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The Mortal Kombat series of fighting games, created by Ed Boon and John Tobias, has been the subject of various controversies since its creation in 1992. In particular, Mortal Kombat has often been criticised from a broad spectrum of politicians and other critics for its unrestrained use of graphic and bloody violence, both in the game's regular combat scenes and its Fatalities—finishing moves which allow the player to kill or otherwise maim the defeated opponents. The violent nature of the series, one of the earliest of its kind, has led to the creation and continued presence of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) in 1994, and other ratings boards for video games. Various Mortal Kombat games have been censored or banned in several countries, and the franchise was the subject of several court cases. In Germany, many Mortal Kombat games were indexed or banned. Mortal Kombat (2011) is also banned in South Korea, and was banned in Australia until February 2013, while Mortal Kombat 11 is banned in Indonesia, Japan, Mainland China and Ukraine. Controversies and censorship The Mortal Kombat series, particularly its "Fatalities", was a source of major controversy in at the time of its release. A moral panic over the series, fueled by outrage from the mass media, resulted in a Congressional hearing and helped to pave the way for the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) game rating system. In 2010, Mortal Kombat co-creator and long-time producer Ed Boon revealed that he had actually sympathized with much of the outrage and admitted, "I wouldn't want my ten-year-old kid playing a game like that." 1993 congressional hearing and response During the U.S. Congressional hearing on video game violence, Democratic Party Senator Herb Kohl, working with Senator Joe Lieberman, attempted to illustrate why government regulation of video games was needed by showing clips from 1992's Mortal Kombat and Night Trap (another game featuring digitized actors). Brought in as an expert, Professor Eugene F. Provenzo commented that such games "have almost TV-quality graphics [but] are overwhelmingly violent, sexist and racist." Nintendo, which had a policy of screening games for content like blood, had refused to allow gore in Mortal Kombat's release for their home system. Meanwhile, their rival, Sega, released the game with their MA-13 rating, resulting in a great commercial success for them when millions of consumers chose their version over Nintendo's. Nintendo's representatives attempted to use that fact to attack Sega during the hearings. In response to these developments, Sega's Spanish division cancelled the release of their version of Mortal Kombat in Spain, fearing the game would stir up as much controversy there as it had in the United States and the United Kingdom. Lieberman had been one of the first politicians to voice concerns over Mortal Kombat in 1993, and continued to be one of the most avid critics of violent video games. He later referenced the series and DOOM in a 1996 statement, when he joined Kohl and the psychologist David Walsh in a campaign to inform Congress about the new wave of violent games such as Resident Evil. Mortal Kombat co-creator John Tobias recalled having been "pretty pissed off" about that because of how he felt "the folks like Lieberman" have been "trivializing real problems with their video game nonsense." During the 2000s, however, the controversy surrounding the series had wound down significantly. In 2006, AP writer Lou Kesten wrote that while Lieberman had remained "one of the video game industry's most persistent critic[s,] Mortal Kombat is no longer the flashpoint of the game violence debate. Its brand of mano-a-mano brawling is seen as kind of old-fashioned today, now that the likes of Grand Theft Auto are serving up the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians." Time commented in 2012 that "the reason the 1992 classic remains seminal is because it broke an implicit taboo about what was okay to put in a game." Game ratings, bans and censorship As with the first Mortal Kombat game, the extremely bloody content of Mortal Kombat II became the subject of a great deal of controversy regarding violent video games. In 1994, Mortal Kombat II was added to the index of works deemed harmful to young people by Germany's Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons. The next year, all versions of the game, except for Game Boy's, were confiscated from the German market for violating §131 of the country's penal code, which prohibited showing gruesome violence against humans (the ban ended in 2005, due to the ten-year limitation for confiscations). Mortal Kombat II has been censored in its original release in Japan, where Nintendo insisted on changing the blood shown in the game from red to green, as well as making the screen turn black-and-white for all character-specific lethal Fatality moves. The backlash that Nintendo of America had received for their own similar censorship of the first Mortal Kombat, however, informed the company's future business practices, and so the sequel and following games in the series were released by them uncensored. In 2009, Mortal Kombat developer and publisher Midway Games was forced to tone down the Joker's finishing move to secure the ESRB T-rating for Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. In 2010, Swiss Social Democrat politician Evi Allemann unsuccessfully campaigned to outlaw Mortal Kombat, Manhunt, and video games displaying interactive "cruel acts of violence" in Switzerland. The series' 2011 reboot game Mortal Kombat has been banned by law in a number of countries, including entirely in Australia and South Korea, and partially in Germany (prohibiting any sort of advertising and public exposure). The Australian Minister for Home Affairs, Brendan O'Connor, asked to be briefed on the decision, citing "public disquiet on the issue", and the game was eventually allowed in the country in 2013 when the R18+ rating came into effect. Due to stated reason of the inconsistency of the game with the local legislations, the previously planned regional releases of 2019's Mortal Kombat 11 have been canceled in Indonesia, Japan, and Ukraine (in Ukraine because of laws banning Nazi and communist symbols, in Indonesia because of laws regarding communist symbols, not including Axis symbols during World War II). The game is also unavailable in Mainland China. Legislation The Australian Senate had set up an inquiry in response to the original Mortal Kombat, Time Killers, and Night Trap, and the surrounding media coverage; the Senate's inquiry led to the Commonwealth Classification Act, which came into force on March 1, 1995, and introduced the Australian Classification Board. Almost exactly 18 years later, the Board finally banned the 2011 Mortal Kombat game for its "explicit depictions of dismemberment, decapitation, disembowelment and other brutal forms of slaughter." The game's publisher, Warne.... Discover the Kevin C Pyle Scott Cunningham popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Kevin C Pyle Scott Cunningham books.