Mortal Kombat

aka: Dragon Attack, MK, Mortal Kombat Complete, Mortal Kombat: Competition Edition
Moby ID: 599
Arcade Specs
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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 354 ratings with 22 reviews)

A perfect conversion of a defining moment in arcade history.

The Good
Mortal Kombat for the PC is as near to the original arcade experience as you can get without feeding quarters to your disk-drive. Sure, it feels kinda funky to play with the keyboard, but other than that the graphics are there, the sounds are there and most importantly, the "feel" is there. It would take years for Street Fighter 2 to come out right on the pc, but MK got it right from the start.

Having said that I should now point out that regardless of the overhyping and the needless pimping the game is known for, Mortal Kombat is a damn fine one-on-one fighting game. And perhaps more importantly, it's a damn smart game that deserves all the success it had.

Wazzat? No, you can't have any of what I'm smoking! shoo!

Naw, really. Allow me to explain: Come Street Fighter 2, every arcade game set out to clone Capcom's success story, yet no one added any real innovation or special change. Mortal Kombat, for as trite and cliche as it seems now, was filled with innovative touches that made it stand out firmly over the crop of street fighter wannabes.

For starters you had the setting. Moving away from the japanese concept of "buddy fighting" or such where all fighting games where some sort of lameass tournament where everyone came either to "test" their abilities or save some sister/lover/etc from the clutches of some rich super-strong dictator/champion, etc. Mortal Kombat was not like that. In fact, as you may have noticed, this wasn't "Street Kombat", or "Championship Kombat" or whatever, this was MORTAL Kombat and it was nothing like your kiddie fighting game. Borrowing heavily from the movies "Enter The Dragon" and "Big Trouble in Little China" MK placed players in a dark island where the real prize for the winners was, as the opening screens read: "your continued existance". There was some mumbo-jumbo about an interdimensional war but the real plot here was to get the hell out of the island alive. And the assortment of characters made that an even more serious affair. You had equal quantity of "heroes" as of foes, and the (admitedly) small cast of characters included an assassin ninja, an undead warrior looking for payback, a terrorist, a demigod, a four-armed monster and a deranged shapeshifting wizard. There were no "kawaii" characters to be found and hardly anyone fell in the "best buddies" Ryu & Ken archetypes.

In all, a far more dark and brooding experience than we were used to at the arcades, but to keep it from getting too somber and boring the game made a great use of over the top violence and gore. Sure, we have had our quota of blood in previous games (ie. you could chop opponents in half on Samurai Shodown) but MK took it to the next level by throwing buckets of blood for every hit and adding in "Fatality" animations to finish your opponents in the most gruesomely entertaining ways. It was incredibly cheesy, but also wildly entertaining and a fantastic addition to the game.

Couple that with fast and responsive controls, a unique graphical look courtesy of digitized graphics and a pulse-pounding gameplay that added some new concepts (remember the endurance rounds?) to the same old "best 2 of 3" gameplay and you have one of the most refreshing games ever to hit the arcades, yet MK didn't stop there. As I said earlier, MK was a terribly smart game, and that is evidenced by it's understanding of the arcade underground scene. Many people don't seem to understand how the game gained such a success, and that's because they didn't ever set a foot on an arcade or did so for brief diversions only. As of the early nineties arcades were much more of an underground hotspot with it's very own culture (or counter-culture) similar to the multiplayer online scene nowadays. This scene thrived on word of mouth and challeges (who doesn't remember battling the local SF2 champ?) and Midway understood this and applied it to MK, which was the first game to be heavily laced with secret features. Sure, by now it's seems like a pretty stupid concept but at the time there was no internet you could log on to learn all the tricks for your favorite games, and the special moves for fighting games where gasp! Actually special! And couldn't be found on the manuals for the games or in the cabinet artwork. Thus arcade games had a potential for mistery that remained largely untapped by the developers. This ended with MK, which was the first game to introduce secret characters and those totally cool fatality animations that inspired every gamer to try out every nook and cranny of the game in hopes of finding a secret or even memorizing and exploiting the glitches and bugs to one's advantage. Mortal Kombat trascended the arcade boundaries and became a myth thanks to that, and the knowledge of every move and fatality earned the respect of fellow arcaders and friends, specially with MK's weird and unnatural code-like moves (hold block-up-up-release block-HP...?[Man, I can't believe I remembered that one! :))])

That's what makes MK unique, that's what makes it much more than just a good fighting game.

The Bad
Well, for as much praise as I can give it I have to still say that I prefer SF2 in many aspects. For starters the characters have all the same strength and agility thus removing the variety of strategies you had on other games (ie. Zangief vs Chun-li on SF2 was a very different fight than Ryu vs Chun-li. On the other hand, Sub-zero vs Scorpion and Sub-zero vs Raiden on MK required the same strategy save for some adjustments to each character's special moves).

This also translates to the interface, I'll be hard pressed to find a difference between HP and LP save for the blood, and the use of a block button is just annoying and unintuitive. Pulling back works much better.

Also, if you find over the top violence disgusting and are the sort of fellow that finds this or that offensive and bla. bla. bla. then first of all you suck and need to get yourself a life, (who the hell can't understand the delicate beauty of ripping someone's heart out?? ;D) and second stay away from this game because it's gonna be hell for you.

The Bottom Line
In a word?? Fatality!!! Go play MK, it's a one of the all-time arcade classics and it can still kick your ass on the PC.

DOS · by Zovni (10504) · 2003

A classic, but not all that good.

The Good
Mortal Kombat is definitely a hallmark in computer gaming; instead of a game that was something of a breakthrough (digitized actors and unprecedented violence), it turned into a veritable institution, spawning three sequels, two movies, a TV series and more stuff I probably don't even know about.

Basically MK is a solid game: great music, good graphics (plus the digitized actors...), solid gameplay and more easter eggs than you can shake a stick at. I never got addicted to it, but it was certainly great fun for a few hours; plus, the Genesis version is technically excellent and a thoroughly good conversion.

The Bad
It's not that I didn't like the game as such - it was uninspired and the violence was superfluous at times, but it was still a pretty good game. What I can't figure out is why in the hell this thing became so amazingly popular; why it spawned this many sequels and spinoffs; why anyone would actually make a television show out of it?... I just can't figure it out.

The Bottom Line
A solid game that's quite fun for a while. There are better games to spend your money on though.

Genesis · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 2002

Censored Combat

The Good
Mortal Kombat for the Super Nintendo takes advantage of the system's superior (compared to the Sega Genesis) graphics and sound capabilities. It looks and sounds closer to the original arcade game then any of the other adaptions for the home console systems.

The Bad
Nintendo was very much a proponent of censorship, both in terms of games it developed and in the content of games from third party developers. Simply put, if it might possibly offend consumers, especially parents and politicians, it could not be depicted, discussed or alluded to. Very little got past the Big N's censorship rules. When it came to Mortal Kombat, all the blood, gore and graphic violence seen in the coin-op arcade had to be removed. Censorship aside, the game's control mechanics are not as good as they could be. They are not horrible, but they are just not as smooth as in other fighting games for the Super Nintendo, such as "Street Fighter II".

The Bottom Line
Mortal Kombat for the Super Nintendo features great graphics, music and sound effects that, while not as good as the original arcade, are quite impressive for the Super Nintendo. Nintendo's requirement that the game be censored before its release and the less then user-friendly game controls, keep the game from getting a perfect score.

SNES · by ETJB (428) · 2010

[ 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. SEGA Master System, Amiga, Game Gear added by festershinetop. Genesis, SNES 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.