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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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10:38 [Music]
10:43 (upbeat music)
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