Videogame Rating Council - Before The Videogame Rating Council

Before The Videogame Rating Council

While rival console manufacturer Nintendo enforced strict content guidelines for games released on its hardware, Sega differentiated itself with a more liberal content policy, allowing for the depiction of blood and graphic violence in software released on its home consoles, provided that the publisher label the game's packaging with a generic "Parental Advisory" warning.

The first company to take advantage of this greater levity was publisher Razor Soft. In 1990, they released a Sega Genesis port of the 1988 home computer game Techno Cop, which depicted criminals and civilians (some of whom were children) spraying what appeared to be blood when shot at. Even with its graphic content, the game had limited commercial success.

In 1991 Razor Soft released a second home computer port for the Genesis titled Stormlord, a fantasy adventure game centered around the rescue of female fairies from an evil queen. The nude fairies found in the original release were edited for the Genesis version, wearing revealing clothing instead. Like Techno Cop, Stormlord found limited critical and commercial success.

That same year Tengen released the popular arcade game Pit Fighter for the Sega Genesis. The fighting game's characters were created by digital filming. The characters looked realistic and the game was a preview of what Midway Games would perfect with its Mortal Kombat arcade game. Pit Fighter had limited success because while its fighting looked more realistic than anyone had ever seen before on the Genesis, the animation was choppy and control did not provide the player with many fighting moves. Razor Soft would try and create a popular fighting game when it released Activision's Mondu's Fight Palace for the Sega Genesis, under the title of Slaughter Sport, which created characters through the traditional means of animation, however the game's alien characters had a certain subtle mature allure. One of the characters was a female punk that would attack with her mohawk hair.

In 1992 Namco released Splatterhouse 2 for the Sega Genesis. In the game you played a male character who wore a cursed mask, and had to fight the forces of evil to save your girlfriend. The blood in the game was green ooze that came out of the monsters that you killed. As with the case of the two Razor Soft games, Splatterhouse 2 had a parental advisory label on the game's box in tiny, red print. Splatterhouse 2 was a commercial success and led to the release of Splatterhouse 3 in 1993.

These games represented a small trickle of pre-V.R.C. games for the Sega Genesis. Most games were suitable for all audiences and most of these more mature games had limited commercial success because the blood or partial nudity was treated as a gimmick. Yet, two Sega Genesis games in 1992 created a national debate over the content of video and compelled Sega to develop the Videogame Rating Council.