| Mortal Kombat | |
|---|---|
Cover artwork for the home versions. |
|
| Developer(s) | Midway Sculptured Software / Probe (home consoles) Activision Las Vegas (Microsoft Windows) |
| Publisher(s) | Midway Acclaim (home consoles) Activision (Microsoft Windows) |
| Designer(s) | Ed Boon John Tobias |
| Composer(s) | Dan Forden |
| Platform(s) | Arcade Super NES Mega Drive/Genesis Sega Mega CD Amiga Game Gear Game Boy Sega Master System MS-DOS Mobile Phone TV game MAME Microsoft Windows 3.1x Virtual Console Playstation Network Xbox Live Arcade |
| Release date(s) | August 1992 (Y-Unit release) 1993 (T-Unit release) November 1994 (Windows release) |
| Genre(s) | Versus fighting |
| Mode(s) | Up to 2 players |
| Rating(s) | |
| Cabinet | Upright |
| Arcade system | Midway Y Unit (Version 1-4) Midway T Unit (Version 4-5) Windows 3.1 Unit (Version 3.1x) |
| Display | Raster, horizontal orientation |
Mortal Kombat is a 1992 fighting-game developed and published by Midway for arcades. In 1993, home versions were released by Acclaim Entertainment. Released in the Fall of 1994, the Microsoft Windows 3.1x version was released by Activision Interactive. It is the first title in the Mortal Kombat series. Upon release, Mortal Kombat became one of the most popular arcade games of all time. It was subsequently ported to home video game consoles and became a best-selling game. Mortal Kombat also became one of the most controversial video games, for its depiction of gore and violence using realistic digitized graphics.[1][2][3][4]
Mortal Kombat focuses on the journey of the monk Liu Kang to save Earth from the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung, ending with their confrontation on the tournament known as Mortal Kombat. The game spawned numerous sequels, as well as a successful 1995 motion picture adaptation, and is one of the most popular fighting games to date.
Contents |
In Mortal Kombat, the player receives information concerning the characters in biographies displayed during attract mode in the title screen. These featured short videos of the characters taking their fighting stances and text informing the motives for each character to enter the tournament. The game takes place in a fantasy setting, with most of the game's events occurring on the fictional realms of the Mortal Kombat series. The original game is the only title in the series that features only one realm, that being Earthrealm. The tournament featured in the story actually takes place fully at Shang Tsung's Island, located somewhere on Earth, with seven of its locations serving as Kombat Zones.
To fully understand the plot of Mortal Kombat, the player must beat Arcade mode to unlock endings for each character; but only a few endings are considered canonical to the Mortal Kombat storyline, and were identified in the sequel Mortal Kombat II.
The original Mortal Kombat is the only game in the series to not have an introduction video explaining its plot. Eventually, the story of the Mortal Kombat universe was revealed, wherein the 'Elder Gods' created various realms, and decreed that the denizens of one realm could only conquer another realm by defeating the defending realm's greatest warriors in ten consecutive Mortal Kombat tournaments. With one of such realms, Outworld, already having won nine tournaments in a row, Earth's warriors would have to avoid handing Earthrealm the tenth loss. The first game takes place during this decisive battle. With the help of the Thunder God Raiden, the Earthrealm warriors are victorious and the monk Liu Kang becomes the new champion of Mortal Kombat after defeating Shang Tsung.[5]
The storyline of the first Mortal Kombat was later adapted into Paul W. S. Anderson's Mortal Kombat motion picture, and also in an animated prequel to the first movie titled Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins, released directly video. In 2010, director Kevin Tancharoen released an eight-minute unofficial film called Mortal Kombat: Rebirth, featuring a darker tone.[6] An alternate climax for the first game would be featured on the adventure game Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, which tells an alternate version of the events between the first and second Mortal Kombat tournaments.
The original Mortal Kombat included seven playable characters, all of which would eventually become trademark characters and appear in sequels. The game was developed with digitized sprites based on actors.[7][8] The protagonist of the game is the Shaolin martial artist Liu Kang, played by Ho Sung Pak, who enters the tournament to defeat antagonist Shang Tsung, the main antagonist and final boss (also played by Sung Pak).
Elizabeth Malecki played the Special Forces agent Sonya Blade, who is pursuing the Black Dragon mercenary Kano (played by Richard Divizio). Carlos Pesina played Raiden, the god of Thunder and protector of Earthrealm, while his brother Daniel Pesina played Hollywood movie star Johnny Cage and the ninja specter Scorpion. The yellow color of Scorpion's costume was changed to blue to create the Lin Kuei warrior Sub-Zero and to green for Shang Tsung's servant Reptile,[9] both played by Daniel Pesina. Mortal Kombat would become famous for these palette swaps, and later games would continue it.
The four-armed Shokan warrior Goro serves as the sub boss of the game, being a half-human, half-dragon beast much stronger than the other characters, and unaffected by some of their manouveres. Although many of the characters displayed superhuman powers, Goro was the only character to appear inhuman. The character's stop motion model was created by Curt Chiarelli. When fighting on the Pit stage, the player could qualify to fight the secret character Reptile.[10] The requirements to face Reptile would be met on home ports if the fighter achieved a double Flawless Victory (winning without taking any damage) without blocking, and performed the standard finishing move, rather than the finishing uppercut to the pit.[10] In some versions, a silhouette must float across the moon in the background during the fight, as described above. Goro, Shang Tsung, and Reptile were not playable in the original game, but would become playable in sequels. The Masked Guard in the Courtyard stage was portrayed by Mortal Kombat developer John Vogel.[11]
Whereas other fighting games had characters with considerable differences in speed, height, attacks, strength, jumping heights and distances, the characters in Mortal Kombat played virtually identically to one another (with the exception of unplayable characters), with only minimal differences in their moves' range and speed. 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 a punch button resulted in an uppercut, which was one of the most damaging attacks in 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 characters in Mortal Kombat differed mostly in their special moves and finishing moves. The game also changed the way special moves were performed. 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. In an interview with Computer and Video Games, Ed Boon stated, "[...] since the beginning, one of the things that's separated us from other fighting games is the crazy moves we've put in it, like fireballs and all the magic moves, so to speak."[13] 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.[14] For example, Sub-Zero would grasp a defeated opponent by the head, then rip out the head and spine while the body fell to the ground in a pool of blood.[15]
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 still take damage from any hit while blocking, although it's very reduced. 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 counter attacks much easier after a successful block, and the ultimate result was an environment which rewards a more furtive playing style than contemporary games.
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 three hits under normal circumstances.
Test Your Might is a breaking minigame (similar to the breaking mini game featured as a bonus in Capcom's 1987 fighting game, Street Fighter) featured as a bonus level between battles. In it, the player's character is stood in front of a large block, and he must break the material in front of him with his bare fist by filling a strength gauge past its breaking point, which is noted by a red line placed on the bar. If the player fails to fill the strength gauge past that point by the time he strikes, the material won't break and the player fails the round. The first material the player must break is wood, once broken he progresses onto stone, then to steel, ruby and finally, diamond. Each material has a higher breaking point than the last, with diamond being the hardest, requiring the player to fill the strength gauge almost entirely. As materials become harder, each of them awards more points than the previous one.
In single-player mode, the minigame appears after every three consecutive battles. However, since the single-player mode ends after the twelfth battle victory, this mode gives players only three chances to play Test Your Might before their game is over. This means that the two hardest blocks of the five (ruby and diamond) are reachable only by playing two-player mode. In this mode, the minigame appears after every five consecutive battles, with each player's progress maintained individually.
Test Your Might would eventually become the franchise's trademark minigame, but it 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" used 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. Test Your Might was also worked into Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe gameplay. While fighting in certain areas, the player can smash the opponent through a series of walls and engage in a tug-of war with the damage meter at the top of the screen. The player on the offense mashes buttons to increase damage, while the player on the defense mashes buttons to decrease damage taken.[16]
According to various articles, the first Mortal Kombat game was, "... put together in 10 months in 1991-1992..." [17] and also in an interview with Official Nintendo Magazine, Mortal Kombat co-creator, Ed Boon, stated, "Mortal Kombat started out with four people in 1991; I was the only programmer, John Tobias and John Vogel were the only two artists, and Dan Forden was the only sound designer. That was it. We developed the first Mortal Kombat in ten months from beginning to end..." .[18] however, other sources tend to differ. For example, on Shacknews it is stated, "Mortal Kombat was created by Midway Games in only five and a half months as a competitor for the hugely popular Street Fighter II..." [19]
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.[20] However, Van Damme was already in negotiations with another company for a video game that ultimately was never released. Van Damme's likeness is still clearly seen in the character of Johnny Cage (with whom he shares his name's initials, JC), a Hollywood martial arts movie star who performs a split punch to the groin (performed by Van Damme in a scene from Bloodsport[21]). In a 1994 interview with the creators, Ed Boon and John Tobias, it was stated that the task that the developers were given by Midway was to create a "combat game for release within a year." The article later states that although both creators say the intention was to create a game for release in a certain time frame, they believe that the Midway officials may have been motivated to create a fighting game because of introduction of the Japanese fighting game series, Street Fighter.[17]
In a podcast interview with the Official Xbox Magazine, Ed Boon stated for six out of the eight months while they were in production of Mortal Kombat, "...nobody could come up with a name nobody didn't hate." Some of the names suggested were Kumite, Dragon Attack, Death Blow, and even at one point, Fatality. Someone had written down "combat" on the drawing board for the names in Ed Boon's office and someone wrote a K over the C, according to Ed Boon, "...just to be kind of weird..." Steve Ritchie, a pinball designer at that time, was sitting in Ed Boon's office and saw the word "Kombat" and said to Ed Boon, 'Why don't you name it Mortal Kombat?' and according to Ed Boon, that name "just stuck."[22] The series itself commonly uses the letter "K" in place of "C" for words containing the hard C sound, thus misspelling them (a notable exception being Johnny Cage's name).
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. On the same year, an official Mortal Kombat Collector's Edition, written and illustrated by the game's designer artist John Tobias, was available through mail order, describing the backstory of the game in a greater detail. The mail order deal was displayed during the attract mode of the game. The comic book would later be sold normally around the country, although it was close to impossible to get a copy outside of the United States. In 2002, the entire comic book was included as an unlockable bonus in "The Krypt" mode of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance.
Mortal Kombat: The Album, an album by The Immortals featuring techno songs, was released in May, 1994 to accompany the release of home versions of Mortal Kombat. It featured two themes for the game, Techno Syndrome and Hypnotic House. Techno Syndrome was adapted for the 1995 movie soundtrack, and incorporated the familiar "Mortal Kombat!" yell first shown in the first game's commercial for home systems.[23] Jeff Rovin also penned a novelization of the first Mortal Kombat game, which was published in June 1995 in order to coincide with the release of the first movie. There were also lines of action figures made in the original characters.
Versions of the original Mortal Kombat game appeared on several different formats, notably the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis 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.[24] The SNES version, therefore, had characters that sweated upon injury instead of bleeding, and most of the Fatality moves were toned down--[24] even so, most of the fatality moves in this version caused injuries that are clearly incompatible with life (such as the loser being immolated by a fireball, leaving only his skeleton behind). Even though critics generally agree that Nintendo had the superior port graphically because of their censorship the game was not received as well and suffered in sales compared to the Mega Drive's port.[24] As of Mortal Kombat II, however, Nintendo decided to leave the gore from the original arcade version intact.
In the arcade version of Mortal Kombat, there were hacked versions of the arcade:
| Reception | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Aggregator | Score |
| GameRankings | 96.17% (3 reviews)[36] (Sega Genesis) 83.3% (3 reviews)[37] (SNES) |
| Review scores | |
| Publication | Score |
| Electronic Gaming Monthly | 8.25 out of 10(Sega Genesis and SNES)[36][37] |
| GamePro | 5 out of 5 (Sega Genesis and SNES)[36][37] |
| Nintendo Power | 3.875 out of 5 (SNES) [37] |
Mortal Kombat was awarded Most Controversial Game of 1993 by Electronic Gaming Monthly. The same publication also awarded the character of Goro the 1993 Hottest Gaming Hunk title.[38] Mortal Kombat for the SNES was rated by IGN the 8th worst Arcade to console conversion stating, "So out went the decapitations and spine-rips, everyone sweated buckets instead of bled, and Kano's heart-rip move was turned into a fatal chest-hair pluck." [39] "Mortal Kombat for the SNES, while having limited gore, had better graphics but the art direction of Nintendo straying from the blood led to a different perspective on a 'better game.'"[40] The Arcade version of Mortal Kombat was rated the 85th "Top Coin-Operated Videogame of all Times".[41] Forbes called Mortal Kombat one of the "Most Loved Arcade Games" stating that it was the "king of the arcade" in its day. As of this article, the arcade machines of the original title go from a few hundred dollars to $2,500.[42]
Mortal Kombat was one of many violent video games that came into prominence between 1992 and 1993, generating controversy among parents and public officials.[43] Hearings on video game violence and the corruption of society, headed by Senator Joseph Lieberman and Herb Kohl were held in late 1992 to 1993. The result of the hearings was that the entertainment software industry was given one year to form a working rating system or the federal government would intervene and create its own system. Eventually, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) was conceived, requiring all video games to be rated and for these ratings to be placed on the games' packaging.[44]
While many games have been subject to urban legends about secret features and unlockable content, these kinds of myths were particularly rampant among the dedicated fan community of the Mortal Kombat series. The game's creators did little to dispel the rumors, some of which were even eventually implemented in subsequent games. The most notable of these myths was due to a glitch where the hidden character Reptile was displayed red instead of green. As a result of this error, an internal error counter indicated as "ERMAC" (ERror MACro) was incremented. This would later lead the developers to include the red-garbed ninja Ermac on Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and subsequent games. According to UGO.com, there was also an urban legend circulating around the time that had to do with inputting a secret code in the SNES version of Mortal Kombat that would allow uncensored Fatalities and blood in the SNES. However, this was later proven untrue, being only available on the Genesis version of Mortal Kombat.[45]
|
|||||||||||||||||