Other notable violent games

Smash TV

The year is 1999. Television has adapted to mankind's violent nature with a game show called "Smash TV". Televised around the world via satelite, the goal of a Smash TV contestant is simple: shoot everything that moves, collect prizes, and survive.

Actually, it was 1990. Williams Electronic Games released "Smash TV" to video arcades around the country, and the game became an instant hit. Loosely borrowing its premise from the film "The Running Man", which in turn was loosely based on the Stephen King short story of the same name, Smash TV presented arcadegoers with an unprecedented level of onscreen carnage. The game was played from a top-down view of an arena, with the player offered two joysticks, harkening back to the arcade classic Robotron: one to move, the other to shoot in any of eight directions. The premise of the game was to survive an assault from hundreds upon hundreds of assailants attacking from all directions, move to the next room, and survive yet another assault. Occasionally the game show host would appear and heckle.

Rumor via word of mouth is that the home version of this game via the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was the progenitor of some controversy -- Nintendo had theretofore vowed against endorsing any game which featured excessive violence, particularly one where such as Smash TV, where slaughtering hordes of enemies was the entire point. Nintendo would not officially rescind this sentiment until the home release of Mortal Kombat 2.

Smash TV spawned a less successful sequel named, appropriately enough, "Total Carnage".

Mortal Kombat

Street Fighter II, by Capcom, was the most popular game in the arcades during the early 90's. It offered a side-view of a one-on-one street fight between bizarre animated characters. The appeal of the game was twofold: in addition to the six different punches and kicks, each character had a unique variety of "special" attacks which could be performed by a practiced joystick movement and button press; each character effectively had his own fighting style to be used or defended against. Second was the competition between players which the game engendered; Street Fighter II allowed two players to play against each other head to head in a best-of-three fight, with the winner staying to play again, and the loser's ego knocked down a notch.. Like the FPS revolution on PCs a few years later, video arcades would find themselves inundated with numerous Street Fighter II clones.

One such imitator was Mortal Kombat, by Midway. Mortal Kombat took the street fighting premise and added images of digitized actors, noncanonical Chinese mythology, and a healthy dose of gore to the mix. Roundhouse kicks sent opponents flying several feet into the air, expelling blood from their faces as they arced toward the ground. Harpoons thrown from across the screen would strike players in the chest and drag them into the waiting fists of their opponents. And finally, at the end of the match, the winner would be encouraged to further humiliate his opponent by performing a character-specific "Fatality" move, such as ripping his opponent's still-beating heart out of his chest, incineration with hellfire, or a simple decapitating uppercut.

The game was an immediate magnet for controversy, and as a somewhat self-conscious reaction, its sequel, Mortal Kombat II, featured even more gore and bloodshed, the violence magnified to utterly unrealistic degrees. It also feaatured, as an alternative to Fatalities, nonviolent and silly "Friendship" finishing moves, where instead of gutting their opponents, match winners would offer cakes or sign autographs. The game was degrees more violent than its predecessor, yet at the same time it attempted to poke fun at both itself and its critics. Mortal Kombat 3 continued the tradition, with exaggerated Fatality moves which included scaring an opponent to death, and opening an opponent's mouth wide enough to drop a bomb down his throat.

Carmageddon

Road rally and road rage. A near futuristic auto race with only one rule -- do whatever it takes to win.

Developers SCI had to water Carmageddon down twice before the UK would relieve the ban on their game due to the "blood and gore factor"; first the human victims were replaced with zombies, and when that didn't work, the zombies were replaced with robots.

Postal

Postal may go down in history as the only computer game to ever incur the wrath of the United States Postal Service. The game itself, developed by Running With Scissors, had nothing to do with mail. Instead, the player was a person who had gone over the edge and decided to vent his frustration with the world upon anyone foolish enough to be anywhere nearby. With a variety of weapons, the player was to travel around a overhead or 3/4 isometric map and slaughter everyone and anyone, be they police, innocent bystander, or ostrich. If the player got tired of hearing their victims beg for mercy, he could put them out of their misery by executing them.

Disturbingly enough, in an interview the producers of the game gleefully recounted how they enjoyed playing levels in which they killed a parade band.

Grand Theft Auto

You are a lowly thug working for a local crime boss. You get missions to perform at pay phones throughout the city. Completing them gets you points. Getting enough points opens up the second part of the city. Even more points allows you to move on to another city. The missions you get from your boss could include stealing cars, running drugs, and the usual mob violence.

Grand Theft Auto, by British developer DMA Design, was played from a top-down perspective of a city. The player traveled around the city with the use of an automobile -- if for whatever reason the car was incapacitated, the player could carjack any other vehicle in the city, including school buses and tanks, to complete his mission.

Like Postal before it, Grand Theft Auto generated a wave of criticism from politicians worldwide, spurring debate in the House of Lords in the United Kingdom, restrictions for sale only to adults, and even banning in some countries.

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