Go Ahead, Chun Li, Make My Day

Lately, I've been dreaming of finding an overly buffed superhero type, grabbing him by the torso and ripping him in half. I know this does not reflect an exclusively American addiction to violence because the same scenario can be played out in Tokyo or Dar-es-Salaam. All around the world, assorted video game junkies know that tapping a joystick forward twice, down once and forward again while holding the low kick button makes Kitana stride towards a dazed opponent to lay a wet smooch on their cheek. This causes said opponent to writhe in pain as their body expands to breaking point, treating the player to a grisly explosion of assorted body parts.

The game with more blood to the byte is Mortal Kombat ll, released in l993 amidst a wave of hysteria over violence in the videodrome. Before the techno revolution the idea of a game was of human pitted against human, bracketed by a passive amalgam of rules. Today the rulemakers, newly empowered through technology, insert themselves into the game. When one says 'I'm playing the machine,' one is actually playing the archetypal techno-geek who has laid down a maze of options based upon anticipation of the player's response. So what's really changed? From chess to Monopoly, somebody's got to lose. In the video age, somebody has to die. The freedom of new technology has enabled the designer to visualise death.

The first game to cash in on our Sadean instincts was 1990's Street Fighter. One could be either Japanese karate master Ryu, or Ken, his blond-haired, blue-eyed American twin and nemesis. Using awkward controls, the player could engage in public brawls in different locales. In 1991, Street Fighter's sequel changed the landscape of the video game generation forever. Now the players were able to choose from a panoply of characters from around the world, like Dhalsim, from India, who looked like a dime store guru complete with skull necklace, headhunter tipico. Once, in an arcade, someone asked a homeboy why he like playing with Dhalsim. All of the other characters are known for power and speed, neither of which Dhalsim possesses. The man said, 'Yo, he's the only one who looks like me, chief!' - a reply which would have brought a tear to Maya Angelou's eye. After further prodding, the player admitted the truth: 'I like to kill them slowly.'

In l991 the first Mortal Kombat was released, changing the rules of the game, so to speak. Now instead of kicking a comic-book character in the face, one could knock Sonya into the stratosphere with a degree of realism: a grappling hook which made a sweet clunk as it landed in an opponent's neck was just icing on the cake. The real reason a cult of Kombat formed was the finishing move, where one had to find the right the combination to kill one's rival. Screams, hoots and hollers accompany the player as he shoves Sub-Zero's hand into a chest to rip out the spinal cord.

All of this, of course, sends the army of the wholesome into a tizzy. But Midway Electronics, who have made hundreds of millions of dollars out of rendering possible virtual decapitation, responded to the congressional hearings by making the sequel bloodier and more realistic. In short, by going for the bottom line. Where Mortal Kombat had one choice of fatality per character, its successor gives us the quintessential American privilege: choice. There's the lethal kiss; the straightforward decapitation; the uppercut into a spiked ceiling; the push into an acid pit; and the classic punch off a ledge, accompanied by screaming and flailing of arms and legs. All are doused with blood and intestines.

This is definitely unsafe computing, which has an allure all of its own. While the designer's fear of AIDS plays itself out in the juiciness of the gore, the characters are free to ignore that fear and go where we know we shouldn't. In SFII when Chun Li, the game's only female character, bites the virtual dust, players are treated to a teasing crotch shot. Strangely enough, the same thing happens when Balrog, the only black character, dies. In MKII, much as SFII, the black men are all topless and the women are all exaggerated T&A.

After you finish a game the credits roll, cinema-style. Guess what? All male. Japan or Cali, techno macho is global beat. Don't doubt the homoerotic realness of what's happening. It's there in Batman and Robin just as it is in Mortal Kombat's Johnny Cage getting his arms ripped off by Lt Jackson Briggs. Enough has been said about the symbiosis of sex and death, but in this realm it adds more than realness. It adds flava. Tales of love and betrayal (or more often than not pride and revenge) are added to complete the characterisations after the game is over. Chun Li goes on to avenge her father's death and 'get on with being a single girl.' Scorpion returns to the fire ninja cult. The player, like the world in general, becomes completely inured to mortality, which has become only a gauge of how good they are at the game and how many pence are in their pocket.

Welcome to the next level. In bars around the world, sitting next to pinball machines, are the gun games. Lethal Enforcers, also digitised, lets you take a gun out of a holster and blast mafiosi and drug dealers. T2, licensed from the movie, literally repeats its narrative. Boys, girls, guns, alcohol and digital electronics are the new standards of normalised debauchery. In Europe, circulating through clandestine quarters are computer games with names like Run, Jew, Run, where the player becomes a Nazi stormtrooper hunting Jewish escapees to return them to the oven. What next? The Jeffrey Dahmer Game? Bataan March 2000? Super Slave Trader? How real is real? I have yet to dream of Rwanda. I think I'll stick to the usual landmarks. But being a 90s guy I know I can have my rocket launcher and joystick too. And I'll nod my head slightly to any other road warriors on the infobahn.