Sound fun? If you were 13 years old this week, the Shaolin tourney, setting of a hugely popular video game called Mortal Kombat, was the place to be. And the good news was that you could get there without leaving your living room. Last week Acclaim Entertainment released Mortal Kombat on cartridges for Nintendo and Sega Genesis systems, and if 750,000 calls in three days are any indication, they have a hit. The company expects to sell 2 million cartridges, at $35 to 875 each, by Christmas. But popularity among kids has never meant a sure-fire winner with parents, and Mortal Kombat fired up an old battle for some long-lost territory: childhood innocence.
The folks may be a little late. Some of junior’s youthful gloss was probably worn off at the local video arcade, where Mortal Kombat has been a top hit for 12 months. The game features an imaginary martial-arts festival that looks more like Jason Goes to Hell than the Karate Kid. Players use game paddles and joysticks to slap, kick and even bum each other. Sound effects include grunts, screams and a death rattle. In some versions the winner murders the loser by ripping out his still-beating heart or tearing his head off. The arcade game was so brutal that Nintendo toned down its version. Sega released a full-gore take of the original but warned buyers with an MA-13 rating (the gaming equivalent of an R movie rating). That did little to distract hard-core fans. “The gore is part of the draw,” said John Seir, passing along a 16-year-old’s four-star rating that sounds more like Beavis and Butt-head than Baedeker’s: “Fighting is cool.”
The game has drawn heavy fire from activist groups. “With all of the media around, kids do have a hard time telling fantasy from reality,” says Parker Page, president of the Children’s Television Resource and Education Center. Page says the argument that bloody video games provide an outlet for teen aggression is a red herring: most research shows violent games spur violent activity. “Remember,” he says, “it’s absolutely OK to forbid some things.” Acclaim’s president, Robert Holmes, agrees that some things should be forbidden, but he doesn’t see Mortal Kombat in apocalyptic terms. “It’s not the equivalent of a snuff movie,” he says. “It’s cartoons.” Cartoons yes, but the game still makes “Jurassic Park” look like Barney.
