the cutting room mirror

Mortal Kombat II (SNES)

This article has a talk page!This article has a talk page!
view on tcrf.net

After the massive controversy about how Nintendo's content guidelines took out half the point of the first game and proved that "Genesis Does What Nintendon't", the go-ahead was given for more violent games to appear on Nintendo platforms. As such, the SNES Mortal Kombat II was practically arcade-perfect, except you didn't have to shove coins into your cartridge slot every ten seconds when fighting the ever-cheap bosses.

Sub-Pages#

Regional Differences#

Watch on YouTube

The Japanese version is unique in that it has...censorship. Blood is recolored green, and the game palette fades into greyscale when a Fatality begins (except for The Bridge's Stage Fatality). Although Japan is generally more tolerant of violence in the media than other cultures, it is much less tolerant toward the graphic dismemberment of humans, which is probably the reason why this was changed. It's notably the only Japanese release of the series to feature any edits; all other versions of Mortal Kombat II released there, as well as subsequent titles in the series, were not edited in any way.

Revisional Differences#

  • The original US release (v1.0) does not show the fighting demonstration during the intro. This was added in v1.1 and carried over to the Japanese and European releases.
  • Also added in the v1.1 release is the animated Sculptured Software Inc. screen on startup. However, in both European versions (the Japanese version is unaffected), the animation has no sound.

References#


  1. Sculptured Software - GDRI :: Game Developer Research Institute↩︎
  2. `Mortal Kombat II' Is Too Kool To Knock - AsianWeek, October 7, 1994↩︎
  3. GDR スーパーファミコン ソフト一覧 1994年 - SUPER FAMICOM Software List 1994↩︎
  4. Temperatura máxima nos games "Max temperature in games" - O Globo, October 6, 1994↩︎
  5. Playtronic: Games em lançamento - Ação Games, Issue 72, December 1994↩︎
  6. Dixons ad - Daily Mirror, September 9, 1994↩︎