The year is 1992. The arcade game? Mortal Kombat. A video game that would unknowingly change the video game industry forever.
Mortal Kombat is a fighting/action-adventure video game whose premise is a group of heroes who must travel through various realms and fight in a series of martial arts tournaments. This in order to become the overall MK Champion. A pretty intense backstory for a fighting game, but one with a great balance of difficulty leading up to the final boss fight. Choose your character and move up the ladder.
In light of the newly released movie, Mortal Kombat 2, let’s have some fun and take a look back at the OG Mortal Kombat game (and the sequel) released back in the early 90s.
Characters
If you were to ask anyone who has played Mortal Kombat to name at lease one character, chances are they probably could.
Each character had a uniqueness about them, and with that, some pretty crazy special moves. Not to say I am a button masher (I am) but I definitely latch on to any character that I can easily repeat a button combo to bust out the craziest throws. My go to then? Sub-Zero, Raiden, and Sheeva. And now? Sub-Zero, Erron Black, and Jax. I mean, these two wield guns! Not at all expected in a hand-to-hand combat game, but boy is it fun.
Gaming platforms
The game was originally developed by Midway Games for the arcade cabinet, released in 1992. Shortly after in 1993, the game was ported to home gaming consoles. The most popular of course being Super Nintendo (SNES), Sega Genesis, Sega Game Gear, and the Nintendo Game Boy. In 1994, Mortal Kombat II is released, this time including the PlayStation console.
The controversy
This is where things get really juicy. Remember earlier I mentioned this was a game that would unknowingly change the video game industry forever? Mortal Kombat, along with a handful of others, sparked the “violence in video games” debate. It created movements lead by concerned parents, and ultimately made its way to Senate hearings. It was this controversy that lead to what we know today as the ESRB, aka the Entertainment Software Rating Board. As someone who has dealt with the ESRB in my previous life, I can say working with any sort of censorship board can be a real stick in the mud. However, I can understand the desire to protect certain graphic imagery and language from young children.
It also influenced game publishers to pull back on the blood and gore, but allowing it to be unlocked by entering a cheat code.
Something new I learned while digging deeper into the ESRB stuff… Allegedly Sega paid homage to the band Genesis and their album, Abacab, by making the cheat code to unlock the blood and gore: ABACABB. Pretty bad ass if true. Especially as a huge Genesis and Mortal Kombat fan! Worlds colliding and it’s fantastic!
Mortal Kombat in the movies
The franchise spawned a few movies over the decades. Mortal Kombat, released in 1995, by far the best video game adaptation out there.
There was just something to seeing the characters and backdrops to the video game we all know and love, for the first time. Especially as kids.
The sequel, Mortal Kombat Annihilation, did okay. I’ve only seen it once. And as for the first movie, I still watch it whenever it’s on. Now, almost 30 years later and another Mortal Kombat movie has been released. It wasn’t for a lack of interest that I never saw it. Same goes for the second movie just released last weekend. If you’ve seen either of the new ones, drop a note in the comments below and let us know what you think!
The Mortal Kombat franchise is still going strong. Mortal Kombat 2 just released May 8. And the latest video game, Mortal Kombat 1, has been out for 2 years across multiple gaming platforms. And it. Is. Awesome.