Before we start, what even is Mortal Kombat? And why is it important?
Mortal Kombat is a fighting game series by the now-defunct Midway Studios that first hit arcade cabinets in October of 1992. Between its current rivals of SNK's Fatal Fury and Capcom's Street Fighter II, it was a smash hit. It was praised for its, at the time, realistic graphics using digitized renders of real-life actors that were filmed and then converted into the game and violent trademark Fatality ending moves that depicted graphic ways to kill your opponent after winning the match. In the United States, it had even usurped Street Fighter II during the holiday season of its release year just three months after its release. By the time it had gained its notoriety in the United States for its graphic violence in the 1993 Congressional hearings, 3 million units were already distributed. I'll get back to the hearings soon.
Grabbed from magazine Play Meter Vol. 18, no. 13, December '92.
It was such a smash hit that it had spawned an entirely new genre of fighting games that used its art style of digitized actors; similar to how Fatal Fury and Street Fighter's success spawned a wave of less successful imitators. Surprisingly, even Capcom had tried it with their two different versions of the video game adaptation of their
movie adaptation of Street Fighter II. Mortal Kombat had countless sequels since its inception, with the trilogy of
Mortal Kombat,
Mortal Kombat II, and
Mortal Kombat III (and its update
UMK3) continuing to dominate the arcade charts for years while being critically acclaimed by critics and gamers alike. And on top of that, home console versions were also selling
millions of units per entry with great reviews. It was on the SEGA Genesis
and Super Nintendo, where although the SNES MK1 was notorious for having its blood permanently censored (the Genesis version was also censored, but had a well-known blood-enabling cheat code), the blood returned for all future installments, which is one of the first seeds of misinformation being how much Nintendo actually supported its graphic content at the time. The awkward handling of the first game's port was mainly due to...
The 1993 Congressional Hearings and the Present Day Kombat
The U.S. Senate held a hearing discussing violent video game franchises in December of 1993 and March of 1994. These meetings discussed the concerns of parents who believed that violent video games would have a negative effect on children as the technology evolved to display more graphic scenes in realistic fashions in an unregulated manner. To Congress, they believed that the industry was purposefully marketing violent content to children and threatened to take action. Four games were brought into the spotlight: SEGA's
Night Trap, ID Software's
DOOM, Konami's
Lethal Enforcers, and of course, Mortal Kombat. These hearings forced the industry to create the ESRB rating system we have today in the United States.
Mortal Kombat by this point had become
the most well-known violent video game. And though that would seem to detract it from audiences, the Kombat train was still going stronger than ever. By the turn of the century, home console versions of
Mortal Kombat Trilogy and its first dive into 3D with
Mortal Kombat 4 were well-received and sold well. However, the series had begun to enter a decline entering the 2000s, selling fewer copies per entry, and eventually, the main publisher of the franchise Midway Studios became defunct in 2009. However, the series was purchased by WB Interactive and repurposed as NetherRealm Studios, and the franchise made a massive rebound when
Mortal Kombat (also known as MK9) released in 2011. It alone saved the franchise after being acquired by WB and launched a new era for the series.
Following to the present day,
Mortal Kombat 11 is beloved and is currently recorded to have sold over 8 million copies as of October 2020. It had even won
Best Fighting Game in The Game Awards 2020. It is still going strong with a recently enhanced version for next-gen consoles on Xbox Series X and PS5. It has also been a juggernaut outside of the gaming scene. This is partially thanks to Warner Bros. owning the series and allowing it to flourish in multimedia formats. There have been comics, figures, cartoons, collaborations with DC, and currently three movies full-length with an upcoming fourth one in production. It is far bigger than one would initially expect.
That is practically all of the history you need to know of the series, but that doesn't solve why many believe a Mortal Kombat character is improbable. It has to do with misinformation being spread about various things. For starters...
The ESRB is only applied in North America. For Europe, there is PEGI. For Japan, their rendition is the CERO, which rates games slightly differently than how we do in the West. Mortal Kombat has an M-Rating in the ESRB. That equivalent in Japan's CERO would be a D rating, which is where the
Metal Gear Solid and
Bayonetta games are placed. Therefore, Mortal Kombat would also be in the same ranking, right? Not quite. Due to its excessive violence and gore, it actually receives a Z rating, the maximum rating that is equivalent to the ESRB's AO (Adult Only) ranking. However, certain acts of violence such as decapitation and massive amounts of blood loss are strictly prohibited and would have to be changed. Even the games listed above have some sort of censored violence that is uncensored in the Western release. Another example would be the
No More Heroes franchise, where excessive blood is replaced with enemies turning into blackened ash.
Despite this, Mortal Kombat still exists in Japan.
I've seen articles everywhere discussing bans on Mortal Kombat, saying that it's been prohibited from release. This isn't the case, the newer entries are simply
unlocalized or
were canceled releases, not outright bans. It isn't that Japan is banning these games from ever reaching store shelves, it is that WB Interactive doesn't want to pursue heavy censoring just to enter that market. However, that doesn't stop any Japanese player from playing any Mortal Kombat, even after the last official Japanese release being
Mortal Kombat Trilogy on the PSX. There was even a televised tournament where Japanese players tried to defeat a blind American in
Mortal Kombat: Deception, despite it never being localized. The blind player won, by the way.
Furthermore, there are two easy ways to play Mortal Kombat as a Japanese player:
Import the games. It's been done with both Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11. You can do it on all platforms, even Switch.
Play on PC, because CERO only regulates console releases. MKX and MK11 are available on Japanese Steam services.
An audience for Mortal Kombat in Japan is also precedent. Although it is a more underground scene, you can find content either on YouTube or nicovideo where Mortal Kombat is being played. and the view count is substantial in thousands and sometimes millions. My point is that a player base exists in Japan. Of course, an official localization would mean more, especially to a Japanese company such as Nintendo. But they do know. In fact...
Nintendo is actually into Mortal Kombat and wanted it on Switch.
At least, this was Nintendo of America's interests. When WB Interactive introduced MK11, they were concerned that the mature title would conflict with Nintendo's family-friendly console. However, they persisted that they actively wanted this title on their platform and were confident in their sales. Below is the panel from NoA representative Scott Hawkins and his discussion of Mortal Kombat 11's success on Nintendo Switch (the stream is in Portuguese, but the voices are in English):
When Warner Bros. got the first playable build of Mortal Kombat 11 up and running on Nintendo Switch, I flew down and met with the team down in southern California. One of the executives there was meeting with me and showing me the game, and we were playing it, and he looks at me and he says, ‘Scott, are you sure Nintendo wants this game on Nintendo Switch?’ And I said, ‘Yes, we absolutely want this game.’
He was concerned because it’s a mature-rated title that it wouldn’t be Nintendo-friendly. But clearly after seeing the first month’s worth of sales and see it be the number one game on the platform, it shows that yes, there is an audience. There’s an audience for lots of different types of content on the platform, and this was a big success.
And they were very much correct. Mortal Kombat 11 has sold extremely well on Nintendo Switch and even toppled Breath of the Wild
and Super Mario Odyssey, even being yet another million unit best-seller. Go into the eShop
right now and you will still find MK11 on their best-selling section of listed games still after being on the platform for over a year now. While graphically the game is lacking, it is a technical marvel for a Switch game and went well beyond Nintendo's original expectations, which was already positive. What does this tell us?
Nintendo is aware. Nintendo knows that there is an audience for Kombat.
As long as CERO remains the same, Mortal Kombat will likely not see an official localization on Switch. But that is fine. Mortal Kombat was never even translated for its 90's era localizations; they're all in English. The knowledge that Nintendo has about the cultural icon that is Mortal Kombat is enough. You can argue adding a character such as Scorpion detracts from the charm of Mortal Kombat's violent themes, but that is similar to characters like the Doom Slayer or Ryu Hayabusa where violence held a key component in aspects of their games. It is not needed to fulfill the character, the character itself is represented to celebrate the video game industry, and this would be selling one of the best-selling fighting games to date; the third rival after Fatal Fury and Street Fighter.
Final Words
The main message of this piece is not to say that Scorpion is a must-have that everyone must accept and open their eyes to. The cultural challenges of Mortal Kombat have persevered and clashed with Japan, but that doesn't make him an impossible inclusion, especially not the fact that it is an American creation that mostly sticks Western. After all, Banjo Kazooie is prominently known to be a bigger success in the Western market than in Japan. Four playable characters in the game are designed by Western companies (with Dark Samus being one American-designed character). SNK (and by translation, what Terry Bogard brought) dominated the Latin-American scene with the NEOGEO more than its Asian scene. Much like how a series that's predominantly popular in Japan that isn't so paraded in the West can and has gotten into Smash, the reverse can apply, and Mortal Kombat is a shining example.
Mortal Kombat's history might appear to paint it in a negative light, but the inclusion of the rating systems has benefitted the gaming industry; as it had prevented government involvement in the industry that could have done far worse. Nowadays, the games and series that were once brought to court in 1993 are beloved. You can buy DOOM and Night Trap on Nintendo Switch eShops today. To say that Scorpion would be impossible is to also assume that the Doom Slayer must also be impossible, even if he was able to localize into the Japanese market.
Again, I am not saying to expect Scorpion or to think he's a priority. I am saying that with the information we have of him, we understand that Nintendo recognizes the Mortal Kombat franchise and respects it. They understand both it and its history as both one of the biggest fighting games
and game series in history. My goal was to correct the constant misinformation I have heard about him and to clarify that the shaky history of the franchise overseas does not disqualify him or any other Kombatant. And I hope I was able to deliver.
Just don't be surprised if the day comes where Mario gets hooked by a kunai and dragged away to
Hell Netherrealm in a Smash trailer.
I'm calling the cops.
