#technocop

Technocop

🎮 TechnoCop (Mega Drive)

Complete Gameplay: https://youtu.be/Y0Zfe5-L7Ig

When it comes to videogames, you can usually judge a game by its cover and understand that serious gun-toting dudes will bring the blood. Once in a while, however, we’ll find that the greatest gore comes in some of the strangest packages.

With Halloween right around the corner, Laser Time is feeling the season as we’ll have lists, streams, podcasts, and commentaries covering some of the best horror-themed videogames, shows, and movies ever made. Sometimes, though, the nastiest violence takes you by surprise as the most unassuming games will get gory without any prior warning. As a kid of the 80s or 90s, these games were the diamonds in the rough that you could sneak into your collection while your parents clucked their tongues at the Mortal Kombats and Grand Theft Autos of the world. Some snuck by in a pre-ESRB world while others required an explanation at the Electronics Boutique counter, but all of these games brought the blood in some unexpected ways.

6 – ZOMBIES ATE MY NEIGHBORS (GENESIS)

When it comes to games that are considerably more violent on the Sega Genesis compared to the SNES, there’s more than just the original Mortal Kombat. With its pre-teen stars goofy weapons (like a water pistol and six-pack of soda), and 1950’s pulp horror feel, Zombies Ate My Neighbors sounded like a lighthearted action game that subverted the usual violent shooter. On the Super Nintendo, it delivered on that promise, but the uncensored Sega Genesis version made things a few shades darker. Darker RED!

For starters, the game over screen painted a gorier end for these ghoul-hunting kids as the end of your game was punctuated with a screen covered in blood (SNES kids had purple so they could pretend they were oozed at Nickelodeon Studios). There was also a character who carried around severed heads in the Genesis version who was changed into a puppeteer on the Super Nintendo. While these might not sound like super-gory scenes, it was pretty substantial for Nintendo-loving gamers who assumed ZAMN was always squeaky-clean.

5 – TRUE LIES

True Lies was far from G-rated in theaters, but we didn’t expect the videogame to exceed it in some regards. While we were denied the 16-bit equivalent of Jamie Lee Curtis’ striptease, LJN made the game adaptation far more violent. How so? Civilian kills.

While there’s already enough violence traversing the stages and taking down terrorists, you can even kill the innocent workers trapped in the middle of a firefight. You can even murder two bystanders before receiving any punishment from digital Tom Arnold, who will make Arnold Schwarzenegger restart the stage.

4 – DOOM TROOPERS

The ESRB is far from perfect; just about every Halo game has been tagged with a Mature rating despite the complete lack of (human) blood and relatively sanitary alien deaths, while the Naughty Bear series gets a Teen rating because the brutal murders only have fluff spilled on the ground. One of their earlier mis-ratings came in the form of Doom Troopers, a Contra-esque shooter that got a teen rating despite every enemy turning into a Puddle of Bludd and having their head asplode thanks to some hot lead injections from the eponymous cops.

It’s a mystery how this game didn’t score an M, but a few guesses could be the cartoony nature of the visuals, the franchise’s past as a harmless card game, or perhaps some ESRB dingus never got around to actually shooting anything in this run-and-gun game. Regardless of the reason, plenty of kids got to enjoy some extra-violent gunplay a few years before gaming watchdogs would appreciate back in the mid-90s.

What’s to come on the next page? How about an anti-drug gore-fest and a JRPG with blood geysers?!

3 – TECHNOCOP

With a name that recalls Robocop, you’d expect a violent action romp, but Technocop manages to push the envelope further than Paul Verhoeven’s creation. In addition to killing plenty of perps, Technocop can bring his brand of violence to civilians, who expire in explosions of blood. The populace includes innocent children, which puts Technocop in a spectrum of awfulness all its own.

That’s right, in 1990, a full decade before Grand Theft Auto III let you murder everything except children, Technocop had straight-up kid killing. Technocop reportedly had a warning label on the cover mentioning its violent content, but any savvy adolescent could cover that with their hand when passing the box to a clueless parent.

2 – NARC

Winners don’t do drugs, but they sure do enjoy some ultra-violence. While not part of any official anti-drug campaign, this Midway hit made every villain a drug user. The protagonists (Max Force and Hit Man) had a sports car and plenty of firearms to end the lives of abusers and pushers, who would end the baddies’ trip in a torrent of gunfire – bet they didn’t think that was too groovy.

After hitting the arcades, Narc went on to the Nintendo Entertainment System (among other platforms) where kids likely conned their parents into buying the “anti-drug game” full of death and mayhem. Hopefully some of those kids felt the hard hand of karma as adults when they bought the 2005 reboot and slogged through a boring open-world crime sim.

1 – VANDAL HEARTS

JRPGs tend to skimp on the violence, what with all the angst and magic they need to fit into 40 hours. This was doubly true back in early 1997 before Final Fantasy VII introduced grittier elements to the worlds of swords and spells. The M-rating aside, a look at Vandal Hearts’ box doesn’t seem to forecast a blood-letting battle ahead, just a couple bloodless swipes at a scary dragon (there are no dragons to slay in this game, by the way).

The first time you land a killing blow in this tactical role-playing game, you might be taken aback by the geyser of blood that erupts from your now-deceased foe. Similar to a Mortal Kombat Fatality where extra skulls and limbs fly off an opponent, there seems to be more blood exploding from enemy soldiers than the human body can hold, but that’s easily ignored due to the awesome sight that happens with every vanquished foe. Vandal Hearts also deserves mention for beating FFVII to the profanity punch as there’s a single utterance of “SHIT!” when a character is kidnapped late into the campaign. Kids of the 1990s likely said that same swear multiple times upon discovering this secretly violent Konami-published game.

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What do you think of these bloody games mate? Are there any surprisingly violent games from your youth you remember? Sound off about them below!