This article concerns the fighting game. For the movie based on the game, see Mortal Kombat (film).

Mortal Kombat is a 1992 fighting game by Midway. It was popular because of its realistic, digitized graphics mixed with bloody and brutal action. This differentiated it from the hand-drawn, more anime-like graphics of competing games like Street Fighter II. Its graphic "fatality" killing moves led to the founding of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB).

Overview

Mortal Kombat was developed as a reaction to the popular Capcom game Street Fighter II, with simpler controls and digitized graphics. Some say the game's graphic violence was gratuitous, and was only included in order to generate a public outcry and controversy that would garner publicity for the game.

Although highly controversial, the mix of realism and violence propelled Mortal Kombat to widespread renown. The game included many innovations over earlier fighting games such as Street Fighter II. However, 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.

An example 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 would grasp a defeated opponent by the head, then rip off head and spine while the body crumpled to the ground in a pool of blood. Fatalities could only be executed after you had defeated your opponent in combat, and essentially served as a memorable and gruesome sort of victory dance.

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 when a character is knocked into the air, that player is unable to control their character 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.

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.

Legacy

Midway created five sequels for the arcade and home systems, each one bloodier, more brutal, and stranger than the last. Mortal Kombat 4 brought the series into 3D, replacing the digitized fighters of the previous games with polygon models, while Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance was the first in the series to skip arcades altogether and go directly to consoles, a symptom of U.S. arcade market's dramatic decline. The second-to-last installment in the series, Mortal Kombat: Deception, was released for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 platforms in October 2004 (with a Nintendo GameCube version released in February 2005). A PSP version has also been announced. Following a gameplay style very similar to the one found on Deadly Alliance, Deception also features several new gaming modes, such as a Puzzle Fighter-like puzzle game and an Archon-like chess game, as well as a suicidal finishing move for each character, usually performed to prevent the opponent from doing a fatality.

Finishing moves in later games included the Animality (turning into animal to violently finish off the opponent), the Brutality (decimating an opponent into pieces with a long combination of hits or combo), the Friendship (offering one's opponent a token of friendship), and the Babality (transforming the opponent into a baby). The Babality and Friendship moves were created as a jokey non-violent finishing move, a swipe at the US Congressional Investigation for Violence in Videogames who came down harshly on the Mortal Kombat games. Purists, fonder of the earlier style, were upset by the introduction of such finishing moves, yet Mortal Kombat's "purely violent" and dark gameplay was once again implemented after the release of Mortal Kombat 4.

Throughout the series, the game was noted for its simplicity of controls and the exotic special moves it featured, as well as a tendency to replace a hard c sound in its lexicon with a k - hence the name Mortal Kombat.

Easter eggs and secrets

Mortal Kombat was among the first titles in the fighting game genre to include secret characters, secret games, and other Easter eggs. Mortal Kombat 3, for example, included a hidden game of Galaxian. Many extras in the series have only been accessible through very challenging, demanding, and sometimes coincidental requirements. In the 1992 original, by executing a Fatality when fighting on The Pit stage (the bridge) without taking any damage or pressing the block button in the winning round, the player could fight Reptile, a merge between the Sub-Zero and Scorpion characters... providing certain figures (one being a headshot of President of Probe Software Fergus McGovern, only in the Sega Genesis version, though) happened to be flying by the moon in the background. In Mortal Kombat II, Reptile would be developed into a full character with his own special moves and would be available from the outset. It was pioneering ideas like these that has made Mortal Kombat one of the most memorable of the genre. Also, playing as Raiden on the Portal stage, you could perform a Fergality by pressing Back, Back, Back, Block during a fatality (once again, only on the Sega Genesis version).

Another Easter egg actually came about from a rumored glitch. In the original arcade version of the first Mortal Kombat, a rumor stated that the game would sometimes present problems due to a bug and mix two characters together. This would usually be two of the ninja characters, resulting in a ninja in a semi-red suit. The computer would display his name as "ERMAC", short for "error macro." As word spread, people thought they had found a secret character. That wasn't the case, yet in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, it was decided to make an actual Ermac character. Also, glitch characters occurred should the player accomplish the very difficult feat of reaching Reptile in Endurance mode. Once Reptile was defeated, the second character would jump down. As Reptile used a special green colour palette, the following fighter (a normal fighter) would be a jumble of the character's original colors plus Reptile's green colors.

However, one of the most fascinating elements of Mortal Kombat was completely unplanned and out of the programmers' hands. Following the release of Mortal Kombat II, a myth culture was created around the game. The most famous one is the Goro myth. In the first game, Goro was a four-armed monster that acted as a miniboss to the game's main boss, Shang Tsung. Many fans were convinced that Goro was hidden somewhere in Mortal Kombat II and many were obsessed with finding him. The UK's GamesMaster magazine (also a popular TV Show on Channel 4) received numerous letters asking about where to find Goro. Much searching was done, both by fans and the computer game press, until in 1995 GamesMaster concluded, "We are positive Goro isn't to be found in Mortal Kombat II, we are positive he would have been found by now."

Some Easter eggs originated from private jokes between members of the Mortal Kombat development team. The best-known example is "Toasty," which began in Mortal Kombat II. Developers fell into the habit of yelling the victory cry "Toasted!" (and later, "Toasty!") during the testing phase of development. This joke found its way into the game in the form of a small image of sound designer Dan Forden, who would appear in the corner of the screen during gameplay and sing the word "toasty." Later games included other jokes that originated in similar fashion; Mortal Kombat IV had characters uttering strange battle cries such as "That's nacho cheese!" and "I'm gonna throw you over there!"

Characters

• Johnny Cage
• Liu Kang
• Sub-Zero
• Scorpion
• Raiden
• Sonya Blade
• Kano

Non-playable characters

• Shang Tsung - boss
• Goro - sub-boss
• Reptile - hidden character
• Ermac - glitch character

Storylines

The annual Shaolin Tournament promised to be a good one. The best of the best would gather from far and wide to put their skills to the ultimate test. It seemed like it would be a wonderful day of fighting.

When everyone least expected it, an old sorcerer and a strange four-armed creature appeared and corrupted the tournament. This Shokan warrior was the half-human, half-dragon fighter named Goro, who became the ultimate fighting champion by defeating the Great Kung Lao. Because this 2,000 year-old monster had been the undefeated champion for the past 500 years, he made short work of all participating fighters. This was all part of Shang Tsung's plan to tip the balance into chaos and help the Outworld conquer the Earth Realm.

Raiden, the thunder god, saw this and decided to take care of Shang Tsung. However, despite having the powers of a god, he would still need Earth Realm fighters to help him out. Of course, Liu Kang would help, since it was his country's tournament. Other fighters also took part in the melee for their own reasons. They included martial artist/movie star Johnny Cage, Lin Kuei ninja Sub-Zero, and Shirai Ryu ninja Scorpion.

Kano, the Black Dragon's most diabolical thug, was getting chased by a U.S. Special Forces Unit, led by Lt. Sonya Blade, when he received a vision from Shang Tsung to lure them towards his tournament. Once Kano arrived, Tsung had his personal army ambush them. Kano managed to get away and into the tournament, while most of 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.

Raiden would also participate in the tournament, but he would have to take the form of a human in order to do so. So, the tournament was set. With Outworld already having won 9 tournaments in a row, our heroes must avoid handing Earth Realm the 10th loss, or all of humanity would crumble into the darkness of the Outworld.

Bosses

Mortal Kombat featured two bosses. One was a sub-boss (whom you'd have to face before challenging the main boss of the game). The Sub-boss of the game was a four armed shokan warrior named Goro, a half-human, half-dragon beast, who was considered difficult to beat. Upon Goro's defeat, the player would then face the game's main boss, Shang Tsung. Tsung was an old man who was, in fact, incredibly fast and shot out skull fireballs at will. He also had the ability to morph into any character of the game and not only assume their identity, but their special moves too (Goro was the character Tsung most notoriously morphed into on a continuous basis). Upon defeat, the many warrior souls that Shang Tsung used during battle would leave his body and then he would be engulfed in flames.

Future Mortal Kombat sequels would continue to use sub-bosses. While most sub-bosses would be hideous monsters like a Shokan, Centaur or an Oni, Mortal Kombat: Deception would break this trend by placing the character Noob Smoke as a sub-boss.

Contributing Cultural Material

The Mortal Kombat mythology borrows heavily from multiple sources, notably Asian cultures, religions and martial arts. Examples include the following:

• Raiden, who is the God of Thunder in Mortal Kombat, takes his name from the Japanese Raiden (雷電 meaning "thunder and lightning"), which is the name of a demon-god in Japanese mythology. The Japanese Raiden is usually depicted as a man-beast with sharp teeth, long hair and a large drum for making thunder. The Mortal Kombat Raiden's trademark glowing eyes and straw hat, however, appear to have been inspired by the Three Storms in the film Big Trouble in Little China.
• Fujin (Mortal Kombat IV) is named after the Japanese wind god Fuujin (風神).
• Shujinko (Mortal Kombat: Deception) is from shujinkou (主人公 meaning "protagonist").
• Damashi (Mortal Kombat: Deception) gets his name, appropriately, from the Japanese word damashi (騙し meaning "deception").
• Hotaru (Mortal Kombat: Deception) is from hotaru (蛍 meaning "firefly").
• Kenshi (Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance and Mortal Kombat: Deception) is from kenshi (剣士 meaning "swordsman").
• The "White Lotus Society" to which Liu Kang belongs may or may not have been named after to the secret White Lotus Society which existed in China during the Mongol Yuan Dynasty and Ming Dynasty. A white lotus is traditionally symbolic of death.

Possible Design Errors

As steeped in cultural allusions as the Mortal Kombat universe is, it also harbors some distinctly Western misinterpretations. For example:

• Reiko, a name applied to a male character, is a very typical female name in Japan.
• Goro is also a Japanese name, but a very typical one (and therefor an unlikely name for the character).
• Kintaro is the name of a super-human boy in a Japanese fairy tale; once again, not a name befitting the character.
• Although the game's developers have acknowledged Raiden's Japanese origins, the name Raiden is consistently mispronounced in every Mortal Kombat game.
• 'There are references to a ninja clan called shirai ryuu, which is also consistently mispronounced, assuming that shirai is 白井 (white well) and ryuu is 竜 (dragon) or 流 (flow; style).

Movies and television

Mortal Kombat was adapted into two major motion pictures, Mortal Kombat, and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Both had a poor critical reception at the time they were released, but the first movie was a major financial success, eventually grossing over $125,000,000 worldwide and starting the Hollywood careers of Paul W. S. Anderson, Robin Shou, and Talisa Soto, among others. A third movie, Mortal Kombat: Devastation, is said to be in pre-production as confirmed officially, and will be released in 2006.

The franchise also sparked two TV series, the animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm and the live-action Mortal Kombat: Conquest. Neither series ran for more than one season despite the popularity of Conquest. In 1995 an animated TV movie was released titled Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins.

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.

When the first game in the series was released for the SNES in North America, Nintendo of America held a strict "Family Friendly" policy towards the content of the games released on their systems, this included 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 Genesis port, but all violence was censored. The success of Mortal Kombat on Genesis drove Nintendo to rethink its censorship policies.

After this, Nintendo began to concede on their policies, and the SNES version of Mortal Kombat II was released with the violence fully intact but with a warning label on the game's packaging. Nintendo later allowed other publishers to make games with sensitive subject material following the advent of various video game content rating systems. In Japan, the game was also released for the Japanese version of the SNES, the Super Famicom.

Ports:

• Sega Genesis/Sega Mega Drive (1993) - the Genesis/Mega Drive versions were censored, but entering a secret code (a-b-a-c-a-b-b) restored the full gore and fatalities from the arcade version. In 1993 a Sega CD/Mega CD version of the game was released with arcade quality sound, 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 by the Videogames Rating Council.
• Amiga (1993)
• Game Boy (1993)
• IBM PC (1993)
• Sega Master System (1993)
• Sega Game Gear (1993)
• SNES/Super Famicom (1993) - Because Nintendo of America had a problem with the depiction of blood, the SNES replaces blood with "sweat" and all fatalities that involve decapitation or mutilation are modified or replaced (only Liu Kang's, Sonya's and Scorpion's are intact). A Game Genie code existed which could recolor the sweat pixels to be red, giving the slight appearance of blood, although this could not realter the fatalities to their original form.
• The game has been ported illegally to the Famicom in Asia. It has appeared in several multicarts in China.

Sequels

• Mortal Kombat II
• Mortal Kombat 3
• Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
• Mortal Kombat Trilogy
• Mortal Kombat 4
• Mortal Kombat Gold
• Mortal Kombat Advance
• Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance
• Mortal Kombat: Tournament Edition
• Mortal Kombat: Deception
• Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks
• Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (to be released in late 2006)

There was also a separate game starring the character of Sub-Zero called Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. This was a platform game rather than a fighting game. This radical change coupled with having an extremely complicated storyline and sluggish gameplay spelled certain doom: the game received negative reviews from its inception and it became widely regarded as a disappointing and lackluster endeavor.

Another interesting Mortal Kombat game is Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, which is an action game that was originally supposed to star Jax and Sonya. Due to Midway cutting a lot of corners after Tobias left, Sonya wasn't in the game. This game was an even bigger failure than Mythologies, and the series has fallen to its lowest point in 1999, a few years after reaching its peak with Mortal Kombat 3 and its updates (UMK3 and MKT). This caused Midway to take some time off and refocus.

Mortal Kombat bosses

• Goro-sub-boss, MK1, MK4
• Shang Tsung-boss, MK1, MK:DA sub-boss, MK:SM
• Kintaro-sub-boss, MK2, MK:SM
• Shao Kahn-boss, MK2, MK3, MKU3, MKT,MK:SM
• Motaro-sub-boss, MK3, MKU3, MKT
• Shinnok-boss, MK4
• Moloch-sub-boss, MK:DA
• Quan Chi-boss, MK:DA
• Noob-Smoke-sub-boss, MK:D
• Onaga-boss, MK:D

Plot continuity

One interesting aspect of the Mortal Kombat series' plot is that every single game features a different ending for every character. Because many endings in a single game will contradict each other, only one or a few per game are considered canon, and the true endings are never known until the next game is released. The result is that when a new Mortal Kombat game is released, fans speculate about which ending (or endings) are real.

Nearly every game's canon ending involves the good guys emerging triumphant over evil, though this trend was broken with the release of Mortal Kombat: Deception, which revealed that Earthrealm's warriors in Deadly Alliance had failed to prevent Shang Tsung and Quan Chi from resurrecting the Dragon King's army.

Mortal Kombat crossovers

Mortal Kombat has also been the focus of several extremely popular game modifications, including hacks to the original Mortal Kombat PC games (MK2: Kintaro's Vulgar Version), and the integration of console artwork and audio into other game engines, including but not limited to the original Quake and Unreal engines (Mortal Kombat Quake TC).

Characters from the Mortal Kombat series have often appeared in other Midway games as secret characters, the most recent of which was Raiden's inclusion in Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict (which coincidentally also included a fatality system similar to MK's).

A fanmade version of Pong based on the Mortal Kombat series called Pong Kombat was released in 1994.

Similar Games

• Primal Rage featured a battle system similar to that found in Mortal Kombat, including fatality-like finishing moves and blood depiction. The major difference was that this game's characters were giant animals instead of digitized humans.
• Killer Instinct was also a fairly popular game that adopted a similar gameplay mechanism.
• OpenMortal is a parody of Mortal Kombat, released for Windows and Linux under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It has 16 playable characters, with the possibility of adding designed characters, and can be played in team mode and network.

See also

• List of Mortal Kombat characters
• Minor Mortal Kombat characters

External links

Official Websites:

• Mortal Kombat Official Website
• Mortal Kombat Comics

Other Websites:

• All the Mortal Kombat characters
• UVL - Mortal Kombat games for any platform
• Category at ODP
• Nintendo's Mortal Mistake
• The Killer List of Video Games entry on Mortal Kombat
• Mortal Kombat at MobyGames
• The History of Mortal Kombat