The 6 Most Controversial Video Games Ever Made

Mortal Kombat

You can’t have a list of the most controversial games ever made without including the title that first glorified violence and called into question the censorship of video games, Mortal Kombat.

Thanks to the game’s digitized sprites, Mortal Kombat offered arcade players a frightening level of realism among other 16 bit video games at the time. So ruthless were the death animations – known as fatalities – that, after several length court cases, the formation of the ESRB, the censorship committee that still exists today, was considered necessary.

Mortal Kombat’s over the top death animations might seem ridiculous and somewhat harmless by today’s modern standards, but the level of gore and violence it featured was absolutely unheard of in 1992.