Lungren Decries Video Game Gore : Entertainment: State attorney general, speaking at Tustin store, urges nonviolent alternatives.

TUSTIN —  It took Sean Williams just a few months to master the secret moves of Mortal Kombat, a video game that debuted to controversy because of its excessive blood and gore.

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And while Williams didn’t care for the violence, he liked the video game’s fast pace. But then the 16-year-old began to notice a difference in his friends who also played the game.

“They were becoming more violent,” Williams said. “Every now and then, they would do stupid moves, like act out the moves from Mortal Kombat. They were imitating the players, like they were throwing a spear through each other’s chests.”

Williams, who gave up the game, was among about 20 youngsters on hand Tuesday at the Game Arena in Tustin, where California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren made a plea to parents to stop purchasing video games with violent themes and to begin promoting other forms of entertainment.

“I want to encourage parents--the all-important consumers in this equation--to take proactive action to change the cultural influences being peddled to their kids,” Lungren said.

Lungren has waged a three-year public relations campaign against the producers of video games that he sees as promoting violence. On Tuesday, he visited the Game Arena, where board and card games are promoted as alternatives to video games.

“Unfortunately, many in the video game industry have continued to peddle needless and gratuitous violence, blood and gore to our young children,” he said.

“What is so troubling is that Mortal Kombat, in all its forms, is being marketed--sometimes in subtle ways and sometimes not so subtly--to children,” said Lungren, who noted that video game producers have begun to cross-promote their games with even more influential forms of entertainment. “Mortal Kombat--The Movie” opens at movie theaters Friday.

Lungren said that supporting the board game industry is more effective than picketing outside a movie theater and pointed to merchandise at the Game Arena as proof.

He praised “entrepreneurs [who] have taken a more socially responsible stance by promoting and offering alternatives to mind-numbing violent entertainment.”

Williams, who spends most of his summer days at the store, said that “forcing kids not to play violent video games is not such a great idea, but changing the games so they’re of a less violent nature would be a better idea.”

Timothy Moore, 14, disagrees. He plays regularly at the Fun ‘n’ Games arcade at the Mission Viejo Mall whenever he accompanies his mother there on shopping trips.

“I play plenty of video games--Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter--and I’m not a violent person,” Moore said.

“I turned out just perfect,” he added with a smile.

Moore’s friend Brad Weir considers himself a Mortal Kombat expert.

“I know that Mortal Kombat is just a game,” the 14-year-old said. “I play it all the time, and it’s fun.”

But what about the blood and gore? “C’mon, it’s red color on your computer screen. How real is that?” Weir said.