I just want to share my history with MK because its an topic I rarely talk about. I haven't cared for MK for so long now that I rarely talk about it but in the early 90s there was no game series that I was more crazy about than MK. It was a crazy obsession of mine I became facinated about every aspect of the mythology.

I first heard about it in the school yard, this crazy bloody arcade game where you can rip out some guys heart or punch off their head. I instantly had to find this game, I must see it for myself. The year was I believe 92 or 93, game violence was just beginning, DOOM was about to hit and change everything. I was 10 so I was entering that I want to see cool bloody stuff age, it was the perfect storm.

So one day I was at the arcade and I finally found it, Mortal Kombat. My first thoughts were on the graphics, mindblowing, it looked like real people!! I saw someone play and got to witness a fatality first hand, I fell in love. I eventually got to play, the menu alone was intriguing with the kung fu music. I would let the arcade sit for a while so I could see some bios and learn about these cool ass characters. Of course two characters stood out from the rest. You had Liu Kang, some fake Bruce Lee type, boring. Sonya, a girl, eww. Jonny Cage, movie star guy what a wimp. Kano, hmm has a cool metal plate on his head, interesting. Raiden, a thunder god with a cool hat, now we are talking. Then there was two fucking awesome ninjas, Scorpion and Sub-Zero. One had and ice blast and the other a harpoon, tough choice but I went with Scorpion, "Get over here" was to awesome to pass up. And from that moment I choose my guy, Scorpion would be my character. I quickly learned his moves and I dont know when it happened but he was my first fatality as well, Block, Up, Up.

Of course Mortal Kombat was coming out on consoles and I had to have it day one. I believe its one of the first times that the concept of a release date ever entered the equation. I had a Genesis and MK was the ultimate weapon in the Genesis vs SNES battles as school. "We have Mario", "We have Sonic". "We have 3DFX chip", " We have blast processing". "My MK looks nicer"... "oh yeah, well my MK has BLOOD." Discussion over, Genesis wins. SNES had fake fatalities and no blood, might as well been playing a Mickey Mouse game. ABACABB, just like that the Genesis version was king, full blood, all the fatalities, it was amazing.

The first MK was so simple, I still remember every single move. I remember all fatalities by heart. I played that game over and over and over again. It didn't matter to me that the combat wasn't great, the whole concept of SF2 being the "better" fighter was alien to me. I didn't understand combat systems, to me it was just that one game had cartoony characters (still awesome, I loved SF2) and one had realisitic graphics and blood! It was the characters, story and the feeling of mystery that got my attention. The fatalities were hidden, to this day I don't know where I learned them, there was no internet to get on. There were rumors of a secret character on the pit level, a green ninja!. What was that thing flying over the moon? It was full of mystery and the school yard rumors of the secrets fueled my interest. This day in age that kind of mystery and discovery is impossible to achieve, kind of sad when I think about it.

So a year or two later MK2 hits arcade and now my little head is about to explode from excitement. I am talking scary levels of MK2 hype. I had a poster of the game up on my wall and I would stare at it for hours just counting down the days until it hit the Genesis. I first played it an arcade and I had to be pulled away. The graphics were better, the characters were so much cooler and the game was blooder. Rumors of all kinds of secrets and finishing moves were flying every where. You can turn enemies into babies, yeah right that had to be a lie. But did you hear the one about getting he character nude, the nudeality, that had to be real, a boy could dream. The hype for that game was insane. I got it day one as well and it quickly became the game I played the most. I got a strategy guide with it so that I can do all the fatalities, find all the secret characters and all that good stuff. Even though I played the game a ton I always sucked at it, the computer was a pain.

At this point MK was branching out into many other forms of media and I was following almost all of them. I had a scorpion and sub-zero action figure. I had a MK comic. I remember getting this video which was this crazy looking half CG half animated cartoon movie of MK that I believe was a prequel for the movie. I forget the name, I just remember I played that video over and over like how kids do. Thats so different from me now, I rarely watch something many times over and over now, but back as a kid I could see the same movie 100 times. There was this saturday morning real acted show about some fake martial arts tournament. I forget the name but they created fake martial art characters, and a fake WWF like storyline to go along with it and they had fights every show. The guy that played Liu Kang in the games was an actor on the show and I watched it just because of that. I think a year or so later a live action MK show came out, which was awesome (there was some smoking hot women in that show).

1995, MK3 and the movie were coming out. At this point there is no bigger video game property than Mortal Kombat and the hype machine was in full effect. I found out the exact date that my arcade would recieve the game, or maybe they made a big deal about it, all I know I was there. Of course there was a huge line so for the most part I watched. The graphics crazier than I could ever believe. The charactyers more wild than ever. I watched people play and they were doing all sorts of moves and they knew Fatalaties and even Animalities, how, the arcade was there for less than a day? So when I played I got my ass handed to me. Something happened, it didn't feel like the first two games, it was different and in a way I did not like. The run button pissed me off for some reason, I felt it was not needed. The combos were an alien concept to me, the way I played MK was to use a few basic attacks and use special moves over and over. I didn't really care for the changes but I was still very excited for the game to hit consoles.

At that same time the movie was coming out and I was even more excited about that. I was there on opening day, my dad took me and we loved the movie. To this day it's still the only perfect video game movie. It was released at the height of the games popularity. It stayed true to the source material, all characters were represented as they were in the video game. It had incredible special effects, especially Goro. The soundtrack was very influential, it started a big techno movement, after that movie hit techno music started playing on the radio and almost every kung fu movie had some techno song to it. The movie was as good as an adaptation that you could want from some crazy fighting game. I was in love with the movie, oh and that ending, my god I could not wait for the sequel... As a gift I recieved the MK soundtrack. It became the first ever music album I owned, and I listened to it all the time. The movie and MK3 launch was the mountain top, everything after that was downhill.

During this time we were entering a new console generation and all of a sudden I had an issue, MK3 was coming to the Playstation not the Saturn. This was earth ending news to me, I was a Sega guy all the way, there is no way I could go with some crappy console by some company that makes TVs, HA like that will last. But I wanted MK3 in all of its 32-bit glory, what do I do. Luckily news came out that the Saturn would get Ultimate MK3 but later, hell yeah, all was ok with the world again. Still I couldn't get the game at launch so I decided to rent the Genesis version the day it came out and play that to scratch that itch. The genesis version was a poor port and I knew that but it had to do. Well I played it and played and still didn't feel the same love I had for the first two games. Eventually Ultimate MK3 hit and I got it but I didn't play it all that much. There was another game on another console that came out in 1996 that blew my mind, MK was all of a sudden obsolete. In fact I hardly played the Saturn, I was always in my brothers room playing his Playstation, playing that game that changed my life.

The MK obsession died in almost an instant, it was so weird. I remember hearing about MK4, it was going 3D so that got my attention. I remember seeing it an arcade, looking at it and just thinking to myself "this is not MK, this is not the game I loved". The games kept coming out and I played some of them like that terrible Sub-Zero game. I just stopped caring for the series, none of the games interested me. The second movie hit and it was horrendous, kind of a perfect symbol for how the series was progressing. It was over, the days of MK being king were long gone and all that was left was a shell of this second rate fighting game that now lay exposed cause the cool factor wore off. It was sad cause I really do love the characters (from MK1-3) and the mythology is fantastic. I have been waiting for the day MK would return to its roots, waiting for it to be cool again. I feel that day is almost here, Mortal Kombat is back. Nice to have an old friend return.

Argh! My eyes! *Tries to read Vader's blog but is blinded by all the white*

Good post . I remember those MK console arguements about the Blood. Good times.

I myself was never a huge MK fan. I didn't like the first one. When people debated which console version was better I'd usually just roll my eyes and go back to Street FIghter. I did enjoy MK2 on the other hand. The character line up was a big improvement I thought, and all the extra ways to end fights - fatalities, babalities, friendship.... that was just fun.

However once MK3 rolled around I totally lost interest and never got back into it. The combat was less focused on well timed moves and more on long drawn out 40 button combos. I could never fight like that. Just didn't click. Plus the god awful MK: Annihilation movie made me embarassed that I ever played the series so I was more than happy to never look at it again.

Still need to check out the demo of the new game. If its' more like the old ones I may give it a shot.

Funny MK story now that I think back to it.  When I was a freshman in college MK 3 Ultimate came out, and when our arcade got it a small group of my friends quickly got hooked on it because of what happened when you beat it. You could pick what kind of ending you got. One of them showed off every player's Animality.... and that got us in trouble.

My friend beat the game and at the very moment of the final battle the manager of the arcade had to close up. Well after a long and hard fought battle my friends didn't want to leave. They wanted to stay and watch all of the animalities. It was their right dammit! They paid $.50 to play, they deserved it. At first the manager was cool about it, but a few minutes later as they were still playing he started to get pissed that they weren't leaving. Long story short, a few words on both sides were exchanged and we were banned for the rest of the semester. Granted, the ban wasn't enforced for long, but I still take pride in being a dumbass who managed to get banned from a college game room.

...

I once had another friend who would bite his controller in frustration over MK.

She might understand.

Damn you Edit Button!!

travo said:

She might understand.

Oh reeeeaaaaalllllyyyy...???!!!

Sooo much better than that Phil Collin's song!