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.