Collection essentials #127: Mortal Kombat (Genesis)

In the early ‘90s there was a certain arcade fighting game that set the entire world on fire and popularized the genre. Unfortunately I haven’t gotten around to that game yet. But once it came out, everything else wanted to make fighting games. American developer Midway was one of many who wanted to get in on the trend, and the result was Mortal Kombat, which proved to be one of the most successful fighting games of its day. And one of the reasons why was its violence, as Mortal Kombat had lots more blood and gore than other fighting games at the time. This was an era where video game graphics were getting realistic enough that, if developers chose to put violence in their games, it could look somewhat lifelike. This, understandably, concerned many parents who didn’t want their kids exposed to such a thing. Many players thought the violence was cool. It caused a huge controversy, which even led to the U.S. government getting involved to see if they needed to regulate the gaming industry in some way (which probably contributed to the success of the games in question due to the attention). Eventually this resulted in the ESRB, which would give info on the cover of every released video game in the Americas about what kind of content was in each game along with a content rating (like the one used for movies).

So what’s the game itself like? Well, this is the first proper fighting game I’ve talked about here, and there may be non-gamers reading, so let me explain the concept of the genre. Fighting games are mainly intended for two players, though one player can play them against computer-controlled opponents. The two players’ characters face each other, typically with a limited amount of space, and try to attack the other, doing enough damage to get the other player’s health meter down to zero before the opponent can do the same to them. Fighting games almost always have many selectable characters, each with their own special attributes and moves, providing a lot of variety in gameplay. Characters typically have a set of basic moves (the effectiveness of which may vary among characters) as well as unique “special moves” executed by pressing buttons in a certain order. For example, to execute Sub-Zero’s ice beam in Mortal Kombat, one has to press “down” and then “forward” on the d-pad or joystick (forward being whatever direction Sub-Zero is facing) and then the “low punch” button. Fighting games typically have a high skill ceiling and it takes lots of practice to master a given game.

While many developers copied that certain big popular game that set the world on fire, Mortal Kombat changed up the basic mechanics more than most copycat games in the genre did at the time. Did that make it better? No, but it did help it stand out amongst a sea of copycats. The game also featured cool, interesting characters who would supply the foundation for what became a long-running series with some great lore. I was a huge fan of Mortal Kombat in my teen years especially, and I’ll be talking more about my personal history with the series as I get to the relevant games.

The home version of Mortal Kombat 1 was very highly anticipated and took a long time to come out, and in fact it didn’t come out until the sequel had already been released in arcades. The release day was advertised as “Mortal Monday”.  And this was a very significant event in the contest between Sega and Nintendo. Both companies got versions of Mortal Kombat on their console, at the same time. The Sega Genesis version was censored, removing the blood and toning down the violence, but it contained a cheat code to restore the blood and violence to the same level as the arcade version, and it wasn’t even that much of a secret because there is a secret as you boot up the game that pretty much tells you that the game contains a code (though it doesn’t tell you the button input). This became one of the most famous cheat codes in gaming history, and you’ll see in the photo that the previous owner of my copy wrote it on the cover of the game’s manual. Nintendo’s version, on the other hand, not only censored the game but did not provide a code to uncensor it. Players wanted a version with violence true to the arcade version, so the Genesis version was far more successful and temporarily tilted the console wars in Sega’s favor.

Now, the Sega Genesis version of Mortal Kombat is far inferior to the arcade version in terms of graphics and audio. It does have some cheat codes that might make it fun to go back to, but if you want to experience Mortal Kombat 1 there are better ways to do it now. But this is still a hugely significant release from the early ‘90s, the first game in a series that meant a lot to me, and so I consider this an essential.