My game today is Mortal Kombat the arcade fighting game developed and published by Midway (in 1992) It was subsequently released by
Acclaim Entertainment for just about every home video game system that
existed back then. It was a massive seller and was one of the few
competitors for street fighter 2’s crown in a market which was usually
filled with awful semi functioning clones. It started a whole series of
games but more than that it actually spawned a successful film
adaptation in 1995. It sparked a great deal of controversy though for
its depiction of extreme violence and bloodshed by using realistic (for
the time) digitized graphics. This game was involved in several hearings
on video game violence the results of which resulted in the
introduction of age-specific content description ratings for video
games. This game certainly changed the world of video games.
When mortal kombat came it came riding a huge train load of hype,
at the time nearly all games were released on a friday but mortal kombat
just had to break the trend it was released on a monday which was
dubbed Mortal Monday… No matter how long ago that was I still remember
it for one reason and that’s the fact that the man who owned the local
games shop agreed to give a select number of his loyal customers the
game on the friday before that. My brother was one of them, he brought
the megadrive version and we spent the entire weekend before its release
playing it.. Its not uncommon now to get the odd game a day or maybe
two before release because it has been posted out and arrived early but
back then this was more or less unheard of.
Eventually I decided to get the snes version when I saw it at a
greatly reduced price. Now a lot of people would expect the snes version
to be an improvement and maybe the graphics were a touch clearer but if
anything the gritty quality of the megadrive version actually helped to
give it a certain grind house feel and if anything covered some of the
blur present in the sprites a little and that’s before you even got to
the infamous blood code. On both the snes and megadrive versions of
mortal kombat when you put them in the machine they would load up and
one of the first things you would notice was the absence of blood. For
the mega drive there was a simple code you could input which would
switch on the gore, unfortunately the snes version simply did not
feature this and no button combinations or joypad caresses would get
claret flowing.
A snes magazine in the uk actually ran an april fools which tried
to make its readers believe that the blood was in there as well as an
option to play as the boss characters but that the cart needed extra
weight adding to it to make all of this obtainable. What they told you
to do was glue a one pence piece on to the top of your cartridge before
going through a combination of button presses which would open some kind
of debug menu. I remember that even after they had admitted it was all a
giant wind up I would come across seconds hand copies of the game in
various stores and markets which still had a penny firmly glued to the
top of them. The funny thing is there were kids at school who swore on
there life that they had gotten into this debug menu and then promptly
denied ever having said it latter. Now the game mortal kombat often gets
compared to is street fighter 2 and yes I admit street fighter 2 is
better for combos and has several other advantages but I think MK has
enough of its own qualities to warrant its place in the fighting fans
collection. Personally I love the characters and there back stories sure
people will argue that sub zero and scorpion are essentially palate
swaps but there portrayal as mortal enemies from warring clans and just
how cool they both were in general was more than enough to make me not
care. In some ways it can be said the graphics haven’t aged as well as
more basic sprites but I don’t know something about them appeals to me
and kind of reminds me of old kung fu films I guess its down to your
personal preferences. One thing I loved with Mk was the music and sound
effects the beat in the various songs just got you in the mood to rip
somebodies head off and the sounds being cried out such as scorpion
shouting ”get over here” just had an epic quality to them. I find the
game greatly playable but not without its limits, the way I see it is as
an excellent starting block for a franchise and I can’t help but give
it a 7 out of 10. (I give the mega drive a 8 out of 10 though it just
feels more tailored to the system and I guess I am just ”loyal to the
gore” (bonus points for anyone who knows where this quote comes from)
If you want to play the game on your SNES it is going to cost you
around £10 for a pal cart or about £20 for a boxed copy, if you own a
megadrive you might want to consider getting a copy on that instead. I
also dont want to give anything away but you might want to look at the
prices of other games in the series as well.
