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It’s been a weird E3, huh? 3DS, Konami staff losing their minds in press conferences and Metal Gear Solid: I Cut Out Your Spine featuring the most realistic real-time cut out your spine technology yet seen in the field of spine-cutting. Give me your spine. Fighting game fans got a boost though, with the first Marvel Vs Capcom title in ten years and a complete back to basics reboot of the Mortal Kombat franchise. They’ve got a Mortal Kombat I want to play too, with fast combo-focused gameplay and X-Ray super combos that show you bone and organ damage as you beat on your opponent. What better time than now to look back through the series and reflect… reflect that sometimes Mortal Kombat is really really crazy, and sometimes really, really stupid?
DID HE JUST… DID HE JUST DO THAT?
Say what you like about Mortal Kombat 1 (I’ll start – it isn’t fit to clean Street Fighter II‘s sweaty crevices) but it avoids some obvious design choices. This is why Sub Zero skips any kind of cheesy ice-based nonsense for his fatality (that can wait for the sequels) in deference to pulling out your spine, using your severed head as purchase. This was literally the most violent thing that had happened to anyone, anywhere and the resulting moral panic saw civilisation destroyed by an army of deranged children pumped up on Kombat fever. Now all we have to do with our lives is fight bears for food in the decaying ruins of our cities. Thanks, Mortal Kombat!
ROBOT SMOKE’S SUPER-EFFECTIVE FATALITY
By the time Mortal Kombat 3 turned up the franchise had lost its way horribly. Comedic fatalities, Sub Zero dressing like a dorky wrestler and series mainstay Scorpion replaced by one of three horrific “cyber-ninjas”, truly this was the nadir of the series. I do love Smoke’s fatality though, purely for the insane excess: he kills everyone in the whole world, including the whole world.
STRYKER, KURTIS STRIKER
This douche was another low point. Previously Mortal Kombat had maintained a fairly consistent set of character motifs: 1970s grindhouse tropes duking it out with Special Forces and half the cast of Big Trouble In Little China. Kurtis was a totally rad guy who dressed like a pudgy ESPN-huffing dork’s idea of a SWAT commander and was insanely high-tier, bro! He was awful, and managed to set the low benchmark for character design in a game full of faintly unappealing swimsuit models and cybernetic banalities. He showed up again for an obligatory slot in the all-star Mortal Kombat: Armageddon dressed like Solid Snake for assholes. Hateful.
PEACE, LOVE, RESPECT, KOMBAT
This isn’t crazy or dumb, this is just amazing: back in 1994 Praga Kahn and Oliver Adams (two thirds of the Lords Of Acid) joined up to create Mortal Kombat: The Album. I have a theory: I don’t think either of these guys bothered to play the game! How else to explain the breezy, upbeat tone and lyrics directly taken from early promotional biography sheets? Johnny Cage gets referenced by his birth name (John Carlton!), Raiden “got no eyes” (his blank his eye colour was listed as “N/A”). The one everyone knows is Sub Zero (Chinese Ninja Warrior) but if I had to pick favourites it’d be these two: a pumping and highly inappropriate love song for Kano and a Scorpion track that seems to inexplicably feature Jimmy Somerville on backing vocals. Enjoy!
MORTAL KOMBAT VS DC UNIVERSE
Marvel vs Capcom was a good fit: The Marvel Universe and Capcom back catalogue are both bursting with bright, neon characters and endearingly convoluted backstories. DC Comics, though? A stable of moralistic super-father figures carrying 1940s values into an increasingly apathetic present, a vast contrast to the techno/metal styled Kombat anti-heroes. I wouldn’t bat an eye at Cyclops and Ryu bumping titties but if there’s one thing the DCU heroes really hate as much as the Kombateers love it’s brutal, intricate murder. Artistic integrity is for sissies though, and pretty soon Mortal Kombat and DCU had a sordid hookup in something I like to call “videogame whoredom”. The last Midway-developed Kombat game thus included prancing dorkuses like Green Lantern firing magic nerd rays at Raiden and chums (those are Green Lantern’s powers, right?) before despatching them with barely non-lethal “Heroic Brutalities”, a gameplay oxymoron that makes you wonder if anyone involved had used a dictionary in their lives.
NICE PORT, IDIOTS
The spice of Mortal Kombat has always been the wealth of hidden secrets, buried assets and outright lies embedded in each board revision – a tradition that has been actively encouraged by the development team in an effort to make you spend money chasing made-up palette swapped ninjas. One of the best was Human Smoke, who needed to be summoned to the brawl by hitting down and start when prompted by the Mortal Kombat II “Toasty!” guy. Pretty memorable, at least for me! Not so for the guys coding Midway Arcade Treasures 2, who mapped start to the pause button… meaning you could never fight Smoke. The same dire port of MKII turns up in Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks… given to you as a gift by Smoke! Oh, Mortal Kombat!
Mortal Kombat 9 was announced at E3 2010 and looks hype. We love Mortal Kombat, but like to see the funny side. Don’t hate us, Ed Boon!