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Mortal Kombat
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| Developer(s) | Midway |
| Publisher(s) | Midway |
| Designer(s) | Ed Boon, John Tobias (creators) Dan Forden (music / sounds) |
| 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), PlayStation Portable (as part of Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play), mobile phone, TV game |
| Release date(s) | 1992 |
| Genre(s) | Versus fighting |
| Mode(s) | Up to 2 players |
| Input methods | 8-way joystick, Buttons: 5 (HP, LP, BLOCK, HK, LK) |
| Cabinet | Upright |
| Arcade system | Midway Y Unit (up to Rev.3) Midway T Unit (Rev.4 onwards) |
| Display | Raster, horizontal orientation |
Mortal Kombat was the first entry in the famous and highly controversial Mortal Kombat fighting game series by Midway Games, released in arcades in 1992. It was later picked up by Acclaim Entertainment 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.
Originally, creators Ed Boon and John Tobias wanted to create a video game starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, with a digitized version of the action star fighting villains. Unfortunately, Van Damme was already in negotiations with another video game company (that game was never realized either), so they decided instead to create a game loosely based on Enter the Dragon. Van Damme's likeness is still clearly seen in the character of Johnny Cage; a Caucasian Hollywood martial arts movie star who performs a split punch to the groin (inspired by a scene from Bloodsport).
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The game was a response by Midway to Capcom's sucessful 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, head butt, 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 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 jump kicks – 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. (For example, Kano's crouching kick dealt more damage than other characters' crouching kicks, while Raiden's jump kick had a longer range than other jump kicks.)
The game retained a similar scoring system (based on 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.
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.
Finally, Mortal Kombat was the first versus-fighting game to feature a secret character (Reptile).
shao kahn
Test Your Might is the minigame that is featured in Mortal Kombat as an interlude between battles, similar to breaking. The minigame would consist of the player's character standing above one of five blocks of increasing hardness, depending on how far the player has progressed in Test Your Might. The player would have to repeadedly tap the low punch and the low kick buttons until the gauge next to their character passed a certain point, and then would have to press the Block button to strike. If they were above this point, their character would break the block in front of them. Otherwise, their hand would bounce off the object sitting in front of them. The player starts off on wood, and after breaking it would move on to stone, steel, ruby, and diamond, then back to wood after diamond is broken. The breaking point on the gauge is raised with the increasing hardness of each block.
The minigame appears at different intervals depending on whether the game is played in one-player or two-player mode. In one-player mode, it appears after every three battle victories, no matter how many battles take place.
However, since the one-player mode ends after the twelfth battle victory (against Shang Tsung), this mode gives players only three chances to test their might before their game is over. This means that the two hardest blocks of the five (ruby and diamond) are reachable only after a player wins at least two "Test Your Might" minigames in two-player mode. The minigame also appears after every five consecutive two-player battles, with each player's progress maintained individually.
The Test Your Might minigame was not used in the subsequent Mortal Kombat games until 2002's console-only Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, where it returned with improved graphics, a similar but longer block sequence (bamboo, coal, oak, brick, redwood, marble, iron, then diamond), and another minigame, Test Your Sight. Whereas in Mortal Kombat Test Your Might was there to earn points, it is in Deadly Alliance to earn "Koins" with which to unlock special features. In Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, the minigame appears whenever the player needs to perform some feat of strength, and at times, even during specific parts of boss battles.
There are a total of seven different backgrounds to fight on:
Goro lives...
A 2,000 year old half human dragon Goro remains undefeated for the past 500 years. He won the title of grand champion of Mortal Kombat by defeating Kung Lao, a shaolin fighting monk. It was during this period that the tournament fell into Shang Tsung's hands and was corrupted. Shang Tsung (Grandmaster of the Mortal Kombat Tournament) has just announced the next Mortal Kombat Fighting Tournament and many fighters arrive. Liu Kang, a Shaolin Monk, has entered the Mortal Kombat fighting tournament to defeat Shang Tsung and return the tournament back to its Shaolin owners. As Liu Kang progresses through the tournament, he meets Johnny Cage (Movie star and Martial Arts Master) and Sonya Blade (US Army Special Forces Officer), and befriends them. Soon, Liu Kang defeats a variety of fighters and faces Goro, Shokan Warrior and Mortal Kombat Champion, and defeats him. As soon as Shang Tsung heard of Goro's defeat, he challenged Liu Kang in Mortal Kombat. Liu Kang fought and defeated Shang Tsung. Thus, Liu Kang became the new champion of Mortal Kombat and saved Earthrealm.
Mortal Kombat features two bosses. One is a sub-boss, which is a four-armed Shokan warrior named Goro, a half-human, half-dragon beast. Goro is a great deal stronger than the other characters, and impossible to grab. Also, he takes less damage when attacked, and is not affected by sweep kicks.
Upon Goro's defeat, the player then faces the game's main boss, Shang Tsung. Despite the sorcerer's old age, he moves with incredible speed and summons skull fireballs at will. Shang Tsung's darkest magic empowers him to steal the souls of fallen adversaries. Due to this sorcery, he also has 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 leaves his body and then he is engulfed in flames.
The September 13, 1993 launch of Mortal Kombat for home consoles by Acclaim Entertainment was one of the largest video game launch of the time. A "Mortal Monday" ad campaign featured a flood of TV commercials, and all four home versions of the game were made available for sale on the same date. In addition, an album Mortal Kombat: The Album was released to accompany the release.
Versions of the original Mortal Kombat game appeared on several different formats, notably the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and Nintendo's SNES. At the time of the game's SNES release in North America, Nintendo of America had a strict "Family Friendly" policy. This required the removal of graphic violence, religious imagery, and mentions of death from all game content. The SNES version, therefore, had characters that sweated upon injury instead of bleeding, and most of the Fatality moves were toned down. As of Mortal Kombat II, however, Nintendo decided to leave the gore from the original arcade version intact.
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