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The video game industry’s fiercest critics will always say that games have never been more violent and that it is doing horrible damage to our children. But the game industry’s fiercest critics have always been saying that. In fact, many of them were children themselves when the first round of panic gripped parents during Death Race‘s 1976 heyday.
Vice’s Mike Diver examines this legacy of violence, citing everything from the obvious (Mortal Kombat and Carmageddon) to the obscure (Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior and Battle Chess). I never thought of Battle Chess as particularly gruesome, but your primer on pixelated gore awaits:
If you came to games fresh during the previous console generation, where once-grainy graphics made the switch to full HD, you don’t know how easy you’ve had it. There was a time, long before the gushes of crimson coloring contemporary offerings of extreme violence–Gears and God of War, Dead Rising, and the more recent Resident Evils, Max Payne 3, the Dead Space series, Bulletstorm, and BioShock (to name but a few)–where you had to lean on your imagination to bring scenes of disgusting dismemberment to life.
You can read the rest of the article at Vice.
