Why Did Nintendo Allow Blood in Mortal Kombat II?

Because the sweat had cost Nintendo a five to one defeat, and a ratings box had just been invented to take the blame instead.

A year after the Super NES Mortal Kombat shipped with grey sweat where its blood should be, the sequel shipped on the same system with its blood red and its Fatalities intact. Nintendo had not softened. It had done arithmetic, and the industry around it had changed the rules it was playing under.

THE LESSON

What the first game taught Nintendo

Five to one

The documented result of the first split was stark: the Genesis version of Mortal Kombat outsold the Super NES version by a factor of five. The Super NES port was prettier and sounded better, and players chose the uncensored game anyway. That story is told in full on this Library's Genesis outsell page.

The stated reason

The record of the sequel's production states the cause directly: due to the poor sales of the censored Super NES version of the first game, Nintendo decided to allow depictions of blood and Fatalities this time around. No mystery source is needed; the reversal was a business decision with a sales chart behind it.

The announcement

Nintendo World Report's history of the episode recounts that at the Consumer Electronics Show in the summer of 1994, George Harrison, then Nintendo of America's director of marketing and corporate communications, announced that the company had changed its internal guidelines pertaining to violence. Mortal Kombat II was the first proof.

THE COVER

A warning label instead of a censor

No rating yet

The industry rating system that the Senate hearings had forced into being was not expected to be in effect until November 1994 at the earliest. The Super NES Mortal Kombat II, released September 9, 1994, therefore carried no formal rating at all.

The label on the box

In place of a rating, a warning label was put on the game's box to inform prospective buyers about its mature content. You can read it on the American box in this gallery: "May Not Be Appropriate For Players Under 17. Parental Discretion Advised." Information replaced alteration.

The exception that proves it

The reversal was Nintendo of America's, not the whole company's. The Japanese Super Famicom version shipped with green blood for every fighter and Fatality sequences turned black and white, a western game censored in Japan, at the time a unique reversal of the usual direction.

THE SETTLEMENT

Why the door stayed open

The timing made the decision safe as well as profitable. The hearings of December 1993 and March 1994 had already produced their outcome: an industry ratings board, the ESRB, formally introduced that July and active from September 1994. Once every box carried an age rating, a platform holder no longer had to be the censor; it could point at the label. Boon's retrospective verdict was that as an M rated game, with everybody knowing the content, the controversy "became almost a non issue."

So the honest answer has three parts: the censored game lost five to one, Nintendo said so itself in its production record, and the ratings system arrived just in time to let a warning label do the work censorship used to do. The blood in the Super NES sequel is what those three facts look like on a cartridge.

THE GAME ON THE SHELF

Mortal Kombat II

Mortal Kombat II · Japan · Super Famicom

The Japanese Super Famicom package, box, cartridge and manual, for the sequel that brought blood back to a Nintendo console.

The History of Mortal Kombat II on Home Consoles

Why Did Nintendo Allow Blood in Mortal Kombat II?

THE LESSON

THE COVER

THE SETTLEMENT

THE GAME ON THE SHELF

THE FIRST WORD