MOOOORRRRTAAAALLL KOOOMMMMBAAAAT!!!
(Once again, I've got to credit Blake Harris' “Console Wars” for providing a lot of the background into the video game violence hearings of 1993. Even as butterflies take this TL farther and farther away from OTL, it's been an invaluable resource.)
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“Since 1985, Nintendo has been committed to providing a family-friendly entertainment experience. Our company chose to put limits on the kind of content that we would allow on our systems. The Nintendo Entertainment System and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System both have restrictions on the kinds of games that are allowed to be produced for those consoles. When we decided to allow less restrictions for our CD-ROM accessory, we knew we were making a conscious decision that more violent and more potentially controversial games would be allowed and that those games might end up in the hands of younger players, IF we did not do our due diligence to inform our retail partners that those games were not to be played by anyone under the age of 17. Nintendo has gone above and beyond to inform retailers, advertisers, and most importantly, parents about the kinds of content in certain games released for the device. Nintendo has spent millions and millions of dollars in advertisements and retail kiosks to allow parents to make informed decisions about the kinds of games that their children will be allowed to play. We are proud to be an industry leader in establishing a ratings system for those games, a rating system which, I must remind the committee, Sega did not have until June of this year.”
-Howard Lincoln, testifying before a Senate committee on the effects of violent video games, September 30, 1993
“The problem, Mr. Lincoln, that I have with your games, is that when you go to buy a video game in the store, the violent games, the sexually explicit games, are right next to the games intended for children. You've got Mortal Kombat right next to the uh, the Carmen Sandiego game, and when a kid looks up at those games, which one is he going to want to buy? A parent might be trying to buy a game to encourage their child to learn but when they see the Mortal Kombat game, you think they're going to want to get something educational? I mean...you wouldn't see a store putting the vibrators and the fuzzy handcuffs next to the Barbie dolls would you?”
-Senator Joseph Lieberman, Senate committee on the effects of violent video games, September 30, 1993
“This gun, this automatic machine gun that Nintendo puts out for their games... *holds up the Super Scope 6* this can be used for Yoshi's Safari. This is for a game they've got rated for general audiences. This game came out three days ago. For a kids' game with a green dinosaur and fun, colorful graphics, this gun is used. Oh, and this is the newest issue of Nintendo Power, their official magazine that they put out every month. *holds up the October 1993 issue of Nintendo Power* They have The Terminator on the cover, this is their big game this month. This is based on a rated-R movie.”
-Bill White, testifying before a Senate committee on the effects of violent video games, September 30, 1993
“And that was like the kill shot, right there. Once Bill pulled out that gun and that magazine, I could just see the look on Howard Lincoln's face. He'd been so composed for that whole time but once that took place he kind of lost his cool a bit and I could see that Bill was getting a lot more comfortable. And you see Lieberman and Kohl, they're kind of looking at each other and sort of nodding their heads, I mean, Nintendo had totally lost the moral high ground and for the first time that day it was Sega starting to look like the good guys. I knew we were all sort of in the doghouse with the Senate but if Nintendo got the worst of it it'd be a lot better for us.”
-Tom Kalinske, “The Chase: Sega's 20 Year Struggle To Take Down A Giant”
“Well, I know that my movie The Terminator came up, and I looked at the game, and it's not as violent as the movie, there's no blood or anything like that. I'm not a big fan of the video games anyway, I think that America's youths need to be out exercising, I think that the games are putting a lot of kids on the couch, and they don't realize how fun physical activity can be. I don't know if the government should step in and censor games but I know they should be doing more to encourage physical activity in schools.”
-Arnold Schwarzenegger, from an Entertainment Tonight interview on October 2, 1993
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September 17, 1993
Bill Andresen could hear some very loud noises coming from the TV in the living room. His son Chris was having some friends over, and one of his friends had brought the newest sensation for the Super Nintendo CD: Mortal Kombat. Bill had never seen the game in person before, and he decided to take a look at just what was making his son and his son's friends so excited.
He entered the room and watched the action on the screen. The vivid colors and lifelike animation showed a fairly realistic looking fight between two characters, Sub-Zero and Raiden. His son Chris was using Sub-Zero and was winning quite handily, delivering a flurry of fierce blows before freezing his opponent solid.
“Well that's pretty neat...” Bill thought, before Raiden went into a daze and the words 'FINISH HIM!' appeared on screen in bright red letters.
“Oooh, yeah yeah yeah, rip his head off, rip his head off!” shouted one of the boys, prompting Chris to input a series of button presses on the controller that triggered Sub-Zero's fatality. Sub-Zero walked over to Raiden, yanking Raiden's head right off his neck with a shower of blood. Raiden's spine dangled limply from his severed skull. Bill's eyes went wide with horror as Chris and his friends cheered and laughed at the gruesome sight.
“What in God's name...?” said Bill, walking over to the television. “Chris, turn that game off, that's the worst thing I've ever seen in my life!”
“Awww, dad.... it's just a game, it's not even real.”
“I don't care, you need to turn that game off right now,” said Bill, looking around the room at Chris' friends. “Which one of you boys brought this kind of filth into my house?”
“Uh...sorry Mr. Andresen, I mean, Kevin and Rick's parents are cool with it...” said one of the boys with a sigh, going over to the SNES-CD and ejecting the disc before turning off the console.
“Sorry Mike,” said Chris apologetically, embarrassed that his dad had caused such an abrupt end to the fun. “Dad....!”
“I don't ever want you playing that game again.” Bill said, wondering just how these games could have gotten so violent. He hadn't had any problem letting his son play games like Super Mario World 2 or Star Fox, heck, he thought the Muppet characters in that game were really funny. But this was completely over the top, especially on a Nintendo system! He knew Sega had violent video games but he thought Nintendo knew better than that.
The next day, Bill's boss would be hearing all about what he'd seen his son and his friends having so much fun playing together.
Bill's boss? Senator Joseph Lieberman.
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Tonight on Nightline... there's a new video game that's sweeping the nation, but parents everywhere are mortified that the graphic violence featured in the game might be causing the nation's children to become more violent themselves. We'll talk to Senator Joseph Lieberman, who's calling for a Senate hearing into the increasingly violent and graphic content of today's most popular games.
-Ted Koppel, ABC's Nightline, September 20, 1993
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Nintendo Brings The Action Of The Big Screen To The SNES-CD!
Two of the hottest Super Nintendo releases of the year are set to come out over the coming weeks, and we've got the scoop on both of them! First up is Jurassic Park, based on the hit Steven Spielberg film that took the box office by storm this summer. Ocean is releasing a different version of the game for each of Nintendo's four big systems, the NES, the Game Boy, the Super Nintendo, and the Super Nintendo CD, and the CD-ROM version of the game looks outstanding! It's a mixture of real-time action and a point and click adventure game that involves hunting for mysteries and clues as you try to escape the mysterious island where a pack of dinosaurs have broken loose! Once you've completed your search, you're dropped into various action scenes that involve running and gunning your way through hordes of dinosaurs. The game is Super Scope compatible for extra accuracy when hunting down dinos.
Then there's The Terminator, released for the Super Nintendo CD by Virgin Games. It's similar to the version released earlier this year for the Sega CD, which was renowned for its acclaimed musical score. The Super Nintendo version adds a few minutes of FMV cutscenes to the mix, depicting the horror that the Terminators have wreaked on Kyle Reese's desperate future and adding some pathos to the game's quest to take the Terminators down. Nintendo's actually pushing this game fairly hard and they expect it to be a top seller this fall. With Sega CD starting to push their big movie-based game in Aladdin, it's clear that cinematic games will have a huge bearing on how this holiday season goes in the world of video game sales!
-From Gamepro magazine, October 1993
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Axelay:
Steve: 9
Ed: 8
Martin: 10 (quote: “A downright flawless upgrade of the SNES original. This challenging but oh-so-addictive shooter looks and sounds beautiful on the CD-ROM. An instant classic.”)
Sushi-X: 9
Battle Chess:
Steve: 8
Ed: 8
Martin: 8 (quote: “Chess has never been more fun than in Battle Chess! Play against the computer with over 20 difficulty levels, or play against your friends and watch your pieces whale on each other.”)
Sushi-X: 6
Mortal Kombat:
Steve: 9
Ed: 8
Martin: 9
Sushi-X: 8 (quote: “This is the best home console version of Mortal Kombat for sure. The fighting is a bit clunkier than Street Fighter, but the game’s realistic graphics make it fun to play nonetheless.”)
Red Line: F-1 Racer
Steve: 7
Ed: 5 (quote: “This ho-hum racing game moves just a bit more quickly on the SNES-CD, but there are much better racing games out there. Wish it could have made better use of the CD-ROM’s capabilities.”)
Martin: 7
Sushi-X: 5
Jurassic Park:
Steve: 7
Ed: 8
Martin: 8 (quote: “This hybrid action-shooter-point-and-click sometimes tries to be too much at once but is still a great adaptation of the film.”)
Sushi-X: 8
Axes Of Avenglia:
Steve: 8 (quote: “This Taito RPG features some of the best graphics I’ve seen in any SNES-CD game and a very good soundtrack as well. The story isn’t quite as good as the SNES’ Lufia, but it’s a really nice glimpse at what the system is capable of putting out.”)
Ed: 6
Martin: 8
Sushi-X: 7
Art of Fighting:
Steve: 8
Ed: 7
Martin: 7
Sushi-X: 9 (quote: “Just as good as on Neo-Geo, Art of Fighting brings one of the best fighting games in the arcade home to your SNES-CD. There’s even more character detail and animation than Street Fighter! Mortal Kombat might get more sales and more press but this is the month’s best fighting game.”)
Yoshi’s Safari:
Steve: 8 (quote: “This rail-shooter makes great use of the Super Scope 6 and looks absolutely great on the SNES-CD. It’s not quite as pretty as Star Fox but the cutesy graphics are appropriate and this game’s a bit easier for younger players.”)
Ed: 8
Martin: 6
Sushi-X: 6
Ghouls ‘n Ghosts CD:
Steve: 7
Ed: 9
Martin: 8 (quote: “The staggeringly difficult series gets a brand new edition for CD-ROM in this sequel to Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts. The difficulty is definitely intact in this one but the great character animation and CD soundtrack are a huge plus.”)
Sushi-X: 8
Frantic Flight:
Steve: 9
Ed: 9 (quote: “Frantic Flight is a fantastic airplane combat game, featuring a huge amount of ship customization and procedurally generated wingmen that make every mission feel brand new. Koei did a great job capturing the feel of a PC dogfight game in this SNES-CD original.”)
Martin: 9
Sushi-X: 8
Ys Collection:
Steve: 7
Ed: 6 (quote: “Nihon Falcom’s classic Ys series arrives on the SNES-CD in the form of a collection of the first three games. It’s a faithful collection but maybe a bit too faithful, the graphics and gameplay are just too dated when compared with other RPGs on the system.”)
Martin: 7
Sushi-X: 4
The Adventures of Willy Beamish:
Steve: 5
Ed: 5
Martin: 4
Sushi-X: 3 (quote: “Another example of a crap point and click that bored me to tears. I hated this brat and I hated this game.”)
The Terminator:
Steve: 8 (quote: “This was a really fun run-and-gun shooter in the style of Contra. It featured some of the best music on the system to date, and while it wasn’t a straight-up movie adaptation, it still felt like it could be a part of the Terminator universe.”)
Ed: 8
Martin: 8
Sushi-X: 8
True Golf: Wicked 18:
Steve: 4
Ed: 5
Martin: 4
Sushi-X: 1 (quote: “Even if I LIKED golf I would have hated this game. It barely looks like an SNES game, let alone an SNES-CD game, and the play controls were god awful. True golf? I doubt it.”)
Super Detective Club:
Steve: 7
Ed: 9 (quote: “Even with all the other point and click detective games available for the SNES-CD, this one stands out. I’m really glad Nintendo decided to bring this game (actually two games, it’s both Famicom games in one!) to our shores. You’ll be gripped by the mystery and won’t want to stop playing until it’s solved.”)
Martin: 7
Sushi-X: 7
-From Electronic Gaming Monthly's reviews of September and October 1993's SNES-CD games in their October, November, and December 1993 issues
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Super Detective Club is the first American release of the Famicom Tantei Club series originally released in Japan for the Famicom system. This remake of the first two games combines all the cases of the Famicom titles into a graphically enhanced detective adventure for the Super Nintendo CD! With three fun cases to solve, you'll spend hours delving into the incredible mysteries within.
-from a Nintendo Power “Pak Watch” article in the October 1993 issue
“Super Detective Club, of course known as Tantei Club here, was one of those games that I did not think would be a success with Western players. We had a long discussion about releasing it there, but Yamauchi-san thought that the more older players of the Super Nintendo CD would appreciate the game. If I recall properly, it did very modest sales, but sold just enough to justify the decision to localize it. I know there is a devoted fanbase in America to this game who appreciates the fact that we did release it there. I am looking forward to seeing their reaction to the sequel, as it has sold extremely well here in Japan.”
-Gunpei Yokoi, translated from the September 1997 issue of Famitsu magazine
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September 30, 1993
A three-and-a-half hour long Senate hearing into the effects of violent video games took place in Washington, DC. It was chaired by Senators Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin. Of particular concern to the senators' was Nintendo's decision to allow violent and graphic games, particularly the uncensored version of Mortal Kombat, on their Super Nintendo CD-ROM device. Of additional concern was Sega's strange advertising campaigns involving the use of seemingly 'subliminal' messages and their reliance on marketing games such as Mortal Kombat to court older players. Both Howard Lincoln of Nintendo and Bill White of Sega testified extensively at the hearing, along with Parker Page from the Children's Television Resource and Education Center, Marilyn Droz from the National Coalition on Television Violence, and several other experts from the fields of juvenile justice and child psychology.
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Howard Lincoln: These games are very clearly marked with ratings symbols that show that these games are not appropriate for children. Here, on the Mortal Kombat case, we have a huge red box that takes up about a fourth of the cover, with a big “17” on it as plain as day. No parent who buys this game for their child will be able to do so without seeing that 17 and the big letters saying “MATURE PLAYERS ONLY”, and an additional ratings descriptor that says “GRAPHIC VIOLENCE”.
Joseph Lieberman: But parents are buying these games for their kids anyway. My chief of staff, his son's friend brought the game over just a couple weeks ago.
Howard Lincoln: It's not up to us what parents decide to purchase for their children, that choice is up to the parents and the ratings boxes-
Joseph Lieberman: But my friend's son was exposed to this when his friend brought it over. Kids are being exposed to this content without their parents even knowing about it. Are parents going to have to ask about these games every time they let one of their children sleep over? This game gets out there and eventually all the kids are going to hear about it and see it. It's all they talk about at school.
Herbert Kohl: Mr. Lincoln, I understand that you don't like being put in a position to censor your own games. But you've got to take a position of responsibility here. Parents can't be looking over their kids' shoulder all the time. There's got to be some limitations because sooner or later, every child is going to see something from these games whether the parents like it or not.
Howard Lincoln: I feel that the parents of America are responsible enough to keep these games out of their homes if they don't want their children exposed to them. Time and time again, I've gotten letters from parents thanking me for implementing this rating system. I understand that there's still a possibility that these games are going to be played in situations that parents haven't given their consent for, but I feel that part of the job of being a parent is being there and making sure that if you don't want your child to play one of these games, that you're there to say no to it.
Joseph Lieberman: I know a lot of single mothers, they have to work 60, 70 hours a week to support their children. They don't have the money to hire a sitter, so their kid has to be home alone two, three hours a day. Two hours of Mortal Kombat a day, that's going to damage a kid beyond repair.
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Bill White: So Nintendo has been pushing their bazooka and their Terminator game, and they've got Mortal Kombat and they say that this CD-ROM device is for adults but then they release all kinds of little kid games for it and push it for families.
Herbert Kohl: But they don't advertise those games in the same way that your company does. You're advertising Mortal Kombat and you're pushing the Sega Genesis in the same commercial. We've talked about Nintendo having these violent games but at least they don't advertise them for little kids.
Bill White: We don't either. The average age of the Sega Genesis player is nineteen.
Herbert Kohl: But you show a teenage boy in the commercial.
Joseph Lieberman: I mean, it's clear that the video game companies are trying to push these games onto our children. Nintendo just takes a more passive approach about it.
Bill White: We absolutely, unequivocally do not try to push violent video games onto young players. We have a ratings system just like Nintendo does and our Mortal Kombat game is rated for 13 and up.
Joseph Lieberman: But you have just as much violence as Nintendo's game does. It's hidden behind a code but every schoolboy in America knows that code by now.
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“I remember that we were both getting burned pretty badly by the senators during that hearing. Howard was doing the best that he could up there and he did make some of the senators understand that Nintendo's rating system was effective in keeping violent video games mostly out of the hands of children. It was just that damn Mortal Kombat game that got everyone in such an uproar...but of course while all of this was going on, it was just driving sales of the game up more and more. I think there was even a rumor that we were going to recall Mortal Kombat for the SNES-CD, and once that rumor was floated, sales spiked even more! People were so scared that we'd recall it and censor it that they rushed to buy the game because they were worried it was the only chance they'd have to play it!
As I recall, Mr. Yamauchi did think seriously about recalling it, but he decided not to pull the trigger at pretty much the last moment. I don't think we'll ever know for sure if he really considered it or not, but I'm sure glad that rumor got out there. It went a LONG way toward putting the SNES-CD into people's homes at the end of 1993 and for that, I've even got to thank Vice President Lieberman.”
-Peter Main, excerpted from an Electronic Gaming Monthly interview, June 2006
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Howard Lincoln: The reason we even decided to relax our censorship policies in the first place is because our third parties wanted to make certain games that would appeal to older players. We had spent a long time, and I mean a LONG time censoring our games, but our partnership with Sony over these last couple of years has been very constructive and even I've started to see that Nintendo has had to change with the times. The vast majority of Nintendo games are still appropriate for families and for the select few that are only appropriate for mature players, we have the ratings system.
Joseph Lieberman: I feel like this was a move to make money. You wanted to appeal to older players with more money to spend on games and you allowed these violent, graphic games to attract more sales.
Howard Lincoln: We were doing just fine before the SNES-CD was released. We controlled 90 percent of the gaming market. We didn't need these games to make money. We did it to protect creative freedom. I want to show you some footage from a video game called Final Fantasy III, released by one of our third party partners, Squaresoft, who was one of the biggest advocates for relaxing our censorship policies. This is a game that's rated 13 on our rating system, it explores some mature themes but doesn't contain any graphic violent or sexual content, but it wouldn't have been possible without the relaxation of our rating system.
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“I was fudging the truth a bit there, I'll admit. We'd censored Final Fantasy IV for Western audiences and we could have done the same with Final Fantasy V. But I wanted to show the committee the possibilities that you had when you released games with more mature content. We showed the senators the scene where Galuf is killed by Exdeath. It's a very emotionally charged scene. I think it moved a couple of the older senators, the ones with grandchildren. I know Marilyn Droz was interested in the game because it featured three female protagonists. I think we won her over a bit with Final Fantasy V.
In the beginning, I was one of the biggest advocates for Nintendo's censorship policies. I'd mentioned before that if it wasn't for Nintendo, the industry would be full of pornography. But when I went in front of that Senate hearing I was put in the position of defending the right of video game producers to make any kinds of games they wished to make. I hated Mortal Kombat, I never would have let my kids play such a game. But I was defending Nintendo and I had to hitch myself to that wagon. That was part of my job, being an attorney before I joined up with Nintendo meant that sometimes I had to defend people and practices that I disagreed with.
But ultimately, I don't regret the direction Nintendo went. I knew that kids were always going to be able to get their hands on these games no matter what ratings we put on the box. But part of our job at Nintendo was making sure that those games stayed out of the hands of as many of those kids as possible, and I think we did a fine job of that. I never set out to profit off of kids playing violent video games. But if I could profit off of transforming the industry and expanding the creative horizons of game creators everywhere, I was just fine with that.”
-Howard Lincoln, from an interview with GameInformer, September 2008
“I think on that day, that was the start of the Super Nintendo CD becoming something that would replace the Super Nintendo intend of merely supplementing it. With the opening of the gates for more mature games, which is something Sony had pushed for from the very beginning, it made the transition to the Super Nintendo CD a true evolutionary leap in the production of video games. Nobody knew it at the time of course, and it wouldn't happen for at least a couple more years, but when the news from those Congressional hearings got back to Japan, everyone here at Sony was extremely pleased. I wish I could have been there.”
-Ken Kutaragi, from an interview on IGN.com, October 17, 2010
“I was very dismayed at all of the controversy these games had created. I had merely set out to create toys, not so much create something that would be regarded as violent or graphic or bad for children. I was very troubled by all of this, and so I asked my friend Mr. Frank Oz what he thought of the whole situation. He told me about Jim Henson and that though Mr. Henson had set out to create something children could enjoy as well, he always believed that children were very smart and could handle many things that adults did not believe they could. He told me of their very lovely film The Dark Crystal and how it had been controversial at the time as well, and that I should not worry so much about children being harmed or scared by these games. It was this conversation that encouraged me to ask Yamauchi-san to allow our friends at Argonaut to go ahead with their follow up game to Star Fox. Squad Four, I believe they called it, was said to be just a bit too mature for the audiences Nintendo wanted to appeal to, and at first I had agreed, but after talking to my friend I encouraged Yamauchi-san to reconsider. I was very pleased when he told me he would.”
-Shigeru Miyamoto, translated from an interview with Famitsu, March 1995
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October 1, 1993
Senator Lieberman had not been entirely pleased with the responses from either Nintendo or Sega at the Senate hearing. If it had been entirely up to him, he'd have likely moved forward with his plan to push a bill through Congress requiring federal oversight of video game content, or at the very least, a mandatory, government-controlled game ratings system.
But....Howard Lincoln had held his own at the hearing, and the senator knew that any government bill regulating the sale of video games would mean a tough fight against an increasingly powerful industry. He also knew that the representatives from the game industry, particularly Lincoln, had won over a few of his colleagues with their call to allow creative freedom in video games, and his promises that Nintendo would do even more than they were already doing to raise awareness of their (admittedly very effective) ratings system, including threatening to withhold shipments of certain video games from stores that did not comply with Nintendo's ratings policies and using secret shoppers to enforce that compliance. The fact that Howard Lincoln said that he'd even promised to pull games from Walmart, the growing retail giant, if it didn't do a better job of avoiding selling violent video games to children, impressed some on the committee even more.
In the end, Lieberman and Kohl decided that they'd give the game industry a chance to regulate itself, though another hearing would be called in February 1994 to assess its progress in fulfilling its promises. Those promises would lead to something called the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, or ESRB for short, that would introduce the ratings of EC (Early Childhood, 3 and up), E (for Everyone), T (for Teen, 13 and up), M (Mature, 17 and up), and AO (Adults Only, 18 and up), utilizing Nintendo's green (for EC and E), yellow (for T), and red (for M and AO) color coding scheme in their ratings symbols. The first games to be rated by the ESRB would begin to roll out in March 1994, with Konami's Snatcher being the first M-rated game for the Super Nintendo CD.
The congressional hearings of 1993 wouldn't be the last time that video games faced the threat of censorship and regulation from the government, but the game industry had weathered its first major storm of controversy, and Nintendo's decision to agree to Sony's terms when it came to video game content censorship had been justified at last, despite those tenuous weeks when Hiroshi Yamauchi and Howard Lincoln believed they'd made a fatal mistake.
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SNES-CD Power Charts – October 1993
1. Super Mario World 2 – 25,780
2. Star Fox – 22,164
3. Final Fantasy III – 18,056
4. Super Mario Kart – 14,988
5. Street Fighter II: Arcade Edition – 12,750
6. Super Bomberman CD – 9,641
7. Clue – 7,540
8. Final Fantasy: New Generation – 7,316
9. Lethal Enforcers – 6,252
10. The Lost Vikings – 6,148
11. Alien 3 – 5,992
12. ClayFighter – 5,651
13. The Terminator – 4,372
14. Battletoads II – 4,052
15. Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? - 3,951
16. MechWarrior – 3,544
17. Dark City – 2,988
18. Shadowrun – 2,957
19. Time Gal – 2,544
20. Secret Of Mana – 2,206
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“Over the last couple of weeks, video games have been in the news for all the wrong reasons and last Thursday, there was a Congressional hearing into the detrimental effects of video game violence on today's youth. But a few nights ago in Petaluma, California, a video game device is being credited with possibly saving lives in a most unlikely fashion. Richard Allen Davis is being charged with burglary, criminal confinement, assault with a deadly weapon, and a host of other charges after he attempted to abduct a young girl from her home. He'd broken into the house during a slumber party, brandishing a knife at a girl and her friends before ordering the girl to leave the house with him. But as he was dragging the girl away, he tripped over a Super Nintendo CD-ROM console that the girls had been listening to music on. Davis fell into a dresser, sustaining a head injury that knocked him out long enough for the would-be victim to free her friends before summoning her parents for help. While her father kept the injured Davis at gunpoint, police were called and Davis was arrested.
When asked about the incident, the relieved father told reporters that he'd told his daughter several times not to keep the game device on the floor in the middle of her room because people might trip on it, but that he was glad that she hadn't listened to him this time. He was then asked about the ongoing video game violence controversy, and he replied that he didn't let his daughter play any of those violent games and that she enjoyed playing Carmen Sandiego. It seems that the Super Nintendo CD is catching criminals in both the virtual world and in the real world. This has been the NBC Nightly News. I'm Tom Brokaw, goodnight.”
-from the NBC Nightly News, October 4, 1993
