In December 1993, the US Senate put Mario and Sonic on trial. Led by Senator Joe Lieberman, politicians launched a moral crusade against the video game industry, citing two games as evidence of the corruption of America's youth: the bloody fighting game "Mortal Kombat" and the B-movie vampire trap "Night Trap." They threatened federal regulation if the industry didn't police itself. "The Senate vs. The Joystick" takes you inside the courtroom drama where executives from Nintendo and Sega, instead of uniting, turned on each other. Nintendo, projecting a "family-friendly" image, happily threw Sega under the bus for allowing violent games on their Genesis console. This book details the cultural panic that led to the creation of the ESRB rating system (the E, T, and M symbols on every game box today). It explores the hypocrisy of the hearings—where politicians admitted they had never actually played the games—and how the controversy ironically fueled the sales of the very violent games they tried to ban. It is the origin story of gaming growing up.