Original: Arcade · 1992
Mortal Kombat's 1993 home ports ignited a national debate over video game violence when the SNES version removed blood and altered fatalities while the Genesis version restored them via a button code, directly leading to the creation of the ESRB rating system.
Midway's Mortal Kombat used digitised actors and exaggerated gore to differentiate itself from Street Fighter II, and that content became the central question when Acclaim ported the game to home consoles in 1993. Nintendo of America's content policies at the time required Acclaim to replace blood with "sweat" and soften or replace many fatalities in the SNES version; Sub-Zero's iconic spine-rip, for instance, became a less graphic "freeze and shatter." Sega's equivalent policies were less restrictive, and the Genesis version shipped with the blood and most fatalities hidden behind a button code (A, B, A, C, A, B, B at the main screen) — once entered, the game matched the arcade content closely. The resulting consumer backlash against Nintendo's censorship and the disparity between the two versions became primary evidence cited by Senator Joseph Lieberman in 1993 Senate hearings on video game violence, leading directly to the formation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) in 1994.
The SNES port was technically competent and reproduced the gameplay well, but Nintendo of America's content policies required blood to be replaced with grey "sweat" and many fatalities to be censored or replaced entirely. The bowdlerised version was widely mocked at the time and contributed to consumer preference for the Genesis version.
The Genesis version was broadly similar in gameplay quality to the SNES port and shipped with blood and fatalities locked behind a simple button code (A, B, A, C, A, B, B). Once unlocked it matched the arcade content closely, giving it a significant cultural advantage over the Nintendo version despite arguably inferior audio.
The Game Boy version was visually crude but preserved the basic moveset and even included simplified versions of the fatalities, making it more content-complete than the SNES version. It was a reasonable portable approximation given the hardware.
The PC DOS version was one of the more faithful home ports, with blood and fatalities intact by default and benefiting from the flexibility of PC hardware configurations. Performance varied widely by machine, and the lack of a standard gamepad made controls inconsistent.