Mortal Kombat (arcade game)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article concerns the first entry of the fighting game series. For the movie based on the series, see Mortal Kombat (film).
| Mortal Kombat | |
|---|---|
  |
|
| Developer(s) | Midway |
| Publisher(s) | Midway |
| Release date(s) | 1992 |
| Genre(s) | Versus fighting |
| Mode(s) | Up to 2 players |
| Platform(s) | Arcade, Super NES, Mega Drive/Genesis, Sega CD, Amiga, Game Gear, Game Boy, Sega Master System, MS-DOS, PlayStation 2 and Xbox (with Mortal Kombat: Deception Premium Pack), PSP (as part of Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play), Mobile Phone, TV game |
| Input | 8-way joystick, Buttons: 5 (HP, LP, BLOCK, HK, LK) |
| Arcade cabinet | Upright |
| Arcade system(s) | Midway Y Unit (up to Rev.3) Midway T Unit (Rev.4 onwards) |
| Arcade display | Raster, horizontal orientation |
Mortal Kombat was the first entry in the famous Mortal Kombat fighting game series by Midway, released in arcades in 1992. It was later picked up by Acclaim Games for the home version, then later returned to Midway. It centers on the first Mortal Kombat tournament and the ultimate defeat of the evil Shang Tsung by the monk Liu Kang.
Contents |
[edit] Gameplay
The game was a response by Midway to Capcom's successful Street Fighter II, which spawned a number of fighting games. However, it used a distinctly different fighting system from the Street Fighter formula, which was used in all subsequent sequels until Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. The controls consisted of five buttons arranged in an "X" pattern: a high punch, a high kick, a low punch, a low kick, and a block button, as well as an eight-way joystick. If the two fighters were standing next to each other, hitting any of the attack buttons would result in a modified strike: a low punch turned into a throw, a high punch turned into a heavy elbow, headbutt, or backhand, and either kick turned into a knee strike. Crouching and hitting either punch resulted in an uppercut, which was the most damaging attack of the game. Jump kicking and crouch-kicking were executed in a similar fashion to Street Fighter, although leg sweeps and roundhouse kicks were performed by holding away while pressing the appropriate kick button.
The blocking in Mortal Kombat I by itself greatly changed the flow of fighting in comparison to contemporary games which used Street Fighter conventions. Characters do not block while retreating or crouching, but only block when the block button is pushed. Even then, characters take (reduced) damage from any hit while blocking. However, successfully blocking moves is simple – a crouching block can successfully defend against all moves, even aerial attacks such as jumpkicks – and blocking characters give very little ground when struck rather than sliding backwards. This style of blocking rewarded dodging to avoid damage but also made counterattacks much easier after a successful block, and the ultimate result was an environment which rewards a more furtive playing style than contemporary games.
Each of the seven playable characters move and fight in the exact same fashion, which led to complaints that the characters lacked distinction. However, each character's moves differed in their hit detection, speed, and damage, such that (for example) Kano's crouching kick dealt much more damage than other characters' crouching kicks, while Raiden's jumpkick had much longer range than other jumpkicks.
The game retained a similar scoring system (based off successful hits, the Test Your Might minigame and other bonuses) to those games; this would be dropped in later entries to the Mortal Kombat series in favor of counting wins.
Another of the game's innovations was the Fatality, a special finishing move executed against a beaten opponent to kill them in a gruesome fashion. For example, one character (Sub-Zero) would grasp a defeated opponent by the head, then rip out the head and spine while the body crumpled to the ground in a pool of blood.
Mortal Kombat also introduced the concept of juggling, an idea so popular it has spread to many games and even other genres. Juggling takes advantage of the fact that when a character is knocked into the air, that player is unable to control his or her character and is still vulnerable to other hits, until he or she lands and gets up again. The idea behind juggling is to knock the enemy into the air and then follow up with other combat moves to keep them there. Theoretically, one could juggle one's opponent to death without ever taking damage, though this was difficult to accomplish in practice. In early versions of the game, juggling was extremely easy because the physics caused characters to fly upwards when hit; by version 5.0, however, characters reacted with somewhat more realism, and also fell more rapidly with successive hits, effectively limiting juggles to 3 hits under normal circumstances.
Finally, Mortal Kombat also changed the way special moves were performed. Street Fighter (and many other fighting games) performed most special moves in fractions of circles (usually full, half or one-quarter) on the joystick followed by a button press (such as a quarter-circle forward, plus punch). Mortal Kombat was the first to introduce moves that did not require a button press (such as tap back, tap back, then forward), and only a few of the special moves required circular joystick movement.
[edit] Characters and cast
[edit] Playable characters
- Johnny Cage – Daniel Pesina
- Liu Kang – Ho Sung Pak
- Sub-Zero – Daniel Pesina
- Scorpion – Daniel Pesina
- Raiden – Carlos Pesina
- Lt. Sonya Blade – Elizabeth Malecki
- Kano – Richard Divizio
[edit] Boss and sub-boss
[edit] Hidden opponent
[edit] Arenas
There are a total of seven different backgrounds to fight on:
- The Courtyard
- Palace Gates
- Warrior Shrine
- The Pit – When an opponent is defeated on this stage, he/she can be uppercutted off the bridge where they will land on a bed of spikes. Although the announcer doesn't acknowledge it, this would be the series' first stage fatality.
- Throne Room
- Goro's Lair
- The Pit Bottom (Versus Reptile only)
[edit] Storyline
500 years ago, the annual Shaolin Tournament, the most prestigious fighting tournament in the world, was interrupted by the appearance of an old sorcerer and a strange four-armed creature, who entered the tournament and defeated the Great Kung Lao. This Shokan warrior was the half-human, half-dragon fighter named Goro, who became the ultimate fighting champion for the next five hundred years. This was all part of Shang Tsung's plan to tip the balance into chaos and help Outworld conquer the Earth Realm.[1]
Liu Kang would go to the tournament with the intent to restore balance. A martial artist/movie star Johnny Cage also entered the tournament and befriended Liu when a fight broke out between himself and Kano. Lin Kuei warrior Sub-Zero was invited to join the tournament by Shang Tsung himself, two years earlier after his ordeal with Shinnok's Amulet.[1] (According to his MK Ending, his reason for joining the tournament was to assassinate Shang Tsung, by the request of a wealthy enemy of Tsung's. This story thread is continued with the younger Sub-Zero brother in MKII). The undead Shirai Ryu ninja Scorpion entered the tournament intending to kill Sub-Zero, believing Sub-Zero to be responsible for killing him (in Mythologies, it was also stated that Scorpion thought that Sub-Zero had murdered his family and clan as well)[1]. Raiden, the God of Thunder, was also asked personally by Shang Tsung himself, and Raiden himself boasted that "all those who would oppose Raiden would be crushed." He took the form of a human in order to participate in the tournament.
Kano, the Black Dragon's most diabolical thug, was being chased by a U.S. Special Forces Unit, led by Lt. Sonya Blade, when he managed to get onto the boat leading to the tournament; his goal in the tournament was to loot Shang Tsung's Palace (where the walls are rumored to be made of gold). Once Sonya and her men arrived, Shang Tsung had his personal army ambush them. The Special Forces Unit got caught in the surprise attack, so Sonya had no choice but to take part in the tournament in order to save her team. Thus the tournament was set.
With Outworld already having won nine tournaments in a row, the heroes would have to avoid handing Earth Realm its tenth loss, or all of humanity would crumble into the darkness of the Outworld (the "ten tournaments in a row" detail was added in Mortal Kombat Trilogy, and had previously been a key plot point in the film adaptation of the original Mortal Kombat)[1].
[edit] Bosses
Mortal Kombat featured two bosses. One was a sub-boss, which was a four-armed Shokan warrior named Goro, a half-human, half-dragon beast. Goro was a great deal stronger then the other characters, and was impossible to grab. Upon Goro's defeat, the player would then face the game's main boss, Shang Tsung. Despite the sorcerer's old age, he moved with incredible speed and summoned skull fireballs at will. Shang Tsung's darkest magic empowered him to steal the souls of fallen adversaries. Due to this sorcery, he also had the ability to morph into any character of the game, including Goro, and assume their appearance and their special abilities. Upon defeat, the many warrior souls that Shang Tsung used during battle would leave his body and then he would be engulfed in flames.
[edit] Ports
From a marketing perspective, the 1993 launch of Mortal Kombat for video game consoles by Acclaim was probably the largest launch of a video game up until that time. A "Mortal Monday" TV campaign featured a flood of TV advertisements, which were unusual for video games at that time, and all four home versions of the game were made available for sale on the same date.
Versions of the original Mortal Kombat game appeared on several different formats, most notably the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and Nintendo's SNES. When the first game in the series was released for the SNES in North America, Nintendo of America had a strict "Family Friendly" policy towards the content of the games released on their systems which required the removal of graphic violence, religious imagery and themes, mentions of death, sexual themes, and other sensitive subjects. Hence, the first Mortal Kombat game on the SNES had the blood recolored gray in an attempt to pass it off as sweat, and the various Fatality moves were graphically changed to be less gruesome. The SNES version was graphically superior to the Mega Drive/Genesis port, but all violence was censored. Beginning with Mortal Kombat II, Nintendo would give in and allow all the original gore and fatalities in its ports of the Mortal Kombat games.
Ports:
- Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis (1993) – the Mega Drive/Genesis version was censored, but entering a secret code (a-b-a-c-a-b-b) restored the full gore and fatalities from the arcade version. This version was given an MA-13 rating by the Videogame Rating Council.
- In 1993 a Sega Mega-CD/Sega CD version of the game was released with a grainy version of the famous Mortal Monday commercial and loading times. This version did not require a code to be entered and thus was given an MA-17 rating. While this port was technologically inferior to the better-looking SNES port, it resembled the arcade version more faithfully in actual gameplay.
- Amiga (1993) – This version is famous for being able to perform all moves in the game using just one button on a joystick. This was required because most amiga joysticks of that time only had one button. The Amiga port of the second game in the series included a Two Button option.
- Game Boy (1993) – Due to technical issues the Game Boy version was severely cut down from its arcade counterpart. It suffered from laggy controls and a limited button layout, plus it was missing Johnny Cage and Reptile. It is, however, the only version of the original Mortal Kombat where Goro is playable.
- IBM PC (1993) – The IBM PC version is probably the most faithful port of the original arcade version. Mortal Kombat II would also see a PC port, with a similar result (although the character size and resolution of the game is hindered from its arcade counterpart).
- Sega Master System (1993)
- Sega Game Gear (1993) – Just as is 16-bit brother, the Mega Drive/Genesis, it was censored unless a cheat code had been entered (2, 1, 2, down, up at the third code screen). Also, because of the 8-bit nature of the Game Gear, the game was somewhat crippled: It featured fewer characters, it had only 2 levels and the responsiveness and frame rate of the game was lower. This made it rather hard to do any kind of special move or fatality, due to its delay, which sometimes lasted almost a second.
- SNES/Super Famicom (1993) – This version contained censored greyish blood, to appear as if you were knocking the sweat off of the fighters. Some critics overlooked the fact that the game played far differently from the original arcade version; for example, the venerable uppercut counter to air attacks was missing in action, and the combo system barely resembled the one from the arcade version. However the graphics and sound are far superior than any other home console version.
- The game has been ported illegally to the Famicom in Asia. It has appeared in several multicarts in China.
- Zx Spectrum (1997) – A version exists, published in Russia.
- In 2004 a new port was included with the Microsoft Xbox and Sony Playstation 2 Mortal Kombat Deception Premium Pack.
[edit] Trivia
- In the Sega Genesis version of the game, the blood code pattern (a-b-a-c-a-b-b) is a deliberate reference to an album released by the band Genesis in the 1980's. The MK team would go on to make other musical references like this in the franchise, most notably the name of a purple-clad character named Rain in reference to Prince (Purple Rain).
- In the arcade version of Mortal Kombat, an alleged glitch was rumored to cause Scorpion or Sub-Zero to morph into a red ninja, named "ERMAC" (short for "error macro"). This rumour spread like wild-fire when Electronic Gaming Monthly published "actual images" of this glitch. However, some players still believed that there was another secret character. Due to the rumors surrounding the glitch, Midway did eventually include a red ninja character named Ermac as an official character in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and he has subsequently appeared in other Mortal Kombat games, such as Deception.
- In the SNES version of Mortal Kombat, if the player performed Raiden's finishing move on the final endurance match, a glitch would occur in which a "metallic" Goro would appear to fight.
- Another false rumor that spread among many players was the existence of a code that would make Sonya appear naked in the game. Various reports told of its existence only appearing in the Sega version, only in the arcade version, and so on.
- A real cheat code that could be used on the Genesis and Sega CD versions, would unlock an entire menu in the main screen called "Cheat Enabled". In the menu a player could turn on and off certain aspects of the game, such as having shadows always crossing the moon during The Pit stage, alternate shadows (high score initials and Fergus McGovern's head), infinite continues, or being able to choose the material for the Test Your Might stage. The code was "down - up - left - left - A - right - down", an acronym for DULLARD. It could only be performed at the main title screen.
- The cheat code system for the Amiga version of the game required a particular word of phrase be typed in at the Main Menu, however the game only required that these letters be typed in that particular order and did not consider letters typed in between. Therefore it is possible to unlock the Cheat Menu (labelled "Diagnostics") by typing in the entire alphabet once. This "flaw" carried over to the Amiga port of MK-II where typing the entire alphabet three times unlocks the Diagnostics Menu.
- Reptile could be fought by executing a Fatality after fighting on The Pit stage, assuming (with the exception of the SNES version) a shadow flew over the moon in the background, without taking any damage or pressing the block button in the winning round (initially, this meant that Sonya could not fight him at all, as her fatality required the block button to be pressed, but this was fixed in later versions). Reptile, a merge between Sub-Zero and Scorpion, is fought on the Pit Bottom. Later, in Mortal Kombat II, Reptile was developed into a full character with his own special moves and would be available from the outset.
- The disembodied heads and remains of various Midway employees like MK creators Ed Boon and John Tobias as well as MK sound programmer Dan Forden can be seen impaled on the bottom of The Pit stage.
- A carving of Pac-Man eating a pill, along with a ghost from Pac-Man, can be seen on the right wall of the Palace Gates stage.
- The designers intended to have martial arts star Jean Claude Van-Damme portray Johnny Cage in the first game. However, he was involved in a Genesis game and declined. That game, however, was never published.
- Another rampant rumor spread with the Genesis version of an African American kickboxer named Nimbus Terrafaux. This was simply a magazine hoax.
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] External links
Categories: Articles with large trivia sections | 1992 arcade games | 1992 computer and video games | Acclaim Entertainment games | Amiga games | Arcade games | Computer and video games with multiple endings | Controversial computer and video games | DOS games | Game Boy games | Game Gear games | Midway Games | Mobile phone games | Mortal Kombat games | Sega CD games | Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis games | Sega Master System games | Super NES games | DOS/4GW games | Computer and video games with digitized sprites
