Pong and Beyond

567th played so far

Genre: Fighting
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1992
Developer: Midway Games
Publisher: Midway Games

What a glorious game for Boxing day, right? Pure coincidence, I can assure you – just how the numbers happened to work out.

Mortal Kombat is an early moral outrage game. People fighting each other in games was nothing new, but its notorious fatalities – hidden finishing moves that are far more gorey than you’d normally see – made it stand out as something the kids shouldn’t play. Now it seems tame in comparison, but it certainly made it stand out.

Our Thoughts

What seems to set this game apart from its contemporaries is the art and characters. As a rarity for the time, these were motion captured and are basically digitized recordings – some more obviously so than others, but these are real people doing some of the moves, making them stand out from the more cartoonish backgrounds and effects. It heightens the reality, however, which makes the injuries and fatalities seem more real and gruesome. It’s an approach that was never really repeated, but certainly put the game on the map.

Beyond that, I must say it’s more difficult to tell the difference with other sidescrolling fighting games. It doesn’t quite stray into the fantastical as some other games do – its motion captured characters make sure of that – but it has plenty of it in the attacks (such as fireballs) and obviously the fatalities are grotesque and over the top.

It’s been interseting to play around with the differnet characters, who feel unique, although the full thing never had it stand out.

Final Thoughts

Mortal Kombat is noticeable in this list because of its controversy, but mostly the reasons why – graphics and fatalities. It is also a solid good fighting game, but the latter doesn’t work as well for me. I can see why it’s that good though.