Here¡¯s my dirty little secret: Despite my reputation as a hardcore moralist, truth be told I love the ¡°Mortal Kombat¡± games. When it¡¯s late at night and the kids are in bed, I¡¯ll sometimes pull out whichever is the latest title in the series -- surely the bloodiest of the bloody fighting games -- and play until my fingers go numb.
If there is a dividing line between the Japanese and Western game markets, ¡°Mortal Kombat¡± has figured into the creation of that line. The Japanese market has embraced games such as ¡°Street Fighter II,¡± ¡°Virtua Fighter,¡± ¡°King of Fighters¡± and ¡°Tekken.¡± But in the United States, the ¡°Mortal Kombat¡± series reigns supreme.
Why is this? Well, Americans like ¡°Mortal Kombat¡¯s¡± ultra-gory depiction of combat, its hidden moves and its digitized graphics. Hidden moves are popular with Japanese gamers too, but they¡¯ve never taken to digitized graphics and gratuitously hyperbolic bloodshed.
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