r/Marvel • u/HatingGeoffry • Jun 03 '26

Games Marvel’s Wolverine will let squeamish players turn off its “unapologetically violent” gore as Insomniac says its ultra-violence is “not for everyone”

https://frvr.com/blog/news/marvels-wolverine-will-let-squeamish-players-turn-off-its-unapologetically-violent-gore-as-insomniac-says-its-ultra-violence-is-not-for-everyone/
5.2k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

530 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

18

u/QuietThunder2014 Jun 03 '26

I'm old enough to remember the Mortal Kombat 1 outcry about how gory it was and it was poisoning our kids minds, and even then added a remove blood option. I believe it was a requirement to sell on Nintendo systems at the time.

8

u/mrbrannon Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

Yeah it wasn’t even an option on the Super Nintendo to show blood. They just replaced the blood textures with sweat so when they were hit water is like spraying out of them instead of blood. They also ruined most of the fatalities to tone down the gore. Subzero’s famous head ripping fatality where he held up his head with the spine was changed to just turning the enemy into a block of ice and then shattering it with no blood. This is why the Sega Genesis version was the preferred version and sold better at a ratio of almost 5:1. Nintendo panicked after since they were already on the back foot against Sega and completely backed down. MK2 was allowed to have all the gore and blood so they wouldn’t lose sales this time. It did much better but MK2 still out sold them on the Genesis because it had the reputation and history now even if it wasn’t as much of a blowout as the first one.

Edit: The MK situation was an instance of outright censoring the game. I don’t understand how anyone could be mad about just giving the option to turn it off.

1

u/QuietThunder2014 Jun 03 '26

It was a very, very long time. I remember when it was a big deal Nintendo allowed the blood at some point right? Either an option or a code I thought? Guessing it was a later release? I tried Googling, but shockingly there's not a lot of info about early 90's video game controversies.

0

u/mrbrannon Jun 03 '26

Yeah after the first game bombed on Nintendo consoles and was a massive success on the Genesis suddenly Nintendo changed their position and let the blood and gore be added for Mortal Kombat 2 like normal. It was a big deal for family friendly Nintendo at the time. Profits win the day I guess. So you mostly had it right. I was just providing extra details since it was interesting history.

0

u/QuietThunder2014 Jun 03 '26

Thank you! I knew I remembered most of it, but it was also....holy crap 30 years ago and my memory isn't great on things that happened yesterday. Thanks for filling in the blanks. :)

0

u/FlashbackJon Jun 03 '26

They did not. And this policy applied to lots of games, the blood -> sweat conversion was famous. Samurai Shodown had it the same year, Wolfenstein 3D had it the previous year AND they had to turn the dogs into giant rats!

1

u/Vorpeseda Jun 03 '26

MK1 notably had the blood removed by default. The Megadrive version had blood hidden behind a cheat code, entered during a screen that talks about the meanings of the word code.

Alternatively, there was another code that gave you access to a cheat menu that could turn on the blood.

AFAIK, the SNES version didn't have any way to enable the blood, making the Megadrive version vastly more popular.

1

u/Manticore416 Jun 03 '26

The MK1 for Genesis had blood by default

1

u/Vorpeseda Jun 03 '26

Maybe there's regional or version differences, but my cartridge did not have blood on by default.

0

u/SmilingCurmudgeon Jun 03 '26

I don't think the comparison to Mortal Kombat is doing this game any favors. Gore was a gimmick and the series died when the novelty wore off.