chopping someone's head off, you can expect to see blood? Nintendo has a long history of censorship, particularly for titles released in the United States. It's understandable; the company was known as a kid's toy producer for awhile and had to avoid any unfavorable press. Whereas current demographics permit no hesitations in publishing games with an ESRB rating of "Mature," the different times forced a more sanitized environment.

Yet the Genesis started to change things. The younger gamers who played the NES were starting to turn into blood-thirsty teenagers who craved mature content. While Nintendo stuck to their guns, Sega indulged. And when Mortal Kombat, one of the hottest games of its time, was ported to home consoles, Nintendo replaced the blood with sweat and the gory fatalities with "finishers." The dismemberment was replaced with more vanilla attacks. In other words: LAME. Meanwhile, the Genesis version contained all the blood and gore of the arcade original. Oh, sure, there was a code required in order to see it, but that thing spread around middle school notebooks like the plague. Thus, the Genesis version sold like gangbusters, especially compared with the neutered SNES port.

How the dollar can change someone's values. While Joe Lieberman was busy likening Mortal Kombat to the apocalypse, young gamers were anxious for more. Pulling off a complete 180, Nintendo allowed all of the violence of the arcade to appear in the home version. Seeing Mortal Kombat's gruesome fatalities emulated perfectly on a Nintendo console was quite fascinating, especially considering that this was a company that clothed the nude statues in Super Castlevania IV.

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