In 1993 the United States Senate was in a moral panic over Mortal Kombat and Night Trap. This episode traces how that pressure, along with retailers like Toys R Us pulling violent games from shelves, pushed fierce rivals including Nintendo and Sega to form the Entertainment Software Association and launch the Entertainment Software Rating Board on September 16, 1994. We look at how a system built as a shield against government regulation became one of the strongest self-regulatory codes in entertainment.

We go inside the rating process, from the detailed long form questionnaire and submitted footage to panels of at least three anonymous raters, and explain why an Adults Only rating functions as a commercial death sentence. We also cover the 2005 Hot Coffee scandal in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the 2011 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. ...