50 Years of Video Games: Mortal Kombat (Arcade)
Violence has been part of video games from the very beginning, but back when you were blowing up black and white spaceships it was easy to pretend there were no living things inside. When characters started appearing and killing each other in games, there was still a layer of removal since they could only be represented through the graphics machines could render. However in 1992 people took notice when a new game hit the arcades with an impressive graphical style. Mortal Kombat took footage of real actors and digitized them into sprites that admittedly were a bit fuzzy on close inspection but still were recognizable as real human beings, so when they began ripping each other’s spines out it was shocking to a culture ready for another uproar. Time and again violent media has been blamed for crime and time again such a link has been proven false, but Mortal Kombat ended up one of the bigger names involved as a nationwide discussion began in America about violence in video games. Admittedly establishing a video game rating system in was helpful in the long run despite the big kerfuffle and Mortal Kombat even continues to release new games to this day, so perhaps a ninja burning all the flesh off someone’s bones did end up benefiting everyone in the long run.
The visual direction of Mortal Kombat was definitely its biggest draw back when it hit the arcade scene. The game’s seven playable characters, two boss characters, and the secret opponent Reptile added in later revisions of the arcade game were mostly created from real photos, the four-armed boss monster Goro a stop motion invention instead and the three ninjas in the cast easily identified as recolors of each other. While their motions aren’t always fluid since they are constructed from such detailed sprites played in sequence, their motions are readable and the game makes sure moves have some strong impact with characters launched skyward by uppercuts and spraying blood from serious injuries. To add even more violent flair to the action, when a player has run two rounds of combat by depleting the opponent’s health bar, the losing character will stand in place reeling for a short period of time. The game calls for you to “FINISH HIM!” and, provided you know the character specific button sequence, you can pull off the brutal spectacles that are Fatalities.
During a regular match the violence can have some over the top effects, but the Fatalities are when the bloodiness gets cranked up. This is where you can see the ninja Scorpion pull off his face mask and belch flames on a foe to reduce them to bones, this is how you can witness Hollywood actor Johnny Cage literally punch someone’s head off with a fountain of blood from the neck, and this is the way you can make the cyborg criminal Kano rip out someone’s heart and show it to the world. Not every Fatality on the small cast is a winner, Liu Kang’s really is just a glorified uppercut in a game where you’ll be seeing them plenty already and Sonya Blade’s blown kiss is an oddly silly kill, but there’s also the truly gruesome kill method available to all in The Pit stage where you can uppercut someone off the bridge instead to have them impaled on the spikes below next to some grisly previous victims who are actually digitized versions of the game developers. Besides The Pit’s preexisting bodies though the Fatalities are fairly tame compared to the kind of gore found in modern games and even something like Splatterhouse 2 was doing much grislier things at the time with ideas like the hanged babies boss room, so mostly Mortal Kombat’s first outing felt like it was going for fantasy violence where people are blood bags who spray absurd amounts when damaged rather than really giving the feeling of a gnarly death.
The spectacle definitely did its job of drawing attention towards the game and secrets like learning the Fatality inputs are neat elements to uncover by investing more interest in the title, but a fighting game especially needs to make sure the actual battles have substance or else there will be a point where the blood spray can’t keep you coming back. Mortal Kombat’s seven playable characters, interestingly enough, have virtually identical move sets. With buttons assigned to high punch, low punch, high kick, as well as a block button and a not as vital run button, you have a pretty good idea of how each character will attack since they’ll do it about the same as everyone else. Your options do change depending on how close you are to the opponent, whether or not your crouching, and other inputs allow you to do moves like a useful leg sweep to knock opponents down or a powerful uppercut that will send them skyward so you can potentially hit their body on the way down in one of the first fighting games to ever introduce this juggling concept. However, beyond a few changes to speed of execution, these moves are universal and this actually doesn’t make the game feel limited thanks to the introduction of special moves.
The main differentiation for how the cast fights will be unique combinations of button presses and directional inputs to unleash special moves. Characters have two or three distinct moves only they can execute, meaning that if you do like the look or role of a character it’s not too hard to learn their special moves and mix them into your fighting style. This does lead to some character advantages and disadvantages emerging and new play styles will form because these differences are small but meaningful enough to change your attack plan. The ice ninja Sub-Zero likes to keep away from his opponents so he can launch his freezing projectile and attack while they can’t fight back or he can quickly slide in to close that distance if he so chooses, but the lightning god turned man Raiden and Kano both have moves where they not only throw themselves towards their opponent quickly but can deal heavy damage if they land the hit. Scorpion’s teleport can get him to the other side of the opponent to catch them unaware and his famous spear accompanied by the iconic cry of “GET OVER HERE” allows him to pull in foes, making him good for controlling space even though a faster projectile from someone like the Special Forces operative Sonya or the martial artist Liu Kang is easier to mix in repeatedly and rapidly.
The special move spread is important enough that players can find strategies unique to certain characters without delving into the minutiae of who can execute jabs marginally faster, and those basic options can prove more effective if they fit a character’s best role. The depth is still minimal, characters not moving quickly enough for fancy footwork and close-range fighting can involve an extended period of uncontested jabs to the face before you break free. It’s more about anticipating which of a few options your opponent might attempt and either striking first or blocking, and while that might be a reductionist way of describing any fighting game, here you really are just worried about 4 or so potential attacks at one time plus possibly the specials. This can lead to attacks like the uppercut and leg sweep becoming overused since they’re rewarding to pull off when they do work and you’ll be mutually vulnerable if you keep attempting them, but if you do try to dive deeper into what complexities do exist you can start to uncover unfortunate things like Sonya’s infinite grab loop. The surface level and even more involved play still has enough options to it to invite some strategy and a skilled player will usually come out on top without needing to use unfair tactics like an inescapable attack loop, so there is enough to the combat to make battles interesting enough even though you’re drawing from small bag of tricks that mean you can’t vary your approach in too many meaningful ways.
While the one on one player fights are probably the bigger draw because both players will be on fair footing and can learn and adapt to each other better, Mortal Kombat does have a solo play option. Mortal Kombat’s story involves a fighting tournament whose top combatant for the past 500 years if the four-armed half dragon man Goro. Once a tournament with prestige, Shang Tsung has used Goro’s reign to corrupt it for his own ends, the sorcerer the ultimate villain of the game who must be fought immediately after Goro. To get your chance to take on these two strictly boss characters though you must fight your way through the tournament as a fighter of your own choice. All seven of the fighters have bios explaining why they’re entering and endings that explain how they’d react to winning the tournament, but to see those short finales you must first face off with every other character in the tournament and then survive three endurance rounds. While most Mortal Kombat fights are best two out of three round battles of the typical fighting game mold where you deplete a foe’s health bar and the a new round starts with both fighters refreshed to fight again, the endurance rounds require a player to first defeat one character and then fight another immediately after without a heal to clear a round. If you are knocked out you don’t have any back up, so essentially you need to win an equivalent of four fights while making sure you don’t lose all your health in the back to back battles.
The endurance rounds are definitely a challenge, and since each foe is a bit smarter than the last in this solo tournament mode, this is the point where you’ll fight regular enemies who won’t fall for simple tricks. Here you’ll not only need to utilize your special skills well but respond to the enemy behavior properly, and knowing how to mix in the basics is key to tipping things in your favor. If endurance was the end of solo mode then it would be a fitting challenge worthy of taking a few quarters to try again as you figure out how to improve your skill enough to succeed, but when Goro and later Shang Tsung fight you, fairness is out the window. Goro does not hide that he is programmed to fire a projectile of his own when you do, often beating you to the punch since his is faster to come out. His grabs deal heavy damage and he seems free to decide whether he does a strong one or even longer strong grab for extra damage. He can jump on you for damage, and utilizing regular battle tactics will avail you little.
Cheap strategies that exploit holes in how Goro responds to player behavior become the tool of victory, and Shang Tsung unfortunately continues this. His special fireballs deal heavy damage if they hit, and while you do always take slight damage when you block an attack, blocking these fireballs deals damage close to some regular attacks. Shang Tsung can transform into other fighters and unleash their special moves as he does so, making it hard to predict his much wider set of attack options, and he can become Goro as well for an extra dollop of unpleasant danger. Again you need to find out the holes in his AI to have a chance rather than utilizing battle strategy or developing the skills you would use in a multiplayer match, so while your limited attack options mean the multiplayer can only be so involved, these boss characters instead stand out as true flaws since their brutal difficulty asks you to play in a way counter not only to how you fight elsewhere, but a way that isn’t even fun to execute once you figure out the cheap tactics required to win.
THE VERDICT: The digitized real world actors and over the top blood effects and dismemberment are the graphical lure used to pull players towards Mortal Kombat, and while the fighting mechanics aren’t exactly a hook, they are a solid enough mix that players will probably stick around to see the violent action. Characters are mostly cut from the same cloth but unique special moves do lead to a few play styles within the limited range of attack options, the design allowing for some simple but effective strategies to develop. The solo tournament almost encouraged this with challenges like the endurance fights only to demand abnormal tactics to take out the unfair boss characters, but the seven main cast members are a decent fit for multiplayer battles, the small array of counter play giving it enough substance that you might stick around long enough to see the spectacle of a Fatality.
And so, I give Mortal Kombat for arcade machines…
An OKAY rating. Shang Tsung and Goro just not playing fair is a cheap tactic to leech quarters from the kind of players who don’t deserve such treatment, the more legitimate threat of the endurance rounds requiring some skill to overcome rather than sneaky tricks that earn a hollow win. Solo mode does at least allow character swapping if you need to whip out someone with a better exploit for those final fights, but it’s the fights with other human players that hit on Mortal Kombat’s more enjoyable moments. The idea of a set of universal basic fighting moves makes learning the game simpler and picking up new characters mostly involves considering how their strengths can be mixed with that core move set, so the barrier of entry is low enough that you can get a quick understanding of all the options at play. Learning too much of the game can lead to it showing its inexperience within the genre as cheap strategies can take hold, but the normal fighting action can still carry enough of the game that people won’t begrudge it too much as they try to get to the blood sprays and special kills that serve as the dramatic highlights. Not quite shallow since choosing from your attack options is certainly meaningful enough, Mortal Kombat still feels like it would benefit from more clear distinctions or wider attacker options so that character specific game plans could be more than how they handle long range and positional advantage could lead to a wider web of options. As it is, while you do need to identify your best option in a situation, it’s more about figuring out the one right response rather than having a varied selection that can serve different purposes and lead to more complex combat scenarios.
Mortal Kombat avoided being a mindless blood bath because its basics still require some thought and skill to use correctly to gain an edge in the fight. The violent spectacle will fade in appeal with familiarity but the decent fighting system holds things together still. The simplicity actually does it a few favors in making it easier to jump into, but that is also what keeps greater planning from happening and the character archetypes can’t develop into the kind of complex options that make for layered battles. Take away even just an attack or two and the fighting would become too rigid and players would be funneled towards an all too limited set of options, but the universal moves we do have means there is just enough texture to the action to want a rematch or feel fulfilled when you clear the endurance rounds. It’s not difficult to find a more substantive fighting game that allows for strategies deeper than which singular move to pick in a situation, but what limited interplay there is means Mortal Kombat is a game that can be a bit of fun still today despite future installments doing things much better. This first iteration is perhaps still better as part of the powder keg for discussing the unfettered world of mature game releases at the time, but it’s a piece of history that is playable enough because there’s more meat to the experience than just the bloody chunks that made it such a famous fighter.