You looked into each other’s eyes and immediately realized that this was love. Your hands intertwined seeking the warmth of two loving hearts that, at last, settled pending accounts. Everything was sweet, pastel colors, cotton clouds, happiness, smiles and good feelings. In fact, at that time, people’s veins were running through sugar and dulce de leche.
But every moment of happiness has, by necessity, to be short-lived. And on that occasion it was a driver named Max Damage who decided to destroy the occasion. The splash of juice reached the third floor balcony , lucky you were in Germany and there, as you all know, the blood is green. But the fright is not taken away by anyone.
Indeed, that was ‘Carmageddon’ , a real madness that saw the light in 1997 and that we will use as a spearhead to enter a sordid, dirty, brutal and sticky world. The world of 5 of the bloodiest, best and most controversial video games that have seen the light. Hold your guts with your hands, for sure they are better inside than outside.
And it seems that some games need to be accompanied by controversy to achieve sales, or perhaps it is that we have grown up with that false perception. The titles that we will see today have suffered different fates. Some filled the sales lists, others passed without pain or glory, but there is something that unites them and that is that they all decided to go one step beyond the political correctness and mount a Christ of care.
‘Carmageddon’
Back in 1997 and after having been the prototype for a couple of games based on film licenses that did not come to fruition, SCI decided to give a creative license to Stainless Software designers and publish the game as its own title.
Many of you know the result, a game that will go down in history as one of the most controversial ever created. We were able to drive, at first only two cars, authentic mash machines for pedestrians. Blood oozed from all the megabytes that made up the installation CD and even in the middle of the market an altered version had to be sold in which, instead of busting people, we did the same with Zombies.
Sure, grace was not comparable. Years later its second version arrived and there, although the pedestrians were already three-dimensional and not sprites, the game really hit it off. We could race the doors open and blow up hundreds of characters or maim them, but the fun was over and the move to full three dimensions didn’t turn out as cool as expected.
However, the oldest of the place, we still remember the echo that the press made at the time. “A game that allows you to run over pedestrians and grants various scores based on how beast you are.” The most typical and bloody phrase in schools throughout Spain was that of:
“Pregnant women and old women are worth double”
Go animals.
‘Postal 2’
I travel directly to the second, and most remembered, part of ‘Postal’. The wildest video game ever created, as defined at the time by those who called it brutal, shameless, violent, Nazi, shameless and not recommended.
We played the charming “Postal Dude” and we could, for a certain time, live one day of his complicated life in the town of ‘Paradise’. And I say complicated because that town was the most redneck and depressing thing that has ever been invented.
A woman who threw you out of the house, some neighbors who insulted you, cows who stepped on you, Taliban with bombs in churches , mutilated heads stuffed with Anthrax and even the possibility of entering a high school to shoot and kill students.
The game was banned in the middle of the civilized world and in the planets of the eastern conference of the Galactus system, come on, such a savagery was not well received by most of the official estates.
Of course, the possibility of pissing on the heads of freshly cut neighbors and then kicking them, made a deep impression among the majority of the Spanish population of the age of hormonal revolution. ‘Postal 2’ is one of the wildest games ever created and other current violent titles are nothing more than a lollipop when compared.
‘Mortal Kombat’
At that time you could only belong to two opposing sides. Those who preferred the stylistic and sexy fighting of ‘Street Fighter’ or those who liked to bust heads of human-looking fighters in ‘Mortal Kombat’.
I still remember the impact that the arcade of the original game caused and the queues of anticipation it generated in the arcade. Placed next to the Capcom game and with a simpler and more rudimentary game system, it was capable of generating much more noise than the bullets between Ryu and Ken.
Make no mistake, a Hadooken is kind of sexy and cool, but seeing how Kano ripped out the heart of the cocky Cage in the middle of an orgy of blood and violence was something much more poetic.
And since at that time we were all very interested in poetry, we became experts in the fatality essay. I say rehearsal because that was what rehearsal and after 100 failures the gift arrived. On television they were scandalized , put their hands to their heads and wondered about the kind of degenerate that could come out if the children were dedicated to wasting their time with it.
In many houses it was a forbidden title when it came out for console and it seems that the average Spanish father of that time found it more violent to see a four-armed monster spit blood when hit, than to see a sumo wrestler wrapped in you call because of a Yoga Flame. Total, those of us who grew up with ‘Mortal Kombat’ are not so bad, right?
‘Manhunt’
And we come to the turn of Rockstar Games. A company specialized in the development of controversial and wild video games that push the limit of what is permissible in the field of video games a little forward. We are going to skip the best known franchise and focus on ‘Manhunt’.
A true marvel of gore, with a touch of snuff cinema in its visual aspect that set off the alarms of what is right and what is wholesome in 2003. The game allowed us to destroy our enemies in radically beastly ways.
And when I say beasts, I mean totally caveman things like ripping out an opponent’s testicles , choking them with a plastic bag, or extracting their skulls with a machete. Of course, at the time it was censored in half the world and it was even related to the death of a boy. ‘Manhunt’ in its own right earned the honor of being considered one of the grossest games ever scheduled.
He had a continuation that was debated in court before leaving. ‘Manhunt 2’ was called to be much bloodier and more violent than the first part, but Sony and Nintendo’s refusal to publish it as it had been developed led to a censored version being distributed in the end.
‘Soldier of Fortune 2’
I must admit, I was the one who bought the second installment of Raven’s hit game. And is that the first ‘Soldier of Fortune’ was a great game. Memorable phases and the ability to dismember enemies with a well-aimed shot.
At the time it seemed a real bestiality that had to be overcome, yes or yes, with the second part, ‘Soldier of Fortune 2’. And boy was it surpassed. We will not talk about the game since it bordered on the ridiculous, at that time and compared to other contemporary titles it already seemed old, but we will focus on its violence.
For the first time we were facing enemies designed to be blasted into very small pieces. In that June of 2002 we could enjoy dismemberment, severed heads, busted faces, broken legs, amputated fingers … the level of detail that could be reached in ‘Soldier of Fortune 2’ was terrible.
Perhaps it was the least mediatic of those that we have seen today, but the gamers of the time that we threw at ease with our brand-new Ati Radeon 9700 we were burned by fire. It showed two things, that a bad second part could sink a franchise (although it was later resurrected) and that enemies, in FPS , must be designed to be shotgun blows.
I am convinced that if you put your little brainies to think, you will get many more wild and controversial titles that would deserve to appear in the top 5. But after seeing what we have seen, let’s ask ourselves one thing, did these titles need the explicit violence they demonstrated to be good games? .Or maybe they needed it to sell and hide some other lack of design?
What is clear is that some did not manage to save themselves due to a lot of violence they presented, but they did obtain advertising revenues. Sometimes, the popular saying goes, it is better for them to speak ill of you than not to speak and it is clear which path the 5 examples of today took.
Of course, it seems that we are returning, little by little, to the golden age of blood on virtual walls. ‘MadWorld’, in another historical moment, would have been offensive for hundreds of associations, and the fact that a saga as lost as ‘Mortal Kombat’ has decided to return to its violent origins to take flight, gives something to think about.
Meanwhile, at another point on the planet where the two lovebirds at the beginning of the post live happily eating chestnuts, Miyamoto watches the pollination of bees while designing what will be a real game. Of course, the day that Miyamoto decides to witness the slaughter of a chicken, I do not want to think about the type of game that he will design for Wii.
What game is the wildest and beast you have played?
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