Game Debate #88: Mortal Kombat

[Reed Rothchild | 9,561]

[JamesRobot | 5,810]

A historically significant 9.

[Tanooki | 4,943]

Rating it in the bubble of its time that game is a pretty solid 8.  It's no street fighter 2 because it just didn't flow as smoothly, had some cheap stunts in there they could have done something about too.  But given the attention to detail with the digitized characters, the audio, good use of color, and obviously the well over the top gore with the finish him fatalities it was a stand out solid rival to what capcom put up as well (and early SNK too.)  The game was good, but it wasn't excellent, very easy to recommend it (and it's first sequel) too as  you really had to learn it... you had no choice with a screwy block button.  That game was a bit more tactical about how to win or lose on it unlike 3 and after which turned into lame button mashing twitchy nonsense.

[ifightdragons | 234]

Mortal Kombat 2 was pretty damn good for its time. Never enjoyed the debut much. It felt very undercooked and stiff.

[croagunk | 798]

8/10 for me. It’s a lot of fun.

[TDIRunner | 2,754]

The historical significance of this game greatly outweighs the actual gameplay itself.  If I'm following the rules of the thread, I would have to give it a 5 or a 6.  MKII does EVERYTHING better and makes the original completely obsolete.  The only reason to play this game is for the novelty of playing the original.  

[sp1nz | 615]

It was fun playing it on my family's DOS PC but beyond the digitized mocap, fun gore and spooky oriental atmosphere there's not much meat in the game; small cast, shared basic moves and stiff gameplay. I enjoy it enough to play it infrequently but the later installments do it bigger and better.

6/10

[DefaultGen | 5,417]

Pretty hard to rate outside historical context. 5/10? It's cool. It's better than the dogshit copycats that came after it. And I'm probably never going to play it unless I'm at an arcade with a friend and it's the only option.

[AstralSoul | 502]

I'll be honest, up until Mortal Kombat 9 I didn't like the series. I thought it was just a straight up bad and cheesy fighting game, certainly nowhere near the fun and complexity of Street Fighter. I will say though at the time of it's release and the controversy surrounding it I thought it was great, as a kid, but later on realized the only thing I liked about it was that it was the first game with blood I ever played and doing the finishing moves was really the only thing I liked about it. Even now, with MK11 being far and away the best in the series in my opinion, the series as a whole still feels too gimmicky to be taken seriously as a fighting game. By no means am I an expert in the genre. I suck at most of them. But I've played enough different ones and something about MK always just felt a bit off. But if I do choose play any in the series it's going to be MK11. The original is just not fun in my opinion. I gave it a generous 4/10. 

[DarkTone | 987]

7/10. 

[Kguillemette | 1,547]

I love MK, but the first is a far cry from what the series would become. The depth and roster of characters just isn't there yet and it plays more like a fast paced game of rock paper scissors than anything else. And unfortunately pretty much every console port of MK1 has been pretty bad.

[JamesRobot | 5,810]

It was 1993 and the hype surrounding Mortal Kombat and its M rating from the new ESRB was at a fever pitch.  Thank god I had a Genesis so I wouldn't have to play the shitty censored version on the Super Nintendo.  Surely, I could harass my parents for a copy for Christmas.

DISASTER!  All of the bad PR and fear mongering propaganda had gotten to my parents.  Not only, would I not be getting Mortal Kombat for Christmas, my dad expressly forbade me from ever owning a copy Mortal Kombat!  Now, I'm sure parents guarding access to media was fairly common for some of you but this was the very first time my parents had invoked any kind of censorship on me.  At this point I owned a few parental advisory CDs and had been consuming a steady diet of action and horror movies for a number of years.  So this kind of came as a shock to me.  Sure MK was violent but it paled in comparison to the gore I was already desensitized to.  My parents were clearly brainwashed by the news media.

Fine.  I'd just buy my own copy and hide it from my parents.  I had a little cash so I opted for a Game Boy cart.  The absolute shittiest version of MK.  But it was cheap and easy to conceal.  I could just throw away the box and its contents and nobody was the wiser.

Then inspiration struck sometime in '94.  Yadda yadda yadda... Now I had my very own Genesis copy along with the guide including all the fatalities to boot.  I just played downstairs later at night when my parents were pretty much going to bed and I would hide the game in its case behind all of my other Genesis games.  But I  got sloppy and started leaving the game in the deck.  Then end of month came and my dad pulled me aside.

"Where did you get this?" Dad asks while brandishing my Genesis MK at me.

"Um...  the mall?"

"You know you're not allowed to play this game, right?!"  Still threatening me with the cart.

"Yeah but-"

"And where did you get the money to buy it?!" Fuck!  Busted!  I'm only 14 or 15 here so I don't have a job and my own money yet.

"Uh..."  Yeah, my brilliant plan was to steal a check from the back of the checkbook in mom's purse and pay myself $70.  Complete with a forged signature (my Mom's of course, Dad's was harder to forge).

After dishing out a fierce grounding, Dad immediately drove me to the Villa Italia Mall to return my ill-gotten booty.  Lucky for me, the clerk didn't even bat an eye when I told him I wasn't allowed to have the game.  Full refund.  

The Game Boy cart survived the ordeal though and was never discovered.  I ended up trading it and a bunch of other GB stuff for some Nintendo carts and CIBs a couple years ago. 

Edited February 13, 2022 by JamesRobot

[mbd39 | 2,026]

As far as fighting games with digitized sprites go, Mortal Kombat was a huge improvement over Pit Fighter. And it shocked the parents so what more can you want? 7/10

 

 

Edited February 13, 2022 by mbd39

[Tanooki | 4,943]

I preferred largely the shitty SNES version, because neutering the gore aside into Immortal Kombat, didn't take away from the fact the core mechanics with the control, audio, and visual were the most intact of the home versions on that Mortal Monday.

 

@JamesRobot Sorry to hear your parents were the media brainwashable suck ups of the era.  I was 16 (1993) by when that game came out and I had parents who trusted me enough for some time already not to watch anything that was to give me nightmares.  They never fell into the lies of the era, probably the shit they had to deal with bible thump human garbage calling rock n roll satans jams, so it made sense it was crap.  I had Doom, I had Wolfenstein before that on PC too, this wasn't anything persay worse, and it clearly was over the top for face value awfulness.  I'm sure the black 'blood' on gameboy wasn't much of an issue and the sweat of the other despite some obviously nasty kills still in there just wasn't enough to make issue about it.

 

These days I don't have the SNES game, but I could do it with the sd2snes, and I did a couple years back get a nice deal on the late MK1+2 combo cart for GB so there's that too.  MK2 was an amazing improvement, high point of GB MK games across the board.

[JamesRobot | 5,810]

32 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

@JamesRobot Sorry to hear your parents were the media brainwashable suck ups of the era. 

It was weird.  This was the only instance and it never occurred again.  That same year, my dad dropped me and a carload of friends off at the theater to see Natural Born Killers.  Go figure. 

[NostalgicMachine | 243]

I'm a fan boi, and I give the OG a 10/10 for its significance alone. MK II perfected that formula, then UMK3 is where the 2D series peaked IMHO. I still play all of these regularly, and one day dream of owning a full arcade cab collection for them.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,561]

16 minutes ago, Van Jackson said:

for its significance alone

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

It's a solid 8/10, basically due to MK II being better all around.

[NostalgicMachine | 243]

On 2/13/2022 at 4:22 PM, Reed Rothchild said:

Personal significance isn't historical significance, friend.

MK has had the biggest influence of any single game on me.

I wouldn't be here, nor have gotten into collecting Nintendo in general if it weren't for my personal experiences and obsessions with the first MK arcade in 1992.

That got me into gaming! It started it all for me. I'd seen other games before obviously, but MK1 in the arcades was the first game that made me eager to actively play. MKII is obviously superior in every single way, MK3 was a slight step back, then they perfected the 2D series with UMK3 IMHO.

That's why MK1 ARCADE (no ports) is a 10/10 for me.

To this day I play UMK3 the most.

Edited February 14, 2022 by Van Jackson

[Reed Rothchild | 9,561]

Fair enough

[Bighab | 58]

Never really played the Arcade version much. I did buy the Genesis version when it came out and loved it. Lots of memories sitting around with buddies drinking and playing tournaments.  I'd sometimes do Raiden's cheap Tornado move of L L R to fly through the air and do minimal damage constantly grinding my opponent down.

[Nintegageo | 582]

4. This is the lowest that I have rated something I think #-wise. The 2nd one was good.

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,014]

I always really liked this game. It might've been my first real introduction to fighters. There was a cab at the mall I remember renting this for the SNES and being blown away. Then my friend rented for the Genesis and there was blood and man, I just thought it was so cool. I even had this on my Gameboy and played it on my GBC throughout highschool in the early 2000s on the bus ride to away games. 

A great game. Easy to recommend to fans of the era. 8/10

[GPX | 1,371]

This is one of those games that without historical context, it is simply an average 2D fighter. A 7/10 game with stiff controls, gimmicky gore content, and a Street Fighter clone. I was never really a fan of this game as I was too busy with Streetfighter 2 and the subsequent sequels of Capcom.

However, I do acknowledge that it was an important divergence of the Streetfighter formula with the digitised graphics, moody atmosphere and the fatalities. It made people talk and gossip to build its own hype. Midway was never trying to outdo Capcom, but adding their own twist to the fighting genre. Pretty much all subsequent 2D fighting games up till present day have some combination of the blueprint from Streetfighter or Mortal Kombat. 

[GPX | 1,371]

On 2/14/2022 at 6:06 AM, JamesRobot said:

It was weird.  This was the only instance and it never occurred again.  That same year, my dad dropped me and a carload of friends off at the theater to see Natural Born Killers.  Go figure. 

Your dad prefers you seeing real gore rather than digitised gore. Makes perfect sense.