Mortal Kombat

aka: Dragon Attack, MK, Mortal Kombat Complete, Mortal Kombat: Competition Edition
Moby ID: 599
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Description official descriptions

Five hundred years ago, an ancient and well respected Shaolin fighting tournament, held every 50 years, was corrupted by an evil and elderly sorcerer by the name of Shang Tsung. Shang was accompanied by Prince Goro, a warrior of the Shokan race (a four-armed half-human / half-dragon). Knowing that if ten tournaments in a row were won by the Outworld champion, the Earth Realm would be conquered by evil and fall into darkness, Shang entered Goro in the tournament and had him defeat the great Kung Lao. Goro has been reigning supreme as the undefeated fighting champion for five hundred years now. As the last tournament required draws near, Raiden, Thunder God and protector of the Earth Realm, enacts a plan to tip the scales in the humans' favor, Seven fighters step into the arena on Shang Tsung's mysterious island: Shaolin warrior Liu Kang, Special Forces operative Sonya Blade, the mercenary thug Kano, fame-seeking actor Johnny Cage, the ice-wielding Lin Kuei warrior Sub-Zero and his undead adversary Scorpion, and Raiden himself.

Mortal Kombat is a side-scrolling fighting game. Fighting is set as one-on-one combat, allowing each player to perform a variety of punches, kicks, and special moves in order to defeat their opponent. When the opponent faces their second round loss, the winner can perform a finishing move called a "Fatality" on the loser. The Fatality is a move unique to each fighter that graphically kills the loser in a blood-soaked finale.

Mortal Kombat began its life as a 2-player arcade title. It is notable for its use of digitized actors to represent the game's fighters, as well as its use of copious amounts of blood during gameplay.

Spellings

  • モータルコンバット - Japanese spelling
  • 真人快打 - Chinese spelling (simplified)

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Credits (Arcade version)

40 People (14 developers, 26 thanks) · View all

Mortal Kombat Cast of Characters
Goro Character Design by
Stop Motion Miniature by
Design
Software
Graphics
Music
Sounds
Background Graphics
Executive Producers
Senior Hardware Technician
Cabinet Design
Special Thanks to
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 78% (based on 83 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 355 ratings with 22 reviews)

The "Edited For Content" Edition

The Good
Mortal Kombat is one of the all time classics, so nostalgia is heavily in this games favor. You can't help but enjoy the game simply cause it takes you back to the past.

The sprite animations are very impressive even today. The character movement is great and better then some other fighting titles. The backgrounds not only look cool but some of them have special environmental fatalities (fatalities are post fight beatings that you inflict on your opponent that usually involve dismemberment).

The soundtrack is another one of the better parts of the game. Even though its not quite as good as it once was, you tell why so many people have remixed it. The voice over guy sounds very cool and to hear your name after beating your opponent makes you feel like you accomplished something.

And unlike later Mortal Kombat games, this edition features a 2 player mode instead of a constant tournament. Now you and a friend can challenge each other without having to do the tournament, leading to some nice pick up and play action.

The Bad
Mortal Kombat on the SNES is heavily edited, most likely due to Nintendo's family demographic and how controversial the game was in its debut. Blood has been completely removed from the game, replaced instead by "sweat" (which looks more like dust-- and given how old the game is that would be a pretty accurate statement). The individual fatalities have also been removed from the game, although the bridge/pit level fatality is intact (minus blood and severed heads). While this complaint is merely a cosmetic change, Mortal Kombat has other problems.

Mortal Kombat's gameplay isn't quiet what it once was. Special moves aren't very easy to pull off without looking up how to perform them. There's no jump back button so its easy for people to start whaling on you with the punch button. And like other games of the day, Mortal Kombat treads a fine line between good fighting game and button masher. This version of Mortal Kombat also feels like a straight from the arcade port by not including a pause button, a feature that makes the game very inconvenient since you either have to die when you need to go to the bathroom or you have to hold it in (this can become a real problem when you are in the middle of a tough tournament).

The Bottom Line
While the SNES version of Mortal Kombat is missing blood and fatalities, its still a very solid fighter and well worth having. The game will keep you busy for hours on hours when played with friends and even if you don't have any friends its still pretty cool. After all, very few gaming experiences can compare to beating an opponent without losing a drop of health.

SNES · by Lawnmower Man (137) · 2008

An overhyped, poorly executed game.

The Good
Great atmosphere, very dark. It makes you want to keep playing just so you can see what neat effect comes next, not because the gameplay is good. Sound effects are very nice, especially the voice. If pulling out a defeated opponent's spine is your idea of fun, this game is loads of fun.

The Bad
The music is even worse than contemporaries Street Fighter and One Must Fall. The graphics may have been sweet when it came out, but after a while it just gets cheesy. Midway tried to do an anime-style gore-fest but failed. Characters are almost identical, in some cases only color is changed. This means balance is horrible (if your one move is better than theirs you win). A separate "block" button and plenty of useless commands make the interface more frustrating than playable. Way too much gore... only Primal Rage comes close to matching the fountains of blood everywhere and brutal finishing moves.

The Bottom Line
It may be popular, but then again, so are the Teletubbies. If you're really hankering for an old-school 2D fighter, try Marvel v. Capcom or One Must Fall.

DOS · by Robyrt (46) · 2001

The first game of a very good series of fighting games, but not the 1 which should be called the best in the series

The Good
The game itself is great, unlike Street Fighter where you play with cartoonish characters, here you play with digitized awesome characters, which seems like your playing a fight between real people. Every character has a unique story and interesting special moves. Another great thing is the violence - loads of blood, Fatalities - this is the thing which makes this series of fighting games a unique one today.

The Bad
The character roster is not too big (10 characters, 7 of which are only playable) , and the game is quite hard to complete. The versus mode is fun to play for only a little time with your friends, and while the "Test your might" mini-game addition is a better bonus than nothing, its not too impressing. Another thing which i did not like is that about half of the arenas look exactly the same, though there were some unique like the Pit stage where you could do a stage-Fatality, but for the most part the arenas are boring.

The Bottom Line
For the most part a descent fighting game with fun gameplay and mysterious secrets to observe, but the small variety (no too many arenas, half of which look too same, and only 7 playable characters) make it boring quite fast. Still, its the first game of a legendary fighting franchise, and deserves respect from players.

DOS · by Medicine Man (328) · 2009

[ View all 22 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Mortal Kombat appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Character choices

The manual states that "arcade machine statistics show that Johnny Cage is the least played character, while Sonya Blade is the most frequently chosen". This is backwards; history has proven that Johnny Cage is the most frequently chosen, while Sonya is the least.

Controversy

Mortal Kombat was one of the games Senator Joseph Lieberman centered his arguments on during the 1993 investigation by the United States Congress on extreme violence in video games. The investigation caused SEGA to develop the Video Game Council, which would later evolve to the Entertainment Standards Review Board (ESRB). Since then, even with the ESRB, video games have actually increased in violence.

Development

  • Jean Claude Van Damme was originally slated to play the part of Johnny Cage, but the deal fell through due to Van Damme being busy with his movie work. Johnny Cage's clothing is almost identical to that of Van Damme's character's from the 1988 movie Bloodsport. Moreover, Cage's split punch is directly taken from a move Van Damme does in the movie. The original data files for Johnny Cage still bear the name "vandamme".

  • According to Ed Boon in statements to EGM Magazine, the original Mortal Kombat was created by four people in just eight months from start to finish.

  • The original name for the character Sub-Zero was going to be Tundra.

  • Johnny Cage's real name is John Carlton (according to the game's storyline). The name was taken from the Midway game programmer John Carlton, who worked for the NBA Jam arcade series.

  • The original name for the character Johnny Cage was going to be Michael Grimm.

  • The original name for the character Goro was going to be Gongoro. According to John Tobias, the team decided to shorten it.

ERMACS

On the diagnostics screen of the first arcade version of Mortal Kombat, there was a listing in the audit menu for "ERMACS". This led players to believe there was a hidden character called Ermac. ERMAC actually is short for "Error Macro", and no such character appears in Mortal Kombat. Midway put a scrambled message in the sequel Mortal Kombat II, which appears at the bottom of the screen after beating the game: "CEAMR ODSE NTO EXITS" (an anagram of "Ermac does not exist"), and the hidden character Jade randomly appeared right before a match with the message "Ermac Who?". For Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, however, a new playable character called Ermac was created.

Game Boy version

Johnny Cage is missing from the Game Boy version.

German index

On March 31, 1994, Mortal Kombat, with the exception of the Game Boy version, was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. For more information about what this means and to see a list of games sharing the same fate, take a look here: BPjS/BPjM indexed games. In addition to the indexing, on November 11, 1994, the SEGA Mega Drive, SEGA CD, SEGA Master System, and Game Gear versions were also confiscated for violating §131 of Germany's penal code (for showing gruel violence against humans, etc.) However, due to the 10 year limitation for confiscations, those four versions are no longer confiscated since November 11, 2004.

Legacy

The game Mortal Kombat spawned numerous sequels, two films, a TV series, and even a cartoon.

Nimbus Terrafaux

It was rumored that there was a secret unlockable character in Mortal Kombat, called Nimbus Terrafaux. Later it was revealed to be a creation of Electronic Gaming Monthly as part of an April Fool's Day joke, despite the fact that Ed Boon had originally mentioned the character in an interview with the magazine. After this the magazine intentionally published false information on this character, complete with doctored screenshots and even a fabricated storyline.

Pre-order

Pre-orders of the console versions in the UK included a limited edition "Kombat Kit" as a give-a-way bonus. The kit included a poster, character cards, tattoo and pin-badge.

Reptile

As the story goes, on November 1992, while preparing an upgrade to fix several bugs, Ed Boon shut himself in his office for a weekend and added the secret character Reptile all by himself. However, no indication was ever given of his existence. It wasn't until a later revision of the game (which added Reptile popping up before matches to give clues of his existence in the game) and a July 1993 VideoGames Magazine article in which Boon and John Tobias specifically clarified how to find Reptile, that the mass public became aware of the existence of a character that was already in the game for months.

In order to fight Reptile, the player has to be in The Pit scenery when the silhouettes glide past the Moon (it happens every 6th game). The player can not use the block move during the whole match, has to win all the rounds with Flawless Victory and perform a Fatality move in the end.

References

  • Raiden really is the Japanese God of Thunder. His appearance in myth is quite different though: he has red skin and a demonic face, his feet have two claws on them, and he carries either a wheel or drums on his back. He also is thought to eat human navels so people are advised to lie on their stomachs during storms. (from Davis, F. Hadland. Myths and Legends of Japan. New York: Dover, 1992. 1913.)

  • According to Ed Boon, the main characters are all caricatures of some of their favorite characters from martial arts and sci-fi movies: Kano, with his infra-red eye, is based on Arnold Schwarzenegger's make-up in The Terminator. Liu Kang is, obviously, the likeness of Bruce Lee. Raiden, the electric God of thunder, is based on the lightening-wielding character from Big Trouble in Little China. Sonya was loosely based on martial arts star Cynthia Rothrock.

References to the game

  • In the movie Billy Madison starring Adam Sandler, a little first grader refers to Mortal Kombat for his Genesis as the best video game ever.
  • In the animated TV-show Megas XLR, in the episode "Rearview Mirror, Mirror (Part 1 of 2)", at some point in the beginning, Megas does Sub-Zero's "Spine Ripper" fatality on a robot.

    Technology

    Because the original code was written in C, the PC port is a flawless conversion in terms of gameplay. The same bugs and tricks in the arcade coin-op are applicable in the PC version, since it was built with the same source code.

    Thrill Kill

    In 1998, Virgin Interactive was ready to release Thrill Kill, a gory four-player fighting game which was supposed to unseat Mortal Kombat as the goriest fighting game. The AO-rated game was never released.

    Violence

    This game specifically is credited for making Nintendo change their no-violence policies and generally "giving some slack" in what regards their strict content control policies. The reason: the SNES port of Mortal Kombat is censored, with modifications such as making completely new finishing moves (Raiden burns his opponent to harmless ashes instead of making his head explode, Sub-Zero deep freezes his enemy and then breaks him instead of pulling out his spine, etc.). As a result of this Nintendo lost millions of dollars in what is arguably one of the best-selling videogames ever and missed out on a title that became a certified blockbuster in all its other incarnations (by way of comparison the Genesis port of the game outsold the SNES port by approximately 3 to 1). The Genesis port requires the player to input a code to get blood and some of the fatalities from the arcade version. The SEGA CD port skips this and has blood on from the get-go and all the fatalities from the arcade version.

    Awards

    • EGM
      • November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #5 (Titles That Revolutionized Console Gaming) (Arcade version)
    • GamePro
      • 1993 (Vol. 6, Issue 2) - Game of the Year (Editor's Choice)
    • Retro Gamer
      • September 2004 (Issue #8) – #55 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)
    • VideoGames Magazine
      • March 1995 - One of the Worst Ten Games of 1994 (SEGA CD version)
    • The Strong National Museum of Play
      • 2019 – Inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame
    Information also contributed by Alexander Michel, Bhatara Dewa Indra I, Big John WV, Caelestis, CaptainCanuck, Kartanym, MegaMegaMan, quizzley7, Robbb, ShabbyPie, Steve ., Terrence Bosky, Tomer Gabel, Xoleras, Zack Green and Zovni.
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    Related Sites +

    • Mortal Kombat Nightmares
      Covers all the games of the Mortal Kombat saga. Includes information on the upcoming Mortal Kombat games, fan fiction, and interactive q&a.
    • Video memories of Mortal Kombat
      The Angry Video Game Nerd, James Rolfe, talks about his memories of the Mortal Kombat series. Mostly the arcade versions but he also discusses the changes made to the SNES and Genesis versions of Mortal Kombat.

    Identifiers +

    • MobyGames ID: 599
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    Contributors to this Entry

    Game added by IJan.

    Dedicated console added by mars_rulez. SEGA CD added by Kartanym. Game Gear, SEGA Master System, Amiga added by festershinetop. SNES, Genesis added by Satoshi Kunsai. Antstream added by lights out party. Arcade added by The cranky hermit. Game Boy added by quizzley7.

    Additional contributors: Trixter, Kartanym, Unicorn Lynx, chirinea, Sciere, Alaka, ~~, LepricahnsGold, Cantillon, Medicine Man, Patrick Bregger, mailmanppa, FatherJack, firefang9212, Dave Zanko, SoMuchChaotix.

    Game added December 19, 1999. Last modified February 23, 2024.