Raiders of The Lost Media - Thrill Kill

Hey everyone and welcome to another edition of my segment for this blog, Raiders of The Lost Media. And today I tell you the story about a controversial video game called Thrill Kill.

Part One - What is Thrill Kill?

Thrill Kill is an unreleased 1998 fighting video game. It was probably the most controversial video game what with it's rating of AO meaning Adults Only. It was the first game to ever receive this rating, not only for the violence that the game contained but for also containing a lot of sexual suggestive content. The game would've been available for the PlayStation.

Part Two - Plot

The story for Thrill Kill was ten damned souls who are the physical manifestations of either their mental illness or the very evil hidden within them have been sent to Hell. Marukka, the Goddess of Secrets has decided to use these damned ones for her own amusement. She comes up with a combative tournament and the prize is reincarnation. With said prize each character isn't fighting for glory, honor, or respect but the selfish reason of getting out of Hell in the hope of being reborn.

Part Three - Gameplay

Much like Mortal Kombat characters would fight to the death and whoever won would be able to kill their opponent with Thrill Kills. In order to get these the life bar or as it was dubbed in the game the "kill meter" would be full and with each attack the character's bloodlust would increase. Once bloodlust was at it's fullest the fighters would be given superhuman strength that would help them pull off their Thrill Kill, and in order to do that it all depended on what button the player pressed upon grabbing their competitor. But what really helped Thrill Kill stand out from Mortal Kombat was four players could fight each other at the same time in the same exact location, which other than the controversary surrounding it was a major selling point for the game.

Part Four - History

Development for Thrill Kill started in the late 90s. The studio that was creating the game was called Paradox Development (later changing it's name to Midway Studios - Los Angeles in 2004) and their publishers would've been Virgin Interactive, until 1998 when the business was acquired by Electronic Arts as part of EA's buyout of Westwood Studios. Because of this EA bought the publishing rights to the game thus becoming the new distributor for Thrill Kill.

At that point in time Thrill Kill was finished and all the creators had to do was wait for their game to be released.....until EA decided to cancel shipping for the game with only a few weeks to go! The reasoning for this was they didn't wait to release a "senselessly violent game" fearing it go ruin their good image. They also said the game was so offensive that they would not even attempt to sell the game nor would they let be released to other publishers.

Part Five - The Big Controversary

So what's the big controversary surrounding the game you might ask? Well a lot of the people would point to the violence because of course we always to violence in any form of media, but what made Thrill Kill truly controversial was there were a lot of sexual content in it. Some of which contained stuff related to BDSM and a lot of costumes that looked like fetish attire. And if that doesn't shock get a load of these names for special moves. Moves such as "Head Muncher", "Bitch Slap", "Going Down", and my personal favorite "Shallow This". I'm not making this up folks, these are actually moves in the game.

Part Six - Bootlegs

Now the game wasn't lost like some many other cancelled games. It turns former employees released the game to a group called T@STY who would go on to complete the game before releasing it onto the internet with various betas and bootlegs. All the files are still widely available through filesharing and playable emulators.

Part Seven - Videos

There's three videos I also go back to that talk about the game. My favorite being one from Maximilian Dood from his series Fighting History. You should really give these videos a watch.

 

 

Okay I'm all done here. Due come back on Thursday, Nov 5th for my Underrated Films review of Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Until then enjoy the rest of your day.