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Mortal Kombat II (1994) — the Friday Nintendo let the blood back in, and the Genesis version still outsold it
Episode 52 of “Today Is Release Day”: Mortal Kombat II. The home versions arrived in North America on Friday, September 9, 1994 — exactly thirty-two years ago today. Nintendo had stripped the blood out of the first game's SNES port; this time it allowed the blood and the Fatalities. The Genesis version still sold more in the United States. And only the Japanese release had its blood recoloured green.
Torneko's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon (1993) — A Dragon Quest Shopkeeper Wears Rogue's Cruelty
On September 19, 1993, Chunsoft released Torneko's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon for the Super Famicom, smuggling the punishing design of 1980's Rogue into Japanese living rooms wearing the face of a beloved Dragon Quest shopkeeper. The Mystery Dungeon lineage it launched is still running today — as of December 2024, playable on Steam in Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island.
The Lost Vikings (1993) — A Classic of Cooperative Puzzling, Three Bodies Moved One at a Time
Released in 1993 by Silicon & Synapse (later Blizzard Entertainment) through Interplay, The Lost Vikings is a cooperative puzzle in which the player controls three differently-skilled vikings one at a time and must lead all of them to the exit. In Japan it was distributed by T&E Soft under the title Viking no Daimeiwaku. This essay re-reads its era, the quality of thought its three-way cooperation produced, and the lineage that runs from Lemmings and Gobliiins to today's cooperative puzzles.
