Probably the West's biggest and most loved
fighting game series, Mortal Kombat has a
legacy spanning multiple decades, with countless
games, multiple feature films, cartoons, comics
and so on.
The franchise is a cultural icon.
Its brutal violence was slammed with controversy
since the very beginning, and was a big factor
in the creation of the ESRB rating system.
But, it's always been about more than just
the gore.
The colourful cast of characters are well
recognised and memorable, and the series has
given birth to so many of the quotes and tropes,
absorbed into Western pop culture.
So then, this brings the question, what do
people in Japan think of the series?
What sort of changes have been made for the
Japanese region and are we likely to see that
highly requested Street Fighter crossover
game sometime in the near future?
Whilst nowhere near the hit that it was in
the West, the franchise was launched with
the very first game for all major platforms,
including the SNES and Mega Drive, as well
as the handheld Game Gear and Game Boy ports.
Whilst released in Japan though, the titles
weren't properly localised.
The games are virtually entirely in English
and identical to the Western counterparts.
One of the extremely rare exceptions to this
is the PS1 intro for Mortal Kombat 3, which
has a new, Japanese narration over the English
text.
Despite the poor localisations, the first
two games actually had special subtitles added
to their names.
In Japan, Mortal Kombat 1 is known as Mortal
Kombat: Legend of the Advent God Fist, whilst
Mortal Kombat 2 was retitled Mortal Kombat
2: Ultimate Godly Fist - this being the name
given to the fatalities, in Japanese promotional
materials.
But yeah, the Japanese releases were virtually
identically.
This means that the censorship found in the
SNES port of Mortal Kombat 1 was also made
to the Japanese version, marking one of the
few times that Nintendo censorship from this
era was made worldwide, instead of only in
the West.
In fact, that's not all.
There's actually another difference that can
be found in one of the Japanese versions,
this being the SNES version of Mortal Kombat
2.
Now, to compete with Sega, who dominated in
sales figures for the first game, Nintendo
allowed this release to be fully uncensored.
This meant the blood and gory fatalities were
allowed to be displayed on Nintendo's infamously
'family friendly' console.
This was not the case in Japan though and
it's not known why.
The Japanese, SNES release of Mortal Kombat
2 is heavily censored, with all blood turned
to green and the screen turning black and
white during fatalities.
Having a game censored worldwide on Nintendo
consoles was rare enough, but for it to be
only found in the Japanese version, was completely
unheard of.
Speaking of Mortal Kombat 2, Japan was interestingly
the only region to see the game released for
the PlayStation.
This version is graphically impressive, although
it does suffer from load time issues and poor
audio quality.
Additionally, it is also uncensored, like
Japan's other ports of Mortal Kombat 2, apart
from the SNES release.
Again, it's entirely in English, the menus,
story sections, everything.
And no, there was no special Japanese narration,
like that found in Mortal Kombat 3's intro.
It's a possibility that the lack of translations
played a part in the series not really taking
off.
In fact, the very last title to be released
in Japan was 1996's Mortal Kombat Trilogy.
Yes, that means that, for more than twenty
years, the title has been completely absent
in the Japanese market.
However, this is not necessary to do with
the series' lack of popularity.
Shortly following Mortal Kombat Trilogy's
release, Japan was hit by mass controversy.
A series of brutal killings, dubbed the Kobe
child murders, caused the public to criticise
violent media for their effects on young people.
In two separate incidents, a 14 year old boy
murdered two young children, with one of the
victims being beheaded and left outside of
their school, for the other kids to find in
the morning.
This played a big part in the eventual creation
of CERO, Japan's console rating system, in
2002.
Prior to this though, developers started to
feel pressured into self censoring their games
to avoid any backlash over the violent content.
This is why, for example, Resident Evil 2
had the deaths scenes censored over in Japan,
despite existing before the CERO rating system
was put in place.
In the Japanese version, the screen fades
to black right after dying, hiding the characters
brutal, final moments.
Following the creation of Japan's rating system,
censorship of extreme violence was now forced
on publishers wanting to release their games
on Japanese consoles.
Sticking with Resident Evil, the censorship
to beheadings found in the Japanese versions
of Resident Evil 4, this time, wasn't done
by choice, but as a requirement, to allow
it to pass CERO's standards.
Hundreds of games have had violence censored
in Japan ever since.
A recent example being the Japanese game Nioh,
which has had the gameplay's dismemberment
removed in Japan, just like the studio's previous
Ninja Gaiden games were censored.
This wasn't done by choice, but was forced
by the rating system.
Keeping this in mind, imagine the amount of
censorship that would be required to release
Mortal Kombat over in Japan.
Games not being released in Japan for this
very reason is actually pretty common.
Gears of War 4, for example, was officially
confirmed to not being getting a Japanese
release, due to the amount of censorship that
would be needed.
The series isn't completely unknown in Japan
though either.
It's a popular title for import purchases
and, for example, the latest release, Mortal
Kombat X, holds positive reviews over on places
like Amazon.
There's also quite a lot of Japanese fan art
and other signs of life, over on the Japanese
side.
There was also a rather unusual Japanese tournament,
consisting of a single American player taking
on countless Japanese.
Oh, and the American was also blind, you know,
the medical state of being completely unable
to see out of their eyes, yet still manage
to win.
This was for the PS2's Mortal Kombat Deception
and was even broadcast on TV.
Hopes of some kind of Street Fighter crossover
though definitely seems unlikely, considering
there has been no official release of the
franchise in Japan for over twenty years,
and that, unless the situation with the Japanese
rating system changes, it's not even possible
to release the games, without completely redesigning
the constant violence.
So, unless the situation changes, Mortal Kombat
will remain somewhat a curious mysterious
to Japanese players, like certain Japanese
games are for folks in the West, although,
for entirely NOT the same reasons.
Thank you for watching.
