How Violent Are Video Games?
A majority of games include punching, kicking, whipping, shooting, or otherwise killing the opponent in order to win the game. Such violence may be directed against inanimate objects, imaginary creatures, or, even, other humans. Even many of the sports titles include fight scenes, such as Blades of Steel (NES), Skate or Die (NES), NHL Hockey (Genesis), and Combat Basketball (SNES). One parent’s group, the National Coalition on TV Violence, recently did a study on NES games. They found that 70% of the 150 games they surveyed contained high levels of violence. As we enter the era of 16-bit machines, increased graphic capabilities are allowing for more gory and realistic violence. Titles such as Splatterhouse (Turbografx-16, Genesis), Slaughtersport (Genesis), and Technocop (Genesis) exemplify this type of violence. Technocop even includes corpses with twitching hands left on the screen after the player defeats the enemy. With the added development of full motion video on CD-ROM, we may s
