Mortal Combat is a series of fighting games that has been an arcade favourite since the year 1992 when they first came out on vending gaming consoles. Mortal Kombat 4 was recently meant to be released to the Australian public but the Australian Classification board said no to it's release.
According to the Classification board the game contains too much violence, which includes limbs being blown off, excessive blood spray, etc.
You know what's also quite amusing? The fact that at the same time of the Mortal Kombat ban, a new series of Wii Games, known as the We Dare, had been released to the public with a PG rating. Despite the game promoting spanking, stripping, and sexual partner swapping. Even "Ubisoft" the games publisher, says that the game is intended for an adult audience. Now this We Dare game is hands on, as the audience engages physically in the game, whereas Mortal Combat is just animation and players are playing via a controller, not with their own hands.
"The highly anticipated video game Mortal Kombat, published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (WBIE) in Australia, has been refused classification by the Australian Classification Board and will not release in Australia. We are extremely disappointed that Mortal Kombat, one of the world’s oldest and most successful video games franchises, will not be available to mature Australian gamers. WBIE would not market mature content where it is not appropriate for the audience. We understand that not all content is for every audience, but there is an audience for mature gaming content and it would make more sense to have the R18+ classification in Australia. As a member of the iGEA, WBIE is reviewing all options available at this time".
There is definitely a valid point made here, and also I don't see why it's fair that games with similar content are released into the Australian public, such as Gears Of War 3 which has high gore content, and yet its still going to be released in a few months.
There also had been a game that was banned a couple of months ago, because the Classification board found it distressing, young children were getting killed by humans. The reason why? Dead Island is a game based on a zombie holocaust, it is not based on real life events, yet the board still bans the game. The things that they ban these days is pathetic, and I think that we really need an R18+ rating to stop these ridiculous bans. All we need to do is monitor those who buy the games, even then it won't stop youth from buying them because they will get brothers, sisters and even older friends to buy the games for them.
The Classification board really need to sort out their system because at the moment, its like there is one rule for one game and then another rule for another.
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