ARCADE LIMITS URGED : PLAN TARGETS VIDEO VIOLENCE.

Byline: Patrick McGreevy Daily News Staff Writer

Alarmed that minors have easy access to video games that depict graphic violence, City Council members called Friday for the city of Los Angeles to ban or regulate the availability of such games in public arcades.

In a motion submitted to the City Council for a vote next week, council members Rudy Svorinich Jr. and Nate Holden proposed that the city's chief legislative analyst and city attorney draft recommendations to ``limit the violence available to children'' in video arcades.

Svorinich said he is concerned that violent games may contribute to the growth of youth violence in society.

``Children are very impressionable,'' said the councilman from San Pedro. ``Children do what they see other people do. Whenever they see two people in a video game they are doing violence to one another.''

Svorinich said he would also be interested in restricting the sale to minors of violent video games for home use.

Holden agreed that video violence may lead to street violence by young people.

``Their whole mind-set has been affected and afflicted by these kind of angry games,'' Holden said.

However, a spokeswoman for Sega of America Inc. said the industry and parents, not government, should be allowed to work on keeping graphic violence from young children.

Sega spokeswoman Lee McEnany said the industry has adopted a rating system for home video games to help parents decide which games are appropriate for their children.

She said the city of Los Angeles should not try to regulate the content.

``We don't believe the games need to be censored,'' she said. ``We've done a very good job as an industry regulating ourselves.''

McEnany said her company does not make excessively violent arcade games, although the firm has been criticized by some members of Congress for distributing the home video game Night Trap, which features video clips of hooded terrorists stalking and killing scantily clad teen-age girls.

However, McEnany questioned Svorinich's assumptions that video games can cause violent behavior by young people.

``The kids understand this is make believe,'' she said.

Svorinich said there is already regulation of other forms of entertainment, noting the motion picture industry's rating system is set up to keep strong violence out of the hands of minors.

For Svorinich, who became a parent for the first time last year, the issue crystallized when he and his wife went to a movie recently.

``I saw two children playing a video game in the theater's arcade and this was one of the most gory, graphic, violent, disgusting games I've ever seen,'' Svorinich recalled, saying the children were about 8 years old.

``The game showed two warriors hacking each other to death with all the blood and gore and maiming that goes along with that,'' Svorinich said. ``I don't think that's healthy.''

The councilman said the city has power to regulate harmful material and behavior, noting the council has put limits on smoking, leaf blowers, pornography and the sale of spray paint cans to minors.

Just this week, the council agreed to study a proposal to place a curfew on the use of automatic teller machines.

Svorinich said he is open to discuss various options, ranging from banning violent video games from arcades to voluntary efforts by the game industry to use technology to make the machines unavailable to minors.

``This allows the industry the opportunity to step up to the plate and show civic mindedness,'' Svorinich said. ``I would think that the same people who tout the constitutional issues of this would work with the city government to come up with a solution.''