Yes indeed. 

Mortal Kombat changed everything. That is more significant than even Grand Theft Auto or any singular game on a Playstation system ever. Period. 

Every one of these "hyper violent M-rated" blockbusters has had its path paved before it thanks to Mortal Kombat. It's the only game to force the US Senate to intervene and laws/ratings to be changed. 

Yeah, There were single games that were mature. But they also already were on Nintendo systems too. Mortal Kombat is one of the first I think strongly pushing mature content. But the majority of games stayed cartoony and whacky. The major shift came in XBox which first pushed mature content in volumes and PS3 and X360 following in that steps.

Games were already getting violent. Mortal Kombat and DOOM were huge, huge blockbusters, we're talking like the GTA and Call of Duty of their time. It was inevitable that there would be a flood of violent video games from that point onwards. 

Even NINTENDO at the time was so smitten by the draw that they decided they had to have their hyper violent fighting franchise as such Killer Instinct was pushed to market. 

So if Nintendo was even on board with the trend, obviously every other developer would be too. Saying Sony or MS showed up and only then did developers start thinking abou violent games and they only made Mario clones before that is just silly crap. That's not how any of that happened. 

Let me just say again too ... Mortal Kombat was 

A. 

BIG. 

FUCKING.

DEAL. 

I remember walking into a 7-11 and seeing it for the first time and thinking "holy shit, this will change gaming", and sure enough it did. It opened a pandora's box that's never been closed since. There were lineups down the street just to play it once word caught on. After that what was allowed in games and what wasn't completely changed. 

I thought for fun I would post some 80s console games from NES & SEGA plus one arcade game that was ported to NES. Now I did censore one with a a  Mega man pastie. Now I know gore isn't always mature but for a couple of these games mainly Snatcher & Sweet home the content in the game with story and characters is very mature. Sweet Ho,e even had a film and has some pretty messed up stuff (also layed the blue print for Resident Evil also from Capcom)

Everything in these pics is well before Sony or MS entered the market up to over a decade. Even before Mortal Kombat. Now I didn't post Atari sex games where (NSFW)you rape a native woman or cum in womens mouths or spy on them in the show nude. Yes those are real Atari 2600 games. Oh and the blue robot is named Metal Gear,yup before MG itself. For Sweet home the skeleton you see is not a enemy or Zombie. It's the sad death of a man sacrificing himself to save two children.

I will warn you even tho I censored the boob this is gory stuff and possibly NSFW. Also can't figure out how to spoiler tag images if a mod could help thanks.

Nintendo been targeting that older audience since the 80s.

The NES, although the PS1 completely set a a new standard on how we viewed video games from just blips and overly simplistic plots/narrative structures in video games to full 3D environments, powerful story telling and taking the industry from just surviving to thriving. NES was the revival, and PS1 was the standard setter for consoles and even a lot of PC games.

More revisionist history.  Who do you think introduced their kids to gaming?  My grandfather had an Intellivision.  He didn't have any kids in the house, and he didn't buy it for the once a year trip we made across the country to visit him.  He played PGA Golf, PBA Bowling, Snafu, Dracula, & Microsurgeon on it all the time.  My dad had a Coleco Vision that Carnival was his favorite game on.  Years later he would pour hours into Sim City on SNES.  My Uncle had an NES of his own and whenever he would come visit, he would come to my room to show me how goood he was at Legend of Zelda.  The video game industry was not a kids only market in the 80's whether or not you can comprehend that.  Adults bought games and played with their kids.  Some got hooked on it more than others.  Those kids grew up still playing and became the adults buying games in the 90's that you somehow think would not have touched a video game if not for Play Station.  Sony copied Sega's "We're the console for adults" marketing strategy, priced their CD based console $100 cheaper than the Saturn and firmly pushed Sega out of the market (not without Sega's own missteps helping along the way admittedly).  Look at the jump from Sega Master System sales to Genesis sales.  The market was growing, and would have continued to grow whether or not Sony entered.  The only major difference would have been that Saturn would have had a better chance to succeed.  Saturn would have gotten Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, and all the other big 3rd party games that wanted the higher storage capability of CD over cartridge.  Sega had already been moving in that direction since Sega CD.

I don't remember the Magnavox Odyssey being a trendsetter like the Atari 2600 was ... (330000 units vs 30m units)

The people who claim PS1 made gaming a non kids hobby are having a laugh, games like Wolfenstein and so on were around since the early 80s over a decade before the PS1 even landed either some of you are having us on or you have an alternate history in your heads as even Mortal Kombat, Flashback, Metal Gear and Doom were there before PS1.

Gaming was already a non kids hobby beforehand, do not mistake successful for influential as PS1 just made gaming more mainstream focused.

I'm not bummed.  But, yeah, it deserves more credit. 

Like I've said before, as have others - it would be really interesting to know how the age of commenters impacts their thinking about which system is most significant.  Personally, I'm thinking that people have trouble recognizing the signifigance of Atari 2600 because it came and went before they were even a twinkle in their parents' eye.