One of the best things about being an arcade-goer in the 80s and 90s was that you could never predict when the next big game was going to come along and suddenly set a whole new standard for arcade technology. You could never foresee the moment in which you'd turn a corner while browsing through an arcade and find a breathtaking, awe-inspiring new arrival quietly lying there in wait for you.
That was my experience with Mortal Kombat: It came from out of nowhere, and seeing it left me speechless.
I remember casually strolling through one of our local arcades on a rather quiet autumn day, at a time when business seemed unusually slow, and suddenly coming across an arcade machine I hadn't seen before. From what I could tell, it hadn't yet managed to garner the attention of the establishment's few scattered patrons, but it was certainly able to capture my interest in a hurry!
This new arrival was called "Mortal Kombat," and what it was displaying on its monitor absolutely blew me away: It was an attract-mode scene that was exhibiting a fight between the single most realistic-looking video-game game characters I'd ever seen!
I mean, seriously: They looked like real people! They even moved like real people do!
It was crazy.
"What kind of sorcery is powering this?!" I wondered as I looked on in awe and attempted to grasp the sheer enormity of the game's visual achievement. "How in the world do they make pixels work this way?!"
Mortal Kombat was, obviously, a fighting game, so it was impossible for me to not immediately begin comparing it to Street Fighter II, which was currently the genre's ruling king. The first thing I did was compare their visuals and determine that Street Fighter II's were "cartoony" and thus no match for this new arrival's (this was the start of my realistic-equals-superior phase, which was thankfully short-lived).
Outside of Street Fighter II, I'd never cared for one-one-one fighting games, and usually I had no interest in even sampling them, but that wasn't the case with Mortal Kombat, no. This one looked way too good to pass up!
So I eagerly popped a quarter into the machine's slot and did so with the intention of finding out what, exactly, this game was all about!
Because, you see, while the two games' control schemes were fairly similar (both featured punches and kicks of varying power), Mortal Kombat's wasn't always as accommodating of quarter- and half-circle joystick motions, which were just about the only inputs I knew. It had, from what I could sense, its own unique set of input combinations.
So when I was using the aforementioned characters, I had to try to execute special moves by randomly mashing buttons and waggling the joystick in all directions. And I had to hope that doing so would produce fighting moves of any kind.
As I was doing this, I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a few correct inputs, and I learned, specifically, how to execute some projectile attacks. My immediate favorite was Scorpion's hooking spear, which could be used to reel in faraway opponents and set them up for heavy strikes and throws! I loved the move for that reason and also because of how he emitted a gravelly, menacing cry of "Get over here!" as he executed it!
It was an instantly quotable expression!
It had, in particular, one very serious overarching issue: It offered no variety of fighting styles. All of the game's characters had the exact same physical attributes. They all walked and jumped the same way, they all had the same height and build, and they all shared the same basic move-set. They had unique special moves, sure, but realistically that didn't really do much to truly differentiate them from each other.
As a result, the game's action felt homogenized, and the fighters felt entirely interchangeable.
What this did was make me miss Street Fighter II's diverse set of fighting styles and its varied selection of uniquely functioning martial artists, street brawlers, boxers, wrestlers, and whatever the hell Dhalsim was supposed to represent ("He's a yoga practitioner," I'd think whenever I was trying to slot him, "but I'm not sure that engaging in the practice turns you into a fighter with stretchy-arms!").
And that didn't seem right to me. "Winning should require genuine effort," I thought.
I mean, I understood that the game was likely made with multiplayer action in mind, but still it spoke poorly of the game's design that it allowed you to mindlessly spam your way to victory.
Otherwise, I didn't like that you had to hold down a button to block. Having to do so added an unnecessary level of complication to the action (I always had trouble with games that required large numbers of inputs), and my sense was that the designers assigning blocking to a button was done merely for the purpose of creating a superficial differentiation between their game and Capcom's.
It just seemed like a pointless deviation from the standard. Street Fighter II's system of simply holding left or right, in the direction opposite of the one you were facing, was so much easier and more natural-feeling.
Honestly, I didn't mind that it did. My problem, rather, was that it didn't follow the blueprint closely enough and thus fell well short of being what it needed to be first and foremost: a top-quality fighting game. It chose to eschew some of the newly established genre's most critical elements and consequently turned out to be merely average.
My feeling was that it could have borrowed a lot more from Street Fighter II and still have been an exciting an alternative Sadly, though, that's not what it did. It settled for differentiation through omission, and its doing so only served to make it feel like a lesser game.
I mean, I continued to be drawn to Mortal Kombat because I was hopelessly enamored with its realistic-looking visuals and amazing animation, but the fact was that I didn't actually enjoy playing it. And, I figured, if its graphics were the only aspect that I truly cared about, then I'd be happier simply watching other people play it.
That way, I could have the best of both worlds: I could derive enjoyment from Mortal Kombat by marveling at it as an observer and consequently save my quarters for games that I actually enjoyed playing!
(At the time, I wasn't aware of the game's top selling point: the "Fatalities"--finishing moves that you could use to kill your opponents in extreme ways. Had I known that the Fatalities existed, I might have felt inclined to continue experimenting with the game just to observe these moves and find out how gruesome they were. But since the game's cabinet made no mention of them and none of my CPU opponents ever used one of them on me, I remained unaware of their existence.
Really, you'd think that the designers would have programmed it to where the CPU characters prioritized such moves and did so for the purpose of advertising them to players and creating intrigue around them. Even seeing one of them in motion would have made spectators wonder, "What was that awesome finishing move, and how can I trigger it?" and resultantly aroused their curiosity and enticed them to drop in a quarter.)
I was, I knew, witnessing the start of a cultural phenomenon.
At times, I tried to become a part of it and sincerely get into the spirit: I'd mix in with the pack, get on a line, and await an opportunity to throw down with a human competitor, but when I'd finally get a chance to play, I'd quickly lose interest because the fight would inevitably devolve into a contest to see who could more effectively spam sweeping kicks and uppercuts. I'd remember that the game lacked a true tactical element, and thus I'd be reminded of why I moved away from it originally.
It didn't help that one credit cost 50 cents, which was too high a price for a game that offered such limited value. (And I couldn't help but take that price as a laughable suggestion that the game's action was somehow twice as good as Street Fighter II's, which you could experience for a single quarter. "It's not even close to being that," I thought.)
So I simply wasn't able to get into Mortal Kombat. It just wasn't my kind of game.
Still, as it was with Street Fighter II, it was definitely a huge deal to me when Nintendo Power announced that Mortal Kombat would be coming to the SNES. Before then, I never would have imagined that the console was powerful enough to reproduce the game's "realistic graphics" (I had yet to realize that the "digitization" and "motion-capture" techniques spoken of in the magazine had been in use for years and weren't, as I thought, born from some newly developed form of advanced sorcery).
That the accompanying screenshots depicted a game whose visuals looked remarkably similar to the arcade original's was incredible to me. I almost couldn't believe what I was seeing!
Despite my not being a particularly big fan of the game, it was hard for me to not get caught up in the hype surrounding its transition to the SNES. I was always an active participant in conversations about why the game's upcoming console debut was such a monumental event in gaming history, and I would have regular discussions with friends and classmates about what its arrival meant for the SNES and how its presence in the console space would impact the broader Street Fighter II-Mortal Kombat war.
I was in the camp that argued that Street Fighter II was the superior game, but those of us who shared that opinion seemed to be a growing minority. Because the simple fact was that Mortal Kombat's brand of ultra-violence (particularly the type that was on display in its gruesome Fatalities) was becoming more and more popular with kids in my age group, and for the majority of them, extreme violence trumped quality of gameplay by a wide margin.
So when I'd argue that Street Fighter II was better because it had a variety of fighting styles and strong tactical action, few wanted to hear it. Its characters couldn't rip each other's heads off or tear each other in half, so it was an inferior game.
That's how most kids felt.
I went the cheaper route instead and rented the game from Blockbuster a bunch of times. I did so initially for the sake of curiosity and specifically to see if the SNES truly was powerful enough to reproduce the arcade game's visuals (and it appeared that it did!); and subsequently because I wanted to learn more about the game's admittedly intriguing storyline elements (each of its characters, much like Street Fighter II's, had a personal agenda: Johnny Cage wanted to prove that action stars weren't fake, for instance, while the undead Scorpion was seeking vengeance against the Lin Kuei clan, which was responsible for his murder) and its Fatalities, the majority of which I'd never seen.
I was more interested in the latter, honestly, and really eager to witness the many ways in which the game's characters went about tearing each other apart and dismembering one another. The decapitations and the ripping out of hearts didn't traumatize me at all because they were completely over the top and didn't make any sense from a physics standpoint (I would just shake my head and chuckle at them), but I remember being somewhat disturbed by any Fatality that would result in a fighter being reduced to a skeleton and particularly any one in which the victim would scream helplessly after being deprived of flesh.
The reason that it bothered me so much was that I had an emotional hang-up about the idea of a person's existence--a man or a woman's life and all of the experiences that it entailed--being ended by someone who wanted to go as far as to callously rob his victim of all form. Someone's skeletal frame being exposed in this manner was very conceivable to me and immediately evoked the same types of unsettling mental images that would form in my head when I'd read about history's tyrants and the ways in which they tortured and killed people.
It was too close to real.
And as I watched the Fatalities play out, I could only conclude that the game's creators were a bunch of sickos who probably met with Shadowgate's developers once a week for lunch and engaged in idea-sharing sessions. There was seriously something wrong with this people, I thought.
(I somehow failed to notice, though, that the SNES version lacked blood and that the fighters were instead discharging sweat. I didn't learn until later on that Nintendo of America had tampered with the game's development and demanded that change.
I was honestly puzzled by the company's behavior. It didn't make any sense to me. "They forbid blood," I questioned, "but they're fine with people brutally slicing each other in half?!"
I saw it as yet more proof that the company's censorship policies were ridiculously warped.)
When I was playing the home version, I leaned toward characters like Scorpion, Sub-Zero and Sonya because they had the easiest-to-use, most-abusable special moves (like the spear-toss, the teleport punch, the leg grab, and the immobilizing ice ball) and the only Fatalities that I could successfully execute. They were, for that reason, the only characters with whom I could perform well and actually win consistently.
Though, honestly, my being fond of the Lin Kuei guys probably had more to do with a strange inclination that I had (the same one that I talked about in my Rolling Thunder piece): When it came to my toys and games, I had an obsession with characters who were members of groups whose uniforms came in multiple color-shades and served to denote the individual members' ranks (Geldra's hooded minions and G.I. Joe's Cobras, for example).
Because I was OCD-afflicted and felt that people and things being arranged in groups according to color and type was one of the best expressions of orderliness. And also because all of the different color-schemes were attractive-looking and visually interesting!
So I probably would have been drawn to Scorpion and Sub-Zero even if they lacked abusable specials!
The best thing about becoming intimately familiar with Mortal Kombat in the home environment was that I could take my knowledge with me to the arcade and impress arcade-goers by executing Fatalities, which was apparently an elusive skill.
"Woah! How'd you do that?" someone would always ask me any time I'd execute one of them.
And being asked that question would always make me feel as though I was part of an exclusive club! I possessed, in the eyes of many, a special skill that few others were capable of exhibiting!
I still wasn't a big fan of how the game played, no, but I was able to find joy in teaching other players what I knew and helping them to understand the game's intricacies.
And that was about the limit of Mortal Kombat's value to me. Once I'd seen all of its endings--how the character's individual stories culminated--and witnessed all of its Fatalities, I felt as though I'd exhausted all of the game's worth.
That's how I remember Mortal Kombat: It was a game whose audacious shock-value tactics stole all of your attention and thus distracted you from the fact that its action was repetitive and mundane and that it wasn't anywhere close to being in Street Fighter II's league.
Street Fighter II was the clear winner of that battle. It was easily the superior game.
The quality comparison between them was, to put it bluntly, less "Marvel vs. DC" and more "Star Wars vs. Homeboys in Outer Space."
And that'll forever be my stance on the issue.
I played a fair amount of Mortal Kombats 2 and 3 and felt that they had equally limited appeal. I had similar experiences with both of them: I saw all of the Fatalities, Animalities, Babalities and Friendships, and then I promptly moved on to better games. They played almost identically to the original, which is to say that their action was also repetitive and mundane, and consequently they couldn't hold my interest for very long.
If anything, I liked experimenting with the new Lin Kuei characters: Reptile, Rain, Smoke and Noob Saibot. I enjoyed playing around with their admittedly cool special moves and trying to determine which ones were the most fun to use and abuse!
I prioritized Noob Saibot, of course, because, at the time, I was in my darkness-is-cool phase. Though, I wasn't entirely sure if he was officially a member of the clan or if it was the case that his existence was merely the result of Midway's designers throwing out randomly created palette-swapped characters just to see if they could get away with it. My guess was that he was a "rogue member" who left the clan because he didn't want to be controlled.
I also took a liking to the now-playable Shang Tsung, who had that alluring transformation ability. I largely wasted it, though, because I'd only use it to transform into Scorpion or Sonya, since I preferred their special moves (and since their Fatalities were the easiest to execute).
"Then why didn't you just save the time and pick either one of them instead, you silly goof?" you ask while putting your face close to the monitor and squinting your eyebrows.
I don't know, man.
Leave me alone.
In all my life, I've only owned a single series game: Mortal Kombat Trilogy. I bought it out of desperation during one of the N64's drought periods. And I immediately regretted the purchase because I lost a lot of money on it (N64 games tended to be pricey) and I didn't have have anyone to play the game with, as I'd since lost contact with all of my childhood friends.
So I had no choice but to find alternative ways to extract value from it. I did that, mainly, by starting up a project: a personalized guide in which I charted out all of the characters' attacks and provided detailed descriptions of their finishing moves. Though, by the time I finished collecting the information, I had little use for it because I no longer had any interest in playing the game.
And that was indicative of my history with the Mortal Kombat series: I'd have fun with one of its entries for a day or two, and then I'd toss it aside and never return to it. No matter how hard I tried, I could never find any lasting appeal in it.
Trilogy was the last Mortal Kombat game that I played, and it represented my last real exposure to the series. I haven't followed it closely since then.
Now don't get me wrong: I'm not trying to downplay the Mortal Kombat series' success or ignore the contributions that it's made to the fighting-game genre and video games in general, no. I certainly recognize that it's had a massive impact on the medium. It's helped to shape every industry sector in which it's appeared (arcade, console and PC), and it's created tide-shifting competition wherever it's gone.
When it was at its peak, it was a serious contender for the fighting-game throne, and its threat was so significant that it put Capcom in a position in which it had to pick up its game and fiercely compete for market share on every platform on which Street Fighter II was available.
Also, it irrevocably shaped the 16-bit war. It became fodder for Nintendo and Sega, each of which used the mainstream perception of the series' violent content as a tool to negatively frame the other's image and gain brand supremacy.
And it pissed off enough industry-hating mothers, politicians, and religious types to prompt huge court battles and congressional intervention and a moral panic that resulted in the creation of the bureaucratic Entertainment Software Rating Board (otherwise known as the League of Distinguished Killjoys).
It changed the entire world.
From my perspective, it was an instrument of change and destruction. On one hand, it was a major player in the industry's shift toward mature-rated content, which many people saw as a positive development, but on the other hand, it left some unremovable stains on the medium and helped to ruin Nintendo's reputation. 20-plus years later, the company still hasn't recovered from the wounds inflicted upon it by Mortal Kombat's negative social influence and Sega's damaging marketing efforts.
I should despise Mortal Kombat for its role in creating such an environment, but I don't. Because I understand that Nintendo was going to have to atone for its shortsighted policies sooner or later, even if it was at a time when it had the moral high ground, and I realize that Mortal Kombat wasn't actually responsible for the company's fall. All it did, rather, was accelerate a process that was already ongoing, much like it accelerated an underlying demand for ultra-violent content.
I don't lament the fact that the industry went in that direction, no, but I do despise the attitudes that the period in question produced. You see such attitudes on display even today. You still come across people who believe that video games should be presented in one way and one way only. They should be realistic, gritty and blood-filled, those people will say, and if they're not, then they're for kids and not worth playing.
If there's a lesson to be learned from Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat, it's that the market has plenty of room for wildly different interpretations of the same idea and that there's an abundance of opportunity for the exploration and proliferation of many divergent themes and visual styles.
Having a variety of options is a great thing. It opens up the opportunity to expand your interests and grow as a person.
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