I must have had the coolest mom. I was 11 when this game first hit the arcade, and I remember doing the spine rip fatality and saying to my mom look look! and she was just like "haha that's gross" but found it humorous. She didn't flip out or demand I stop playing. She knew I knew it was just a form of entertainment, and it still is.
My parents hated this game when I was a kid and if they saw me play it. It’s all just fantasy, just like movies. I knew it wasn’t real at 8 years old. I never could have MK at home, but I always played it with friends or cousins at their houses or at arcades, and I got pretty good at it.
if you think about it fatalities are really just to rub victory in our opponents face. and its gotten to the point where its so ridiculous that its cartoony at this point.
I was just starting 7th grade when this came out and I remember my brother and I watching older kids play in the mall in Billings, MT in 1993. My Dad came to looking for us and was pissed he couldn't find us for so long, but then he saw what we were watching and just went "Did that ninja pull that guys head off!!!" He watched it with us until my Mom came to get us. My Dad was never cooler.
"Wait til they are out in the streets and fighting and they will fantasize this and it will become real." yup, that's why I have my spear with me at all times.
I grew up in this era. I remember this crap and to be honest, the news & the way adults talked about it made it seem a million times worse than it actually was. Yea, kids were shocked and amazed. But it didn't make us desire to murder other people! Besides my anecdote, evidence and study has PROVEN that video games do NOT make kids (or even adults) more violent.
I don't think they forgot. They either were completely ignorant to it because they wanted to shock & sensationalize. Or they knew it, but lied my omission to shock & sensationalize.
@@TyDie85 It’s THIS. I was in Elementary School back in ‘93. It was mostly White Bible Thumping Uber Conservative Parents that over sensationalized MK1.
"Wait until they get out and a situation where they're fighting, and then they'll think about this and try to make it real" Ohhhh man, I remember when I was in the middle of a fight and after i knocked the guy down I tried to rip his head off his body and found out that it was really hard and couldn't do it, thats when the guy then snapped back into consciousness, and I was so tired from trying to rip his head off with my bare hands that he proceeded to kick my ass.
Funny thing is, Mortal Kombat almost gets no controversy anymore despite the fact that the fatalities have more gore in them than ever. The only games parents want banned these days are shooting games, because they think games with guns will make them more violent when games like Mortal Kombat and news reports about murders are more likely to cause it.
Only the boomer generation complains about violent video games. We never see any adults from younger generations complain. Probably because they grew up with violent video games like Doom and Mortal Kombat.
@@Patrick19833 True remember when Dungeon and Dragons came out int the eighties and the same media were saying it was a cult and devil worshiping game.
@@synkron1246 I was there in 1993. 5th Grade. MK was EVERYWHERE. ALL the Boys played it. It helped bring my classmates together, and helped suppressed the Bullying I used to get.
I admit my parents weren't happy to find out when I played this game. But then they didn't care as they new I was a good kid and I never caused any trouble. So really no game or movie was off limits. They even let me watch stuff like Child's Play was I was in about Grade 5 or 6. So I am fortunate for that.
Same here with mine. They let me watch wwf wrestling during the stone cold and Dx days when I was in middle school and let me watch movies like Terminator and Die Hard when I was a kid. They trusted me to make my own decisions and they were Baptist Christians. So they were cool about it. True my mother didn't like that stuff but she never liked wrestling calling it trash. But she never forced me to not watch it.
@@theungreatkahli I was allowed to play Mortal Kombat until a HACK Therapist told my Mom that "He shouldn't play Violent Video Games, they're bad and will make him do crazy things".
It made a lot of sense for there to be controversy at that time. People had never seen a game like that and it was only natural to get worried. Also games like MK are not supposed to be aimed for children anyway. Now as a society we know better to deal with violent games and we know there isn't need to panic or anything; parents just gotta make sure kids don't play stuff that is too above their age. No need to panic anyway. Miss the arcades tho...
A human can’t even do that stuff with their bare hands. Pop in a the quarter and everyone is back. It was being compared to hand drawn graphics at the time. And the Kano thing made people think of Indiana Jones.
Well if they're gonna try to use Mortal Kombat in a fight, they'll get their ass kicked. If you try to rip a guy's head off, you'll just lift him up in the air, and uppercuts don't send people 10 feet in the air and you can't throw green balls at people, it just doesn't work like that. Love the games though.
In 2011 I was playing Mortal Kombat in Afghanistan and the navy master chief saw the game and didn’t like it at all and said he would not buy it for his kids and now Mortal Kombat 11.
Hmm I’ve been in a few fights in my life but honestly never tried to rip off someone’s head with the spine attached. Something about murder and the rest of my life in prison over a dumb fight never appealed to me
It's physically impossible to rip off someone's head with your bare hands anyways! You can try, but you will just look like an idiot and end up getting your butt kicked. The violence in Mortal Kombat is pure fantasy that no way a human can do in real life.
Such an innocent time in my youth during the war on drugs and violent media. Now there are more real-life shootings then ever. Maybe we need arcades back. Hell, put them in schools.
the mk arcade shown was an earlier version since the knockback looked different from the final version of the game. Look at those slides from sub-zero, you see the knockback is huge when it hit or any jump kicks. Interesting that the console version was out that day.
Oh wait! Mortal Kombat II arcade unit was already out when the home versions came out. It came out in April of 1993 and the home video games of MK1 came out in September 1993. I wonder why they did not mention Mortal Kombat II which is even more violent than the original.
@@plawson8577 Yeah, I wonder why they are ignoring the fact that MKII already hit the arcades in this news report. They are acting like it's still 1992 when the original Mortal Kombat just hit the arcades for the first time, but really this was 1993 and they mention that the Home versions of MK 1 just came out. So, obviously this news report aired in September 1993.
@@franksmith613 Back in ‘93, the News Media was Puritanical and Conservative. They Sensationalized anything that was non conformist to them. They saw Video Games as “Kid’s Stuff” and were shocked that a game like Mortal Kombat existed. I was in Elementary school when it came out. I had BOTH the SNES and Genesis ports in Late 1993. Every other kid in my school LOVED MK1. And my Stepdad took me and my then 5 year old brother to the local Mall to play MK2. He loved it!
News Lady: You have to decide if you want to tear their head off or rip their heart out. Me: In the first Mortal Kombat all 7 characters only have *1* *Fatality* The only decision if you do wanna say that is do you wanna play as Sub-Zero or Kano because there's only *1* *Fatality* there's no choice! ( Also what if your Liu Kang, Scorpion or Sonya!) ( Technically Raiden and Johnny Cage rip people's heads off.)
They lied because they were jealous how popular video games were then them so they tried to shut one game down because they heard about mortal kombat and the fatalities so they had to report on it to bash the heck out of it to stop getting popular then them but all they did was promote it even more for kids or teenager to want it even more
@@cheeseattack3608You must not know how inflation works. $50 in 1993 would be the equivalent of about $100 in 2022. Video games are definitely cheaper now than they were back then. Especially considering how much more content you can fit in games these days compared to the early 90s.
Serious points they are making here. I was stomping on turtles and busting peoples brick houses / stealing coins after getting that NES. Sometimes I would eat a mushroom and imagine I was growing, but then end up being revived at the hospital.
You'd think at that time parents would be more concerned about Hollywood making violent movies that kids had access to than video games with the same or similar content. I was 15 at the time so my mom had no issue with Mortal Kombat I think it was the parents who were upset about video game violence just didn't take the time to teach the younger children the difference between fantasy and reality.
the dad at 1:57 has to be one of the biggest squares in history, imagine being concerned about violence in a video game, which i get this was the 90s and nothing like this has been seen before, But still id imagine people would look at these games and not think people would play them and turn into serial killers. Plain ingnorance
Gta3 was a lot worse then the first Mortal Kombat take a look at the RU-vid video gta3 on the news and you will know what I’m talking about good video games 2:28
