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News on the upcoming Mortal Kombat 11 is now rapidly appearing as we get closer and closer
to its April 23rd worldwide release date.
However, there's one region in the world where the title won't be releasing April 23rd - nor
will it be released at a later date.
This region in question is Japan, where a localized version is noticeably lacking from
any pre-release info, there are no pre-orders available on any services and Steam already
has Japan geo-blocked from purchasing it, a restriction that no other country around
the world has.
All Japanese language sites are instructing Japanese fans to purchase the overseas version
when it releases in a few months time.
And this is something that Japanese gamers will likely be well used to, as no Mortal
Kombat games have been officially released in the region in many years.
Mortal Kombat X, for instance, was also completely absent in Japan.
And this isn't due to lack of people interested.
The series does still receive quite a lot of Japanese media coverage and checking sites
like the Japanese version of Amazon, you'll see that Japanese players will import the
Western versions.
Searching for the games on YouTube in Japanese will also result in many videos uploaded by
Japanese gamers, with some having millions of views.
It turns out however that even if the publishers wanted to release the games in Japan, this
wouldn't be possible due to the rules of Japan's age rating system CERO and the game's graphic,
over the top violence.
As the channel as covered numerous times in the past, the Japanese rating system has various
rules in place, where even if a game gets the max rating, there are still certain levels
of violence that are forbidden from being shown.
Human decapitations are commonly caught up under this and so are the depiction of things
like human internal organs.
There's no real cultural reason for this, however, and you can find many graphic scenes
of violence in things like Japanese manga, anime and movies.
Back when the Japanese video game rating system was created in 2002 however, there was actually
a growing controversy in Japan over violent games being responsible for some occurrences
of real life violence that had been occurring in the country around the time and thus these
are just the rules that were decided by the organisation back in 2002 that are still in
effect today.
It goes without saying that Mortal Kombat has violence as one of its most central themes
and so, due to these rules, the game would have to be entirely changed for the Japanese
market to make a release possible.
Unbeknownst to many, it actually would be possible to release the game in Japan on PC
though.
CERO is actually only responsible for console games in the country and PC gaming is often
left unregulated.
It's also not a requirement from platforms like Steam to have your game rated and thus
an uncensored, unrated release would be possible via PC distribution methods.
It must be felt by the publishers however that the costs and effort involved in making
and releasing a localized Japanese release for just PC and not any consoles would make
it not worth it.
PC however is still used as a big loophole by some publishers to get there games to fans
without the changes required by CERO.
For instance, in some examples where games have had to be censored in Japan on consoles,
the games are then released on PC uncensored and without the changes.
This was seen with Grand Theft Auto 5 for instance, which had scenes of nudity as well
as violence censored in Japan on consoles but not PC.
Quite a few publishers don't do this however and will still release the same censored versions
on PC, despite not needing to.
There isn't really a clear reason for this but it just tends to depend on the specific
publisher in question and their own internal policies on the matter.
What do think about these issues with the Japanese rating system and console gaming
in Japan?
And are you looking forward to Mortal Kombat 11's April 23rd release?
Please let us know your thoughts in the comments below and consider subscribing to the channel
to see more videos on how video games and other media are changed around the world.
Until next time, thank you for watching!