The Thrill Is Gore : Kids Love the Grisly Video Games Adults Hate

Blond-haired Kim Crutchfield slides a video game into its player and gasps like a teeny-bopper ready to catch some gory monster-movie matinee.

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“This one is really great,” she says. “It’s called ‘Splatterhouse 3’. You get to see monsters eating people’s brains. It’s really gross. But it’s cool.”

At age 20, Crutchfield is an expert in the ghoulish realm of video-game violence. She knows the best games to see five-headed monsters with 16 dangling eyeballs lurking inside deserted mansions.

She knows all about juicy beheadings and co-eds hanging from meat hooks, about street fighters who plunge their hands into an adversary’s chest and yank out his spinal column and still-beating heart, holding up his severed head like some subhuman trophy.

Yeeeech.

She works at Game City, a video store on Ventura Boulevard. Every day, when she’s not studying child psychology at the College of the Canyons, Crutchfield is renting out video games, mostly to pre-pubescent boys--games with no-nonsense names like “Mortal Kombat,” “Night Trap” and “Total Carnage.”

When she’s not selling the games, she’s playing them on the video screen inside the store--watching the blood and guts fly as her opponents are decapitated.

And this video game expert thinks that California Atty. Gen. Daniel E. Lungren is, well, out on a wild limb since he announced this week that he wants to get violent games such as “Mortal Kombat” off store shelves.

Lungren said he was “issuing a strong consumer warning to the parents of California” about the violent nature of many video games on sale this Christmas season--an industry he says each year sells 73 million game cartridges worth $12 billion.

In a letter sent to several video game makers, Lungren called for less violence in their products. “I am appealing to your sense of corporate and personal responsibility,” he wrote. “Either remove the needless violence from the games or remove the games from the market.”

As part of their campaign against violence in video games, officials cite a sharp jump in youth crime: 119% in juvenile murder arrests nationwide between 1986 and 1991 as well as a 135% jump statewide during the same period.

“Continual exposure to violent images and themes in various entertainment may not be the direct cause of these atrocious acts,” Lungren said in the letter sent to 12 American video-game companies. “But interactive video games which promote violence do have a deadening, desensitizing impact on young, impressionable minds.”

State officials say that two-thirds of all video-game sales are made to children under the age of 15. “Unlike television or music, the interactive nature of the video games requires the player’s total involvement--the child is asked to actually participate in the violence,” Lungren wrote.

“The message conveyed to our children by these violent video games is that the only way to win and be successful and obtain power is to demean and destroy opponents while stripping away their humanity.”

Game company officials Wednesday denied that their products inspire or encourage violence among American youths.

“It’s just entertainment,” said Allyne Mills, a spokeswoman for Acclaim Entertainment of Oyster Bay, N. Y., maker of a home video version of “Mortal Kombat.”

In September, the company introduced its home version of the martial arts-inspired game. Since then, it has shipped 3 million copies and anticipates another million by year’s end. It became the best-selling home video game ever during its first week of sales.

“And in all that time, we’ve not heard of any negative occurrences as a result of someone playing our video game,” she said. “It’s a leap to think that some kid is going to play a video game and then bring a gun to school.”

Mills called Acclaim “the largest independent interactive entertainment software publisher in the world,” which sells games to be played on machines produced by the huge companies Nintendo and Sega.

“Mortal Kombat,” for example, has been manufactured in four different formats--home and portable versions for Sega as well as Super Nintendo and Nintendo’s GameBoy, a portable player.

On the Sega versions of the games, players entering a special code can make blood fly when their street fighter lands a punch or a kick--as well as pull an opponent’s heart from his body and rip off his head.

“There’s all sorts of moves like that,” Mills said. “It’s a martial arts game and it’s a fantasy. Obviously, not every entertainment product is for every customer. Just as there are ratings for movies, there are ratings for video games.

“ ‘Mortal Kombat’ has an MA-13 rating that appears on the box, which means we recommend it for an older audience, at least 13 to 15 years old,” Mills added.

The games cost between $34 and $45 for the portable version and $59 to $75 for the play-at-home cartridge.

Mills said the company has no plans to pull its games from the market.

“We have a consumer hot line where game counselors answer questions from players, and the response has been overwhelming,” she said. “So far, we’ve received over 250,000 calls and letters. People want to know how to execute moves. The complaints are hardly measurable.”

This spring, she added, Acclaim will introduce a new game based on a popular arcade attraction that will outstrip “Mortal Kombat” as the most popular video game in America.

“It’s called ‘NBA Jam’ and it’s hot, hot, hot,” she said. “It’s not violent at all. It’s a slam-dunking, hot-rodding basketball game. So much for the theory of kids lusting after just violent games.”

From her vantage point behind the counter of a video-game store, Kim Crutchfield says that video games--even violent ones--are harmless.

“I think this stuff is funny,” she said. “If you don’t like it, don’t look. It’s not going to hurt you.”

At least one mother, however, disagrees. She returned a version of “Mortal Kombat” that she said was too violent for her young son.

“The lady overreacted,” Crutchfield said. “I mean, it’s just a game. It’s no big deal. You see this kind of violence in the movies all the time. If you’re going to yank video games off the market, you should do it with movies too, don’t you think?”

As she talked, she played several games, including “Splatterhouse 3,” in which a muscular super-hero fights headless monsters, turning their bloodied bodies into a messy green mulch with his kicks and jabs.

Then there was “Night Trap,” a game on compact disc that showed intruders dressed in black masks and get-ups stalking a sorority house where screaming young women are murdered and hung on meat hooks unless the player saves them in time.

As Crutchfield played, 10-year-old Benjamin McCaully entered the store and looked over her shoulder.

“Oh, weird,” he said, as the blood flew on screen. “That’s cool.”

Benjamin was accompanied by 10-year-old Christopher Robinson and his dad, Brian--a child probation officer who didn’t like what he saw on the screen.

“I see all kinds of messed-up kids come through juvenile hall,” he said. “This stuff just cannot be good for them. It desensitizes them to the violence they see on the streets. With ugly scenes like the riots and all, we just don’t need to see any more of it on our televisions screens.”

Chris Robinson said his mother won’t let him buy “Mortal Kombat” because of the violence. So, does he think she has his best interests at heart?

“Yeah, a little,” he said. “I guess those games would change me if I played them all the time. My mom wants me to wait until I’m older, so I can decide for myself.

“Anyways, my dad always tells me that violence begets violence. And he’s a professional. He should know.”