30 Years of Mortal Kombat: A Retrospective Thread
 

So 30 years ago today, we were introduced to the phenomenon that is Mortal Kombat. From humble beginnings to congressional hearings to reboots and everything in between, this franchise has been a staple of the gaming world. That being said, I figured we use this thread to share our stories, memories, rants, praises, and whatever else comes to mind regarding the Mortal Kombat series. What were the highs and lows in your mind? Was there a particular moment in time while playing one of the games that was so memorable that it stuck with you all these years? How would you rank each title? How did you even get involved with the series? Let's honor these 30 years here and now with a bit of reflection, shall we?

The first time I played Mortal Kombat was inside a food lion. I usually would play wrestlefest but they removed it to put Mortal Kombat in. I played as Johnny Cage and eon a few matches despite not knowing what I was doing. Wouldn't have much experience with it until it hit home consoles and a friend had it on Sega Genesis and put the blood code in. I remember being amazed and laughing at Kane fatality because it looked like he took a bite of the Heart he just ripped out and threw it on the ground.

My mom somehow managed to get me MK2 about 2 weeks before the game released. The funny story about this was we had some kid who was full of shit saying he was working on the third game himself which you know couldn't be real and that he has MK2 at home like 2 months before release. I walked into my second grade class that day and threw the instruction booklet on his desk.

The movie had it own special memory as well. The night the movie released I made my dad take me to see it. I didn't live with him and generally would see him every other weekend. He hated the movie, the next morning there was a creek where a friend and his cousin was playing, there was another girl who lived in that complex. I started yelling all the Johnny Cage one liners, but kind of failed to the experience of seeing my first real life naked girl as she decided to skinny dip in that creek.

I never own Three and instead got Trilogy, I remember cleaning the bathroom so they would get me the steregy guide for it. Was so worth it to learn all those fatalities and friendships.

Never owned 4 or Mythologies despite playing them. This would be kind of around the time that I got out of the series and began to focus on wrestling games, for most this was the down years of the series and kind of lost fans.

Deadly Alliance came out which I hardly knew about before hand because that came out around the time of Vice City, WWE Smackdown Shut your mouth and Resident Evil Zero releasing that had my attention so Deadly Alliance threw under the radar. I think I really only knew about this one because my then girlfriend favorite band was Adema and they did the song Immortal for th game. It was a step back in the right direction for the series. Still shook that they literally killed the Chosen One Liu Kang in the intro for this one.

Deception I loved and despite it's weird and weak roster was a great game, definitely the best of the original Xbox/PS2/GameCube era of games. I ended up getting the hard cover version that had Sub Zero on it from Toy R Us before going to see Blade Trinity. The Blade series might of died with that movie but this series was still going.

Also totally realized I forgot to mention Mortal Kombat Annihilation. I hope you can forgive me for that. I try to forget it exists.

Think the first one I played was MKII, then I heard Shang Tsung was the boss of the first game and was all like "Oh really?" and got "drawn into the story" a bit.... played the first at a friend's house but didn't like it as much due to the lack of characters and simplicity compared to the second.....

Then had the third one and enjoyed it too..... and that's all that I have played.

Really enjoyed the movie as a kid too. I got Robin Shou's (Liu Kang) autograph at some trade show thing.

As much as Helmsphere wants to forget it, I also remember enjoying Mortal Kombat Annihilation as a kid.... not as much as the first, but I still watched it a bunch of times.

But lock jaw we don't want to remember it.

Lock Jaw: Too bad for you, you will die.

Also lock jaw.

I remember that movie and IT WAS GLORIOUS!

One time my best friend was playing against his neighbor and somehow got to the Reptile fight (I don't remember how to do it) and told the kid not to touch anything. Of course he did so my friend said "you won't land another hit" and proceeded to rack up double flawless victories on every stage and wound up fighting Reptile anyway.

Love the movies too. So fun.

(I'm really bad at mortal kombat but I love one of them I had for PS3 - MK 9 maybe?)

Arcade machine of MK2 in a Hucks convenience store. I love the series. The mythology is outstanding. I play every MK because these characters are some of the best in the medium. Mechanically its never be top of the class but its always been about other things.

And the 96 film is the best vg movie ever

Armageddon I got a few days after release, enjoyed the story mode and create a fighter was ok. The lack of unique fatalities made me move past it rather quickly.

I didn't play DC v Mk until like 4 years after it's release.

Mk9 or the Re MaKe was amazing and was a needed addition to the lore of MK. Sindel killing everyone still sneaks into my mind from time to time, just not in the way Cody Lane in pigtails does.

Also looking back Ive spent so much money on MK11.

I remember playing the first one. Don't remember how I got my hands on it be it either renting it at a store or playing at a friend's house. We all thought Scorpion's harpoon was the coolest thing ever.

Then 2 came around and I performed my first Fatality. Mileena's Swallow you Whole. It was one of the easier imputs at the time. Had them all memorized except for Liu Kang's Flying Roundhouse Uppercut.

Later on things started getting weird. Sub-Zero became "The Guy" of the franchise and he got his own standalone game. Shaolin Monks was a somewhat nice change.

Now things got back to normal.

MK: Good start. Blood is cool. Yo he totally killed that guy, wow.

MK2: New characters are awesome. Story bits are worth reading. This is cool.

MK3: Kinda wacky now, visuals seem weirdly rendered. Plays weird. Who is Williams?

UMK3: Okay this makes sense, gameplay rocks.

MKT: lol what a mess.

MK4: 3D... eh. Target combo system feeling dated now. Hilarious fatalities tho.

MK4G: Pass.

...

...

MKDA: Nice comeback, aight gameplay. Cool new character designs, story.

MKD: Better gameplay. Holy shit Mileena design. Dumb fatalities.

MKA: God awful. Everything God awful.

...

MKvsDC: Stop this.

...

...

MK(9): Will you look at that. Nice. First banger in years, genre kinda left them behind.

MKX: Still not jiving with gameplay but still best for the series. Wild fatalities. Cool story.

MK11: Absolute best MK has ever been. Fan service left and right. No time to play more tho.

Best art and character design in the genre, imo. That unique blend of old school kung fu movie, sci-fi, and dark fantasy is wholly it's own, and nothing else looks quite like it.

Obviously the gameplay isn't quite up to par with its peers, but it's made a lot of big strides in recent years, and in MK 11 pretty much the whole roster is fun to mess around with.

MK2 was the peak for me. Stopped playing after MK4 I think.

Remember playing some weird Sub Zero game one time. Or was that a dream?a

Mythologies: Sub-Zero. N64/PSX. Universally panned....but i played the shit out of it

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I stumbled across the first game's machine in an H-E-B market. This was the time when any Tom, Dick, and Harry business had some arcade cabinet as a way to keep people busy. It was one of the worst times for my parents because I would always bail on what they were doing just so I could check out what was up. I found lots of games in that fashion, like Street Fighter 2, Ninja Baseball Batman, and Darkstalkers. Smart phones? Oh, no, sweetie. Back then you needed a pocket of quarters to pass the time entertaining yourself.

Obviously the thing that stuck with me after grabbing my attention was the graphics. It looked nothing like the majority of other games, aside from Pit Fighter. Then there was blood and straight up killing your opponent? What red-blooded American young boy wasn't going to be drawn to that?

I became obsessed with the series during those early years. When I discovered a local card shop had managed to get a cabinet of the first game, I freaked out. Normally we had to travel out of town to the big cities for places that had games. Now there was an honest-to-goodness real Mortal Kombat machine in my piss ant backwater hometown?!? I had to get there on my own because no way my parents would take me. I actually walked to it after school, missing the bus home just so I could check it out. Oh, boy, were my parents pissed.

Things just snowballed from the first game as the sequel blew my mind and the third game looked really interesting from all of the first looks I would see in magazines. I'll probably do a game-by-game analysis here in the coming days. I've got some visual aides that I want to track down.

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I'm probably in the minority here, but I actually didn't mind this game. :o

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Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Super Mario Bros., and Batman & Robin were the Unholy Trinity of Movies of my youth that showed me how much Hollywood hates me.

It was a good 10-11 years after I had last seen it when it was released before I watched it again with a friend who had never seen it before. He was the one to point out that they re-used footage of a guy falling into a flame pit that I hadn't noticed before. He was incredulous when I told him that but I countered with the fact that my brain was so fried by that point in the movie that it could've been 4 big breasted blondes riding a giant banana split float nude and I wouldn't have noticed.

And don't even get me started on the climax with Liu Kang and Shao Kahn turning into dragons. The feeling I had at that moment was repeated about 15 years later with the second Silent Hill movie when that film's final battle started. Before that moment, my brain is telling me, "OK, things have been shit so far but look at this way: it's almost over and it can't possibly get any worse!" But then it DOES GET WORSE and my brain didn't know how to cope with that so I'm just left sitting and staring blankly wondering what the fuck is taking the aliens so long to come and obliterate us.

Oh man... nostalgia unlocked
 

I remember reading about MK I in magazines. It was first at a local Marsh grocery store. Played it all the time. Beat a kid once, and he and his two goons followed me outside after and wanted to fight. I walked away, they pursued. Chased me home only to get met by one of my older brothers who took the three of them down with minimal effort. Turns out one had a knife, the one who wanted to fight me.....


Ended up saving money doing chores to buy MK I on SNES. Got it for myself for my bday. Always saw people doing cool shit with Scorpion, so played him mainly. Amazing game. Remember the Reptile fight being insanely difficult, not sure if I ever beat him. Remember a friend having a Genesis and seeing the blood code for the first time. Then felt a bit slighted that I didn't see blood in my SNES version :(



MK II was something else man. I studied the sheet outta this game. I knew every move for every character, seriously. I wrote down everyone's complete move list to give to my oldest brother as he set off to Purdue. He would go on to win a few hundred dollars because he would use that list and practice. Liu Kang was his go to. Also remember a hidden "start menu" where Shao Khan and Kintaro would beat the shit out of the Accliamed logo. Think you had to hold in L+R and Start before turning on the power. I remember the Toasty dude, and trying to time uppercuts to get to the secret Ermac (?) fight.


Wasn't Noob Siabot, Smoke and Jade all in this one too, as secret characters?? Good lord MK II was legendary at the time.


Stepped away from the franchise for a bit after UMK III, which I recall being alright, but not enjoying as much as MK II.


MK 11 has been insane. I never get to the point, on any fighting game, where I am good enough to go against other players, but this game almost got me there with how long I played.

Def are. Game did so poorly it caused Midway to fold after all :lol:

Given the renewed success of MK and Injustice, I wouldn't be against another attempt at it.

As long as it isnt T

Just dropping this in here

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I mean, granted the concept is so WTF out there and the finishing moves, such as they were, are lame as hell, but the gameplay itself actually works. It's got a good look to it and some of the designs of the characters are pretty great. If nothing else, it had the framework of what the reboot would end up becoming, with the cinematic story and all. No question, though, there are a shit ton of other entries in the series that kick its ass.

The issue was the rating. T-rated MK doesn't work. It would be like a PG-13 slasher flick. No one wants that. DC however wasn't going to let you disembowel Superman. Couple that with how expensive the DC licensing was and you have a situation where you must succeed but also absolutely cant. It was doomed conceptually.

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I must say everyone's doing me proud by not mentioning the trainwreck that was Mortal Kombat: Special Forces. I don't think I ever met anyone who played that sucker.

If this ⬇️ doesn’t make you rue the day you popped that abomination into your N64 and powered it on for the first time, nothing will.

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Ermac wasn't in the second game, but Noob, Smoke, and Jade certainly were. Like I bemoaned in Rate the Game, I miss the days of secret characters and the mystique surrounding them instead of things being available at the swipe of a credit card. Deception got back to that, somewhat, with the insane steps you had to take to get Liu Kang as part of the roster.

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Mortal Kombat: Personal Thoughts and Review

OK, so I already spoke on how I came across the first game and thus my introduction to the whole series. The game itself doesn't really hold up after all these years, but at the time, it was life itself. Sadly, I was never really good at it, and it was years before I was able to finish the arcade ladder. To this day I have never fought Reptile. All of that never really mattered to me, though. I was just having the time of my life being engrossed in what the game was giving me. The characters seemed cool and the story, while fairly generic and obviously influenced by martial arts films of old, was enough of a hook.

Gameplay wise, pretty much everyone controls the same. It's just a question of their special moves. It doesn't work as well as Street Fighter 2 and a combo system is almost non-existent. The aesthetic, though, is top notch. The backgrounds look great and it's amplified with some appropriate music. Compared to what was to come, the first game kind of sits below the middle of the road. It's a time capsule, in a way; a curious conversation piece to show someone who's unaware of the beginnings.

My main character: The thing is none of the characters were really fleshed out at this point. If I had to take a stab at who I used the most, it'd probably be Scorpion, as a lot of his stuff was simple to pull off.

Best Fatality: Sub-Zero's Spine Rip, of course. I don't think anything else really compares in that game.

Worst Fatality: Liu Kang's Cartwheel Uppercut. I mean, I know the story behind it but it's still fucking lame.

Kano ripping out a beating heart was kinda cool

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Mortal Kombat 2: Personal Thoughts and Review

OK, this is where shit got real for me as far as being into Mortal Kombat. I put in my Personal Top 10 over in the Rate the Game retrospective thread and for good reason. Virtually everything from the first game takes a huge leap forward. The visuals, the combos, the atmosphere, the roster, the finishing moves, and the story. That last one is especially key as a lot of the lore of the series comes from this game. The curtain is pulled back a bit and we're shown the malevolent forces bent on conquering us that were mere hushed whispers in the first game. Future fan favorites and mainstays like Kitana, Kung Lao, and Mileena debuted here. And then, of course, the main motherfucker himself, Shao Kahn.

I first caught wind of the sequel when a classmate had an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly where it was the main feature. It had a few of the new characters (the actual actors in the photos) showcased on the cover and the article, like Kung Lao and Baraka. It looked so fucking cool and so mysterious.

Then this bad boy dropped and it was a whole new ballgame. It was the talk of the lunch table and everyone had their own ideas of what some of the secrets were and how to get them unlocked and what relation each character had to another. I'm not sure what spawned the whole Nudality and Animality nonsense but with the expanded number of ways to end a match, it's not surprising. I'm almost positive I spotted this machine in more establishments than any other. It was a God damn juggernaut and I still think it holds up as one of the better entries.

My main character: Oh, man, this one's tough. Kitana was insane with the shit you could pull off with her. I dug the backstories of the newbies like Jax and Kung Lao and of course it was cool to see Reptile as a playable character. Overall, though, with things getting more robust as far as character development went, this was the first game where I was beginning to lean more towards Sub-Zero.

Best Fatality: Kung Lao's Hat Slice. Come on, the fucker splits a bitch down the fucking middle. That's just all kinds of awesome.

Best Friendship: Kung Lao gets the nod here again. His Rabbit Out of the Hat Friendship is still funny to this day.

Worst Fatality: Liu Kang's Cartwheel Uppercut: Because the people demanded it, I suppose. Seriously, was there any good reason to bring it back?

My favorite thing about Mortal Kombat II ⬇️:

https://gifrun.com/programs/temp/ad0...9b98ece34b.gif

Unfortunately it could only be done on Sega Genesis/Sega Mega Drive, and only as Raiden (spelled “Rayden” in his HP bar) on the Armory stage, and you have to go under Options from the main menu screen and while highlighting “Done!”, input ⬅️, ⬇️, ⬅️, ➡️, ⬇️, ➡️, ⬅️, ⬅️, ➡️, ➡️, then go into the hidden “Test Modes” menu and go to the third page and select and toggle on “Oooh, Nasty!” and then select Raiden, wait to fight on the Armory stage and when given the “FINISH HIM!!” screen, press back, back, back, block, and then you will see the funny little Easter egg known as the Fergality. It’s a nice acknowledgement of Probe Ltd. employee Fergus McGovern, who worked on the Genesis/Mega Drive port.

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Of course, we all know that there's only one -ality that's really important....:shifty:

https://i.imgur.com/PW1WEAS.jpg

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