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Mortal Kombat is a 1992 fighting game by Midway Games. It was popular because
of its realistic, digitized graphics mixed with bloody and brutal action. This
differentiated it from the hand-animated, more cartoon-like graphics of competing games like Street Fighter II.
Overview
Mortal Kombat was developed as a reaction to the popular Capcom game
Street Fighter II, with simpler controls and digitized graphics. Some say the game's graphic violence was gratuitous, and
was only included in order to generate a public outcry and controversy that would increase publicity for the game.
Although highly controversial, the mix of realism and violence propelled Mortal Kombat to the height of popularity. An
example of the game's innovations was the Fatality, a special finishing move executed against a beaten
opponent to kill them in a gruesome fashion. For example, one character would grasp a defeated, wobbling opponent by the head,
then rip the head and spine out of the opponent's body, which then crumpled to the ground in a pool of blood. Such move may be
performed only after two successful rounds of fighting, and generally annihilates the opponent player.
Another aspect of gameplay that became a recurring element in games that followed was the so-called "juggle", where a series of moves could be
executed against an opponent who was kept in mid-air by the force of the attacks, and who hence had no defense against further
attacks as long as the "juggle" could be maintained.
Legacy
Midway created five sequels for the arcade and home systems, each one bloodier, more brutal, and stranger than the last.
Mortal Kombat 4 brought the series into 3D, replacing the
digitized fighters of the previous games with polygon models, while Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance was the first in the series to skip arcades altogether
and go directly to consoles, a symptom of U.S. arcade market's dramatic decline. The newest installment in the series,
Mortal Kombat: Deception, was released for
the Xbox and PlayStation 2
platforms in October 2004 (with a GameCube version scheduled for 2005). Following a gameplay style very
similar to the one found on Deadly Alliance, Deception also features several new gaming modes, such as a
Tetris-like puzzle and a chess game, as
well as a suicidal finishing move for each character, usually performed to prevent the opponent from doing a fatality.
Finishing moves in later games included the Animality (turning into animal to violently finish off the opponent), the
Brutality (decimating an opponent into pieces with a long combination of hits or combo), the Friendship (offering one's
opponent a token of friendship), and the Babality (transforming the opponent into a baby). The Babality and Friendship moves were
created as a jokey "non-violent" finishing move, a swipe at the US Congressional Investigation for Violence in Videogames who
came down harshly on the Mortal Kombat games. Purists, fonder of the earlier style, were upset by the introduction of such
finishing moves, yet Mortal Kombat's "purely violent" and dark gameplay was once again implemented after the release of
Mortal Kombat 4.
Throughout the series, the game was noted for its simplicity of controls and the exotic special moves it featured.
Easter eggs and secrets
Mortal Kombat was among the first titles in the beat 'em up genre
to include secret characters, secret games, and other Easter eggs. Mortal Kombat 3, for example, including a
hidden game of Galaxian. In the 1992
original, by executing a Fatality when fighting on The Pit stage (the bridge) without taking any damage or pressing the block
button in the winning round, the player could fight Reptile, a merge between the Sub-Zero and Scorpion characters. In Mortal Kombat II, Reptile would be developed into a full
character with his own special moves and would be available from the outset. Carrying on in this tradition, if the player won 50
consecutive fights he/she would come face to face with the black ninja Noob
Saibot, which originates from the last names of the lead designer John Tobias and lead programmer Ed Boon backwards. It was pioneering ideas like these that has made Mortal Kombat one of the
most memorable of the beat 'em up genre. Another Easter egg would appear after landing a strong upper-cut against the opponent.
The face of Dan Forden, a lead
programmer, would appear in the lower-right corner of the screen and shout, "Toasty!". This was also a cue to enter a code to
reach a secret character.
Another Easter egg actually came about from a glitch. In the original arcade version of the first Mortal Kombat, the
game would sometimes present problems due to a bug and mix two characters together. This would usually be two of the ninja
characters, resulting in a ninja in a semi-red suit. The computer would display his name
as "ERMAC", short for "error macro". As word spread, people thought they had found a secret character. That wasn't the case, yet
in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, it was decided
to make an actual Ermac character. Also, glitch characters occurred in the very
rare instance of a player reaching Reptile on an endurance level (rare due to the fact that not only did one have to have the
condition's set for being able to reach Reptile, but then one was required to beat two characters without being hurt or using the
block button on the harder levels). Once Reptile was defeated, the second character would jump down. As reptile used a special
green colour pallette, the following fighter (a normal fighter) would be a jumble of the characters original colours plus
Reptiles green colours.
However, one of the most fascinating elements of Mortal Kombat was completely unplanned and out of the programmers
hands. Following the release of Mortal Kombat II, a myth culture was created around the game. The most famous one is the
Goro myth. In the first game, Goro was a four armed monster that acted as a miniboss to the game's main boss, Shang Tsung. Many fans were convinced that
Goro was hidden somewhere in Mortal Kombat II and many were obsessed with finding him. The UK's GamesMaster magazine (also a popular
TV Show on Channel 4) received numerous letters asking about where to find Goro.
Much searching was done, both by fans and the computer game press, until in 1995
GamesMaster concluded, "We are positive Goro isn't to be found in Mortal Kombat II, we are positive he would have
been found by now."
A similar non-existent hidden character was that of "Torch". In Mortal Kombat II there is a location called The Bridge
II. Far in the background of this stage there is another bridge across the chasm. Standing stationary on this bridge are two
fighters: one of them has been proported to be Johnny Cage or Liu Kang. The other is a humanoid character that seems to be made of flame. As these two
characters never move, it's been suggested that the "other fighter" is actually a funeral pyre. Finally, there is a cloaked
figure who floats outside the window during fights in The Tower in MK2. This character was dubbed Cloak by fans, and was
assumed to be a hidden character. The character of Torch, who had been very popular with fans, eventually showed up as a playable
character in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. Unfortunately, due to trademark issues, he had to be called Blaze instead of
Torch. Despite Cloak's popularity with fans, he has never shown up as a fighter (playable or otherwise) in any Mortal
Kombat game.
Movies and television
Mortal Kombat was adopted into two major motion pictures,
Mortal Kombat, and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Both had a poor
critical reception at the time they were released, but the first movie was a major financial success, eventually grossing over
$100,000,000 and starting the Hollywood career of Paul W. S.
Anderson. A third movie is said to be in pre-production as confirmed officially, and will be released some time between
2005 and 2006.
The franchise also sparked two television series, the animated Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm and the live-action Mortal Kombat:
Conquest. Neither series ran for more than one season.
Ports
From a marketing perspective, the 1993
launch of Mortal Kombat for video game consoles by
Acclaim was probably the largest launch of a video game
up until that time. A "Mortal Monday" television campaign featured a flood of television advertisements, which were unusual for
video games at that time, and all four home versions of the game were made available for sale on the same date.
When the first game in the series was released for the Super
Nintendo in North America, Nintendo of America held a strict "Family Friendly" policy towards the content of the games released on
their systems, this included the removal of graphic violence, religious imagery and themes; mention of death, sexual themes, and
other sensitive subjects. Henceforth, the first Mortal Kombat game on the SNES had the blood recolored gray in order to
pass it off as sweat, and the various Fatality moves were graphically changed to be less gruesome. Although it was graphically
superior and had better controls than the Sega Genesis/Sega Megadrive version, the SNES version sold very poorly due to its sanitation
of the game's violent content. After this, Nintendo began to concede on their policies, and the SNES version of Mortal Kombat
II was released with the violence fully intact with a warning label on the game's packaging. Nintendo later allowed other
publishers to make games with sensitive subject material following the advent of various video game content rating systems. In
Japan, the game was also released for the Japanese version of the SNES, the Super Famicom.
Ports:
Sequels
There was also a separate game starring the character of Sub-Zero called
Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. This was a platform game rather than a fighting game.
Another interesting Mortal Kombat game is Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, which is an adventure game that was originally supposed to star Jax and Sonya. Due to
Midway cutting a lot of corners after John Tobias left, Sonya wasn't in the game. Another game, Mortal Kombat:
Shaolin Monks, has been confirmed for release in March of 2005.
Mortal Kombat crossovers
Mortal Kombat has also been the focus of several extremely popular modifications, including hacks to the original games
(MK2: Kintaro's Vulgar Version), and the integration of artwork and audio into other game engines, including but not
limited to the Quake engine (Mortal Kombat Quake TC).
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