Mortal Kombat: The Constant Core Pillar of Fighting Games

Every genre has its core pillars. The entries in that genre that all others are inevitably compared to, and which hold the genre up. Though it can be difficult to determine what exactly these core pillars are for each genre. While there are some that are universally agreed upon, there are others that are more disputed due to the personal tastes of those involved.

In layman’s terms it changes depending on who you ask. But in some cases, they can change simply due to time. The ever-changing landscape of media can lead to once major franchises falling by the wayside and becoming irrelevant. With very rare exceptions remaining as popular or as relevant today as they were in the past.

Now there are some franchises that can remain a core pillar of its genre simply due to legacy. I think most sci-fi fans would consider Star Wars a pillar of the genre despite it being at its lowest point right now. Its legacy is just that deep to ignore.

But legacy or not, if franchise is no longer relevant in the present it’s difficult to consider it a core pillar of a genre. Star Wars is still releasing new content, and even though it’s not great it does keep it relevant in the public eye to some extent. But when you have a franchise that’s stopped making content, or it takes a long hiatus, it does lose a lot of its relevancy and at that point something else will come and take its place.

Let me give you an example, the core pillars of Shonen manga/anime right now would probably be One Piece, Demon Slayer and My Hero Academia. They’re easily the most popular and most influential in the genre at the moment. You could also include Dragon Ball in that due to its legacy and still getting new stuff, but I digress.

However, if you were to ask me the same question 10-15 years ago, I would say it was One Piece, Bleach and Naruto. Kids of the 2000’s will recognise these as the Big 3. The manga and anime series that were synonymous with the genre back then.

But as time went on Naruto and Bleach ended their runs, with subsequent sequels not living up to the originals, while One Piece has become an outright institution in Japan. One Piece is insanely popular, it has its own theme park for god’s sake, so it will likely always remain a pillar even when the manga eventually ends.

What I mean to say is, a consistent core pillar of any genre is rare. Not everything can be like One Piece and represent its genre across multiple generations. Most series will eventually hit a point where they stop being popular. It’s inevitable.

Which is why I’m fascinated by those few core pillars that are able to stick it through and last. The ones that despite all odds manage to weather the thralls of time to remain influential and relevant to its genre. Which brings us to the topic of today.

Fighting games have been a favourite genre of mine for years. I’m not good at them, at all, but I do enjoy them. And like any genre it’s had multiple different eras. In the beginning you had the Arcade Era of the 1990’s, then you had the Post Arcade Era of the 2000’s, the Revival Era of the 2010’s, and finally the modern era which is the one we’re in right now. And each of those phases have their own core pillars that represented what the genre was like at the time.

For the Arcade Era those would be Street Fighter, Killer Instinct and Mortal Kombat. For the Post Arcade Era they would be Tekken, Soulcalibur and Mortal Kombat. For the Revival era it would be Street Fighter, Dragon Ball Fighterz and Mortal Kombat. And while it’s difficult to say for certain what they are for the modern era, based on what we’ve seen so far, I would say Street Fighter, Tekken and Mortal Kombat.

Yes, for one reason or another, Mortal Kombat is the one fighting game that has remained a core pillar across the different eras of fighting games. Even beating out Street Fighter which is responsible for kick starting the entire genre.

It’s impressive when you look at how far the series has come. Mortal Kombat has changed a lot over the years, more so than any other fighting game, and outside of some missteps and having its original publisher die, still remains incredibly popular to this day.

And we’re going to look at how. We are going to look at Mortal Kombat through each of the different era’s, how it changed and evolved through each of them, and how it became the most consistent core pillar of the fighting game genre.

The Arcade Era

In the beginning there was darkness. Or to be less biblical, the fighting game genre was in its infancy. Most fighting games in the 80’s were either single player experiences or sports simulations like Karate Champ or one of the many boxing and wrestling games on the market, most of which didn’t exactly play the best.

Then in 1991 Street Fighter 2 came out, changed the entire perception of the genre, became a staple of every arcade and defined the entire scene for the whole decade, blah blah blah, you all get it by now. I’ve gone over it so many times it should be on my own personal bingo card at this point.

But when you have a groundbreaking mega hit, you inevitably get those trying to get a slice of the action. And with Street Fighter 2 there were plenty of copycats trying to ape its success. You know how a lot of First Person Shooters in the 90’s were called Doom Clones because we didn’t have a proper name for them yet. Well, the same could be said for fighting games around this time.

There were so many games trying to copy Street Fighter 2 back then it was insane. In fact, one of them was so close to Street Fighter 2 that Capcom tried to sue the developer for copyright infringement. They didn’t win it, but just looking at the game, which is called Fighters History, and yeah, I can definitely see the similarities.

But not every fighting game released at the time was a mere copy. Some did try their own thing. SNK would release a bunch of fighting games with their own unique styles and mechanics, becoming a major player in their own right. But there was one fighting game that was so different that it became an icon almost overnight. That game was the original Mortal Kombat.

Released in 1992 by Midway, Mortal Kombat was made specifically to compete against Street Fighter 2. Designed by Ed Boon and John Tobias, Mortal Kombat stood out from other fighting games for several reasons.

For one thing it played nothing like any other fighting games. Most fighting games back then followed the Street Fighter approach, various punches and kick buttons of different strengths, motion inputs for special moves and holding back to block.

Mortal Kombat didn’t do any of that. Well, sort of. It did have different punches and kicks, but rather than strength, they were determined by height. So, you had low punches and kicks, and high punches and kicks, with every character having universal normals rather than it being different for each one. Every character had the same punches, kicks, sweeps and uppercuts.

The main thing that differentiated them were their special moves. Which were still done using motion inputs, but these were simplified. Rather than use quarter circle motions, use just pressed down then forward or back and the button.

This made moves easier to pull off, which is why Mortal Kombat had such a dedicated casual audience. It was easier to play than other fighting games at the time. The only thing that may have given players pause was that blocking wasn’t done by holding back, it was done via a dedicated button. This is common now, but back then having a dedicated block button was weird.

All of this helped give Mortal Kombat a unique mechanical identity compared to a lot of other fighting games at the time. Though that wasn’t what made it immediately stand out. No, that was its unique visual style.

Mortal Kombat used large, digitised sprites for its characters. What they did was film or photograph footage of real-world actors, then digitise the footage as sprites for the game. If you remember my Donkey Kong Country reviews from a while back, it’s similar to what that game did only instead of 3D models it was real people.

Mortal Kombat wasn’t the first game to do this. The game Pit Fighter had used a similar animation style 2 years previous. But it was the first to really popularise the idea, mainly because it did it way better.

Nobody had seen a game that looked this real before. Seeing real, actual people fighting each other in a game was a huge draw for people. So much so the poster made it a key selling point.

But more than looking real, it looked good. The animations were smooth, the attacks looked cool if not a little goofy, and it had a unique style beyond the digitised sprites.

Mortal Kombat took key inspirations from classic kung-fun movies like Enter the Dragon while mixing it with a bit of eastern mysticism. It had a darker, more fantastical world compared to other fighting games. Most fighting games either had warriors from around the world, or a more urban street feel for their characters and world.

You had a lot of the typical street fighters, martial artists, Chinese kung-fu girls, big burly wrestlers and military men in a lot of those games. But in Mortal Kombat you had a disgraced egotistical movie star, an honourable shaolin monk, ninjas of fire and ice (one of which was undead), a god of thunder, a female special forces agent, a cyborg criminal and the bosses were an ancient shape shifting sorcerer and a four armed monster.

It was a cast of characters unlike anything we’d seen up to that point. They were all memorable, had distinct and interesting special moves, and backstories that actually connected to one another to create rivalries and dynamics between them.

The ninja characters of Scorpion and Sub Zero would be the breakout stars of the game. They had the coolest designs and moves and had a mysterious air around them which made them iconic. Despite neither being the main characters, they wound up being the faces of the franchise, appearing in almost every instalment of the series.

But it wasn’t just the characters, the world was interesting too. The stages kept the feeling of a kung fu film, with a sense of cohesion and story telling you didn’t see a lot in fighters back then. Seeing the final boss watching you in several stages, gave you a good idea of the end goal, and the dark dungeons of the final area gave a foreboding atmosphere that upped the tension of the final boss.

It was a darker setting than most were used to. Especially when playing on the iconic pit stage, a giant bridge suspended over a giant pit of spikes, which you could also knock your enemies into.

Alright, I’ve ignored the elephant in the room long enough. It’s time to talk about the big reason why Mortal Kombat is so iconic, the violence. It’s funny because the original Street Fighter 2 was pretty violent itself. I mean there was blood, characters would vomit if you hit them in a certain way, some victory screens were kind of messed up, it was a lot more brutal than you remember.

But Mortal Kombat took it to a new level. Not only was there way more blood, but you could also kill your opponent with Fatalities. Unique finishing moves each character had that would end the opponent in very brutal fashion. The most famous of which would be Sub-Zero’s, where he wouldn’t just rip your head off, he’d rip your head off with your spine attached.

This did not go without controversy. I think everyone knows the story by now, but Mortal Kombat along with fellow controversial titles Night Trap and Lethal Enforcers would form the basis of the creation of the American videogame ratings system, the ESRB.

But honestly, all this controversy just ended up making the game more popular. Which it was, insanely so. Mortal Kombat arguably matched and surpassed Street Fighter in terms of popularity. It even spawned its own line of clones trying to ape its success.

Mortal Kombat was so popular that when the game came to home consoles the following year, they treat it like a frigging event. Don’t believe me, just look at the ad.

This is one of the greatest ads in videogame history. The kid is so excited for it he screams for it at the top of his lungs, and the third time he does it so hard his nuts dropped. No wonder they harkened back to it for Mortal Kombat 1, it’s perfection.

Speaking of the home console versions, it would play a part in the 90’s console war. Because of Nintendo’s strict standards, the SNES version of Mortal Kombat was heavily censored. While the Sega version was also censored, it would have a special code that would essentially remove the censorship and give access to all the blood and violence of the arcade.

Suffice to say, the Sega version ended up doing better and is more fondly remembered. Nintendo would learn from this blunder, and the subsequent sequel ports to their systems would remain uncensored.

Speaking of sequels, the first of those would release the same year as the home console ports of Mortal Kombat 1, the first Mortal Kombat 1, the fact I must clarify that makes me sad. Mortal Kombat 2 would basically improve on everything from the first game.

It looked better, played better, had a larger cast of characters, a bigger emphasis on its story and had more striking stages that took advantage of the games more fantastical setting. In short, it did everything a sequel should do.

This would be the game that would introduce new elements to the series that would go on to become series staples. Everyone now had 2 fatalities, along with joke finishing moves like Friendships and Babalities. Which were added as a jab against those who were offended by the violence in the first game.

The playable cast was increased from 7 to 12, with several of the new cast members going on to be huge fan favourites. Including Mileena, who would gain a fanbase so large it would piss off the developers, but we’ll get to that shitshow later. And Reptile, a third ninja who was made playable in this game but debuted in the first game as a secret fight.

This was another aspect that helped Mortal Kombat’s popularity, the secrets and easter eggs. This was a time before the internet where sharing this stuff is common and found pretty quickly. Back then You had to piece this stuff together from magazine articles or playground rumours, neither of which were 100% reliable.

It made the act of searching for these secrets all the more enticing. And the developers would take advantage of this by filling the games with a bunch of hidden fights and easter eggs. Some of these were funny like the Toasty! sound effect which became a running gag, others were challenging battles against secret characters like Jade and Smoke who would be fully playable in later games.

Mortal Kombat became so notorious for its secrets that it ended up spawning a bunch of false rumours. Like one rumour saying you could unlock a red Ninja named Ermac based on a statistic found in the games debug menu.

This ended up being shorthand for Error Macro, but this rumour was so popular they wound up making Ermac a real character anyway. Something they would do with surprising frequency in later titles, like turning the flaming guy in the background of the pit stage into the ultimate final boss much later on.

Mortal Kombat 2 ended up being just as popular as the first game. At this point Mortal Kombat had become a staple of the arcade fighting game scene. Which was becoming increasingly more competitive with many high-quality games coming out.

It had become a household name at that point. So much so that it received a feature film adaptation in 1995 which was pretty well received compared to most other videogame movie adaptations. To this day it’s considered a good movie and would have an impact on the series by changing aspects of certain characters.

That wasn’t the only Mortal Kombat related thing released in 1995. The third game, Mortal Kombat 3, was released in arcades. Though this one was a bit more contentious. While the gameplay was improved and it looked great, it was chastised by fans for omitting several key characters. Including all the ninja characters minus Sub Zero who now had a different unmasked design.

Fortunately, a few months after the original release, an updated version called Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 released which had some gameplay adjustments and brought back a lot of the characters that weren’t in the original release. Including all the male and female ninjas, as well as adding the new Ninja, Ermac who I mentioned earlier.

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is universally considered the best version, though fans were still mixed on it. The game had a different, more urban style for many of its stages which some weren’t huge on. It was trying to go for a more post-apocalyptic feel which was cool, but I think people preferred the more fantastical setting of the second game.

The fatalities were also much goofier and cartoonish this time around. Still decently gory, but some were just outright weird. And the new Animalities weren’t as much fun as Friendships or even the Babalities.

Still, it does have its fans. For some this is the apex of the classic arcade era of Mortal Kombat and it’s not hard to see why. The gameplay was further refined with the introduction of an actual combo system with dial a combos, and a run mechanic which made the game a lot faster. The roster, at least in Ultimate, was still great and introduced fan favourite characters like Sindel and the Cyborgs.

And while the game’s style wasn’t to everyone’s taste, it still looked great. Though they did replace a lot of the actors because of rights disputes, which is also why some characters like Johnny Cage didn’t come back at all. The soundtrack is also arguably the best of the classic era with a lot of memorable tracks.

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 would later receive an updated port in the form of Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Well sort of, it was more of a compilation. Featuring the gameplay of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 but having every stage and character from all 3 games released at that point. Including characters cut from UMK3, the previously unplayable bosses, and characters from the MK3 home ports.

Trilogy was a great send off to the classic era of Mortal Kombat. Because this was when Mortal Kombat would see a decline in its overall popularity. This was also around the time when 3D was starting to become mainstream. With fighting games like Tekken and Virtua Fighter proving massively popular.

And since they were already having issues with the actors, the team at Midway figured it was time to go full 3D. Though after initially testing the waters with full 3D gameplay with the game War Gods proved unsuccessful, they decided to stick to 2D gameplay with 3D graphics instead.

But they would give the old style one last hurrah with a spin-off game, Mortal Kombat Mythologies Sub Zero. Unfortunately, that hurrah ended up being a disappointing farewell. The game was a terrible action game that tried to mix the classic Mortal Kombat gameplay with a platformer.

It went about as well as you would expect. It was criticised for awful controls and unfair level design. Resulting in an overly frustrating game that nobody liked. It was supposed to be the start of a new sub-series, but the reception was so poor all subsequent Mythology projects were scrapped.

But the next main game fared much better. Mortal Kombat 4 would release in arcades in 1997, followed soon after by ports to home consoles a year later. As the first attempt at 3D, it wasn’t great. It was janky compared to a lot of other 3D fighters at the time, but it was enjoyable.

It was basically just a 3D version of Mortal Kombat 3 but with new features like every character having their own weapons. For what it was, it did well enough. It got decent critical scores and sales, though these days it’s more known for its endings than anything else. And really with masterpieces like this I’m not surprised.

And people say videogames aren’t art. Speaking of things that aren’t art, the second Mortal Kombat movie, Mortal Kombat Annihilation would come out just 2 months after Mortal Kombat 4 to critical scorn and box office disappointment.

This was the main problem with Mortal Kombat in the late nineties. They just weren’t releasing products that resonated with audiences. And keep in mind I’m just sticking to the high-profile stuff. I haven’t even mentioned the animated series, the live action tv series or the stage show which all received the same middling reception.

It also didn’t help that the fighting game boon was starting to die down. Mainly because arcades where fighting games had once thrived were dying out. More and more people were abandoning them for the convenience of home consoles.

In fact, the major successes of fighting games during the late nineties came from the console ports. Tekken 3 was originally an arcade game, but it was the brilliant PlayStation port that made it the most successful fighting game at the time. And don’t get me started on Soulcalibur’s Dreamcast port.

The Arcade Era was reaching its end by the late nineties, and so was Mortal Kombat. After an updated Dreamcast port of 4 dubbed Mortal Kombat Gold failed to impress, Midway would release the absolute nadir of the franchise with Mortal Kombat Special Forces. A game which is widely regarded as one of the worst ever made.

Mortal Kombat had once been on top of the world, but now it was looking tired and worn out. I seemed like it would become a forgotten relic of the nineties. Or would it?

The Post Arcade Era

Now I call the 2000’s era of fighting games the Post Arcade Era, but a lot of fighting game enthusiasts like to call this the Dark Age of fighting games. It isn’t hard to see why.

Fighting games lived and breathed in the arcade. A lot of their popularity came from players huddled around arcade cabinets, spending money to fight one another and forming tightly knit groups and grass roots tournaments. This was where fighting games thrived, and now it was gone.

Granted arcades still went strong in Japan, but they were a dead industry in the west. So, if fighting games were to continue, they would have to focus on the home console market. And a lot of companies struggled with the change.

Namco did very well due to their fantastic ports of Tekken and Soulcalibur, though the latter would abandon arcades entirely by the third entry. SNK would file for bankruptcy before returning as Playmore later in the decade. And Capcom, the king of fighting games who single handedly defined the genre, would abandon it entirely.

After the failure of Street Fighter 3 and diminishing returns of their other endeavours, Capcom would leave fighting games behind for almost the entirety of the 2000’s. The only Street Fighter content we were getting around this time were ports and re-release compilations.

It wasn’t a great time to be a fighting game fan. You still had games coming out to quell the hunger for new fighters, or thirst in the case of Dead or Alive, but nowhere near the extent they were coming out in the nineties.

And where was Mortal Kombat in all this? Oh, you know, just having one of its most successful periods so far. Yeah, despite almost dying out at the end of the nineties, Mortal Kombat would have a major resurgence in the 2000’s.

See, after the failure of their most recent projects, and losing John Tobias who quit due to Special Forces hellish development, Ed Boon and company would take a long hard look at where they had gone wrong, and implement changes to reinvent the entire franchise.

First off, they had to go full 3D. 2D fighting games were out, it was all about 3D fighters now. They had done a half measure with Mortal Kombat 4, but if they were going to survive, they would have to embrace 3D wholeheartedly.

So they did just that. Overhauling the gameplay with a new 3D style of combat. It still had things fans knew like special moves and a block button, but for the most part it was a completely different kind of game.

Stages were now large arena’s that allowed for fully 3D movement. The game had a greater emphasis on combo’s than special moves, in fact the special moves had been whittled down to only two per character. Though in order to give character more variety, each had 3 different fighting styles they could swap between at any time. 2 martial arts and one weapon.

The next thing they had to do, get serious. The most recent entries had been getting increasingly goofy and comical. A lot of the series identity was in the darker, almost horror like tone of its world and that had given way to whatever the hell this was.

This needed to change and change it did. The next game wouldn’t just be a return to the more serious tone of the first two games, it would go further. This new entry would be dark as fuck. How dark? How about killing off the main character in the opening cutscene dark.

Yeah, they just kill of Liu Kang, the long-standing series protagonist in the opening cutscene. It was a shocking thing to do, but it was also the kind of shock value the series needed. It showed that Midway were ready to try new things and actually take risks.

And all this was a risk. I mean overhauling the gameplay and killing off the main character aren’t exactly the safest choices to make. But when you have a series that’s on the verge of irrelevancy, you need to take these kinds of risks.

And fortunately for Midway it paid off. The game, Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance, was a huge success. Critics loved the new combat and darker storyline, and financially it did extremely well. It sold 1 million units in its first month which was impressive for the time.

The darker tone and new gameplay style was just the shot in the arm the series needed. It wasn’t perfect though. The gameplay, while fun and unique, was a bit stiff and awkward compared to its contemporaries. I remember back in the day and even occasionally now seeing a lot of hardcore fighting game fans hating on how the 3D Mortal Kombat’s played.

And while the story was more in depth and expanded on the series lore, a lot of the new characters they introduced weren’t exactly top tier. Characters like Kenshi and Li-Mei went on to be well liked, especially Kenshi who is easily the breakout character oof the 3D games, but characters like Drahmin and Hsu Hao are considered some of the series worst. Even Ed Boon hates them.

Despite this a lot of fans do have fond memories of Deadly Alliance. It was a good game for its time, but a lot of that isn’t necessarily due to the gameplay. It was largely because of the amount of content it had to offer.

See, fighters during the Arcade Era were slim in terms of content. Sometimes you would get a tournament mode or something, but for the most part it was just the arcade game on a home console. And that was perfectly fine. After all, the appeal of these ports was just having the game you loved in arcades at home. The convenience that offered was enough for most consumers back them.

But that wasn’t going to fly in the Post Arcade Era. I mean there weren’t any arcades left by this point, so the whole appeal of having the arcade in the home was gone. As a result, a lot of fighters during this era put a bigger emphasis on having a shit load of things to do.

Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance was no exception. You still had the standard arcade ladder and vs mode, but you also had mini games and a ton of unlockables via The Krypt. Where you could spend currency earned in other modes for stuff like additional characters, costumes, artwork or even dumb shit like this…

Yeah, despite the more serious tone, they still retained the series sense of humour. I mean one of the characters you could unlock was a dude in a mocap suit, called Mokap. Just because they were taking the game a bit more seriously didn’t mean they weren’t going to have fun with it.

But the most substantial mode by far was the Konquest mode. This was a massive single player campaign that doubled as both a mission mode and a tutorial. Teaching you how to play each character while giving you some fun challenges to complete.

It was a feature rich, fun game that put Mortal Kombat back on the map. At a time when fighting games were at a low point, Deadly Alliance proved that there was still life and interest left in the genre. But for as important as Deadly Alliance was for reinvigorating the series, it quickly became overshadowed by its sequel.

Mortal Kombat Deception is widely regarded as the best game from the 3D era and for good reason. it took everything Deadly Alliance did and made it ten times better. The gameplay was more refined, giving character more special moves and introducing new mechanics like the breaker system which allowed you to break out of combos a limited number of times.

It had more interactable stages with some having multiple floors you could knock opponents into and even death traps that could automatically win the round. The roster was improved, bringing back fan favourites like Ermac and Mileena while introducing a cast of newcomers that were more consistent and better received than the ones in Deadly Alliance. Except for Kobra, fuck Kobra.

There were new modes added such as Puzzle Kombat and Chess Kombat. Fun side games that gave you a different style of gameplay to try out. Though the former was basically just Mortal Kombat’s version of Puzzle Fighter. It wasn’t as good, but for a side game it was perfectly fine.

The story was more interesting, having an even darker tone than Deadly Alliance with a greater emphasis on world building. It was much darker too, revealing that in the last game heroes had died and the villains won, only to be met with a much greater evil in Onaga the dragon king. Someone who had been hinted at in Deadly Alliance.

This is something I love about the series; the stories always build on what came before. Even if it goes in a direction, you didn’t expect it always feels like there’s a logical progression to everything.

And while we’re on the topic of stories, I’d like to take a moment to appreciate the opening cutscenes of the 3D games because they are seriously awesome. This was another trend of the post arcade era; every fighter had the hypest intro’s. See for yourself.

The story was greatly expanded upon in the Konquest mode, which had gone from a mere tutorial/mission mode to a full-on adventure. Konquest is easily the standout feature of Deception. it had an epic scope, the story spanning several years across multiple dimensions. It was packed with side activities and easter eggs, and it allowed to interact with the Mortal Kombat world on a much deeper level.

Even today fans want this style of Konquest mode to return. It was one of the most engaging single player modes in fighting games back then. It’s still pretty good today, though I think Street Fighter 6 has since surpassed it.

Deception was also the first Mortal Kombat game to feature online play. Although not every version had this. The GameCube didn’t have online capabilities so when Deception was ported to the system a few months after the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions, it had 2 extra characters in place of an online mode.

Speaking of ports, Deception was later ported to the PSP as Mortal Kombat Unchained. And it wasn’t a straight port, it included additional content. Namely characters from Deadly Alliance that had been cut from Deception. Though they were basically cut straight from Deadly Alliance, so they didn’t have any new fatalities or moves. It was a really good port that included everything from the console games, only now you could take it on the go.

Deception was an even bigger success than Deadly Alliance. Selling nearly 2 million units and becoming the fastest selling game in Midway’s history. At a time when fighting games weren’t doing super well, Mortal Kombat was one of the few series still putting out consistent results.

So much so that Midway decided to have another shot at a spin-off with Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks. And unlike previous attempts, this one actually worked. It was a great 3D beat-em-up that retold the events of Mortal Kombat 2. For some fans it’s the best Mortal Kombat released during this period. People still pester Ed Boon on Twitter for an HD remaster of it… so where is it, Ed? Where is Shaolin Monks HD?

The next main Mortal Kombat game would also act as a finale for the series, kind of. Mortal Kombat Armeggedon would see the final battle between all the Mortal Kombat characters in an apocalyptic brawl that effected the entire universe. Which was depicted in the opening, which per usual was amazing. My favourite in fact.

And when I say all, I mean all. This was the idea for the roster of Armageddon.

Armageddon really did have every character in the series. The mainstays, the bosses, the one offs and the joke characters. Nobody was left out. It had the largest roster the series would ever have, which was a blessing and a curse.

While having all these characters was awesome, the gameplay had to be simplified to accommodate all of them. Characters went from having 3 fighting styles to 2, and many of the move sets were greatly simplified on top of that.

A lot of characters also wound up feeling too similar to one another which made the roster feel less varied despite having more characters. And one of the unfortunate downsides was that characters lacked unique Fatalities. Instead, they had a create a Fatality which just didn’t hit the same.

It wasn’t all bad though. Armageddon would introduce air combos to the mix. They weren’t as insane as the stuff you’d see in Marvel vs Capcom, but they were fun to pull off. And the game still had a ton of unlockables and extra modes.

It had its own kart racer mode, a create a fighter which wasn’t very deep but had some cool options to play with, and the Konquest mode which in this game was a beat-em-up that gave more background on the story. It was still a feature rich game, but fans are a little more split on it. Some liked it for what it was, others were disappointed by it.

Still, it sold well. Not as good as Deception, but still over a million copies. The buzz around the 3D Mortal Kombat’s was still strong, but it was starting to fade by this point.

To be honest, while Mortal Kombat was a core pillar of this era, it kind of got it by default. I mean most of the other big players sat this era out, so it didn’t exactly have much competition. Even the few games that it was competing with wound up selling more. Tekken 5, aka the best Tekken, sold more than the entire 3D era combined with over 8 million units sold.

But I don’t want to undersell the 3D Mortal Kombat games. They were successful and did play a major role in keeping fighting games alive during this period. It was a consistent performer, even the spin off Shaolin Monks did well commercially which isn’t something you can say for other fighting game spinoffs.

And to Midway’s credit they at least stuck things out. They didn’t give up and sit this era out. The stuck it out and had one of their most successful eras yet. For fighting games anyway, everything else wasn’t going so well.

There were a lot of mistakes Midway were making during this time that caused the company to haemorrhage money at an alarming rate. There’s way too much to cover, I recommend the What Happened episode on it if you want the full story, but in short, Mortal Kombat was one of the only things keeping them afloat.

Sadly, this era, like the last, would end with a dud. Mortal Kombat vs Dc Universe was the series’ first HD foray and it sucked. The gameplay was stiff with way too many minigames during combat, it didn’t look particularly good, and the censored they violence to fit DC’s standards which didn’t make it feel like Mortal Kombat.

It still sold well, about 1.8 million units as a matter of fact, but with all the shit Midway was going through, it wasn’t enough anymore. Midway wound up shutting down shortly after it released. A developer that had been around since the golden age was brought down due to financial incompetency.

And for Mortal Kombat this meant that it no longer had a developer. By all accounts the series was dead in the water, as were fighting games themselves by this point. Even the mighty Tekken and Soulcalibur were about to go through an era of stagnation and decline, and nobody gave a shit about dead or Alive outside of its jiggle physics.

Things were looking grim, but only a year later the fighting game scene was about to revive itself like a phoenix, and Mortal Kombat wouldn’t be far behind.

The Revival Era

In 2009, just one year after MK vs DC, Street Fighter 4 came out. And almost instantly interest in fighting games skyrocketed. I’m not kidding, just like how Street Fighter 2 created the modern fighting game, 4 completely reinvigorated it.

We saw more and more fighting games coming out, classics got rereleases on digital platforms, members of the FGC started to make YouTube content which only further reached more and more new players to get involved. It was still not quite as big as it was in the 90’s, it’s not like we were getting a new game every week like we were then, but compared to the relative quiet of the previous era we were doing pretty well.

It was a great era for fighting games. Especially 2D ones. The success of Street Fighter 4 had proven that 2D fighting games still had a sizeable market. 2D fighters did still exist in the Post Arcade Era, but they were predominately anime fighters which were already niche in and of themselves. The big boys during that time were the 3D ones.

But after Street Fighter 4 the roles had reversed. Now it’s 2D fighters that are the big boys on the block with 3D fighters being almost a rarity these days. And with this resurgence of 2D fighters came those looking to capitalise.

Which brings us back to Mortal Kombat. After Midway went belly up, the majority of its intellectual properties were swallowed up by Warner Bros including Mortal Kombat. So Mortal Kombat now had a new publisher, but who would develop it.

That would be NetherRealm Studios, which was formed by Ed Boon and most of the Mortal Kombat team so they could keep making games. So not much had really changed. Outside of a new publisher, the same guys that had been making Mortal Kombat for years were still the ones making it now.

But after the lukewarm reception of MK vs DC, it was abundantly clear that they need a new direction, or rather an old direction. While the 3D entries had been successful for their time, a lot of players wanted a return to the classic style of Mortal Kombat. And after Street Fighter 4 had proven that approach could be successful, that’s exactly what they did.

The new Mortal Kombat would be a full reboot of the franchise. Returning to both the story and the gameplay of the original trilogy. Featuring all the characters, stages and classic special moves fans knew and love.

And to avoid the issue they had with MK vs DC; the ultra-violence would be cranked up to 11. Not only having the most violent Fatalities so far, but also having in game damage on the characters that showed the flesh being teared off. It was gruesome, it was brutal, it was Mortal Kombat.

Releasing in 2011, this new game simply titled Mortal Kombat, though fans dub it Mortal Kombat 9 to avoid confusion, was a grand return to form for the series. Though it returned to the series 2D routes, it still contained elements for the 3D game such as the breaker system. Making it feel like the best of both worlds.

The combat was deeper with a new meter system allowing you to perform enhanced special moves and brutal super moves called X-Rays. Stuff that was standard for a lot of fighting games but was new for Mortal Kombat.

And they didn’t skimp out on the modes either. Much like the 3D games, Mortal Kombat 9 still a bunch of unlockables and side modes to play. There was the Challenge Tower which had 100 unique challenges with each one getting progressively harder, and while there wasn’t a Konquest mode, there would be a full cinematic story mode that went over the games story. Something that was actually a hold over from MK vs DC, so at least something good came out of that mess.

This kind of big cinematic story mode would go to be a trademark for NetherRealm games going forward. And while the writing can get, questionable let’s just say, they are usually very entertaining.

But it wasn’t just single player content, there was some fun alternate VS modes too. There was a full tag team mode that was completely separate from the main game and Test Your Luck which was a party mode that was completely random but an utter blast to play.

And I can’t stress how important all these extra modes where at the time. See one of the downsides of this era of fighting games was the lack of major single player content. While the previous generation of fighters had thrived on having strong single player content, the Revival Era seemed to slack on it.

I was a big Soulcalibur fan at the time and was severely disappointed at the lack of major single player content in Soulcalibur 4. I like to blame the rise of online modes. I mean it makes sense, fighting games are meant to be played with real people so why bother with single player content when there’s a way to play against other players around the world.

I guess most fighting game developers didn’t see the point in having strong single player content. Some did, I know Tekken 6 had a major single player mode and Arc Systems games always had a meaty story mode to enjoy, if you could comprehend it, but most fighting game developers just didn’t bother.

But NetherRealm did, they absolutely saw the importance of single player content and stuffed Mortal Kombat 9 with as much as possible. This is probably why of all fighting games, Mortal Kombat has the biggest audience of casual fans.

Mortal Kombat 9 was also the first game in the series to have DLC characters. And along with that another thing this era is known for, guest characters. Though one guest character would be console exclusive as the PlayStation 3 version had God of War’s Kratos as a playable character.

It’s a shame Xbox players didn’t get something equivalent, but they still had access to the other guest character Freddy Krueger. Yes, the horror icon of Nightmare on Elm Street was a fighter in Mortal Kombat, though sadly it was based on the shitty reboot version. Still, it was cool to see, and later games would only get wilder with the guest characters.

Mortal Kombat 9 is considered by many to be the best Mortal Kombat game ever made. I don’t fully agree, I actually like the follow up a little more, but I can’t argue against it. It brought Mortal Kombat back to its roots while also improving on the gameplay in fun and logical ways.

It was a big financial success selling over 3 million copies in its first five months. Which, according to Warner Bros, ended up covering the cost of the entire Midway acquisition. Wow they made it back that quickly, how cheap did they get Midway?

Mortal Kombat 9 had done extremely well, but it’s follow-up took a while to come out. This was mainly because after MK9, NetherRealm would work on Injustice, a DC themed fighter that would introduce elements that would then be added to the Mortal Kombat series in its next entry.

Which finally released in 2015 under the title of Mortal Kombat X. And this is my favourite game in the series. Mainly because it just played like a faster, smoother version of Mortal Kombat 9, which is already a great game so a better playing version of that is even better.

Though it wasn’t just a better playing MK9, X did introduce a lot of new things to the series. The stages now had interactable elements which was something taken from Injustice, see I told you. But its biggest change was the introduction of Variations.

You know how the 3D games gave each character 3 fighting styles, well the Variations are similar. Every character has 3 different Variations you can pick from that changes how they fight. Giving access to new combo strings, special moves and in some cases making them a drastically different character.

The DLC fighter Triborg is the best example of this as each of its Variations are based on the different cyborg characters. So, it’s basically like having 3 characters in one, well 4 if you count the Cyber Sub-Zero variation.

It was a cool system that allowed you to play characters in different ways. My main was Ermac and I primarily played the Mystic variation where he got a new telekinetic slam, but I saw a lot of players rocking his Master of Souls variation due to its strong projectile game. Even if you played the same character, the Variations meant you could play the character in vastly different ways.

It also kept up with the single player content. It still had a big cinematic story mode, it still had loads of unlockables, no Challenge Tower unfortunately but it had a rotating selection of arcade towers that had different gimmicks which acted as a suitable replacement.

And as for guest characters, we got horror icons Jason Voorhees and Leatherface, along with Alien and Predator. Yes, you could actually do Alien vs Predator in this game, and it was awesome.

It was once again a big success. It wasn’t quite as well received by players as MK9, some of the new characters rubbed people the wrong way, but most people seemed to like it. It wound up being the bestselling game in the series at that point selling over 12 million copies.

Mortal Kombat had reached a new level of popularity by this point, as were fighting games in general. This was near the beginning of the 8th generation where things were really starting to pick up steam.

Capcom wasn’t doing too hot due to the rough launch of Street Fighter 5, but everyone else was. SNK made a big comeback with King of Fighters 14 and the Samurai Showdown reboot, and Arc Systems had made bank with the mega hit that was Dragon Ball FighterZ.

It was a good time to be a fighting game fan, and a NetherRealm studios fan. Both from a casual and competitive standpoint. I haven’t really talked about the competitive side of Mortal Kombat yet because I’m not too well versed in it. I’m a casual fighting game fan, I don’t deal with the competitive stuff.

But as far as I can tell, Mortal Kombat 9 and X both largely created the competitive Mortal Kombat scene we know today. There were competitive scenes for the older games, but they weren’t very big from what I can gather.

Granted it’s hard to find anything about the competitive scene for these older fighting games. Maybe Mortal Kombat competitively was huge back in the day, and you just had to be there, who knows. But it is during this era where the competitive side began to thrive.

It started to have dedicated more widely accessible tournaments and became a mainstay at Evo the biggest fighting game tournament in the world. Even the older games have more competitive recognition in large part due to this era.

The Mortal Kombat series was reaching larger heights than it ever had in the past. Critically, commercially, and competitively it was doing great. Even film wise it had made a comeback. Thanks to Warner Bros animation department we got a handful of Mortal Kombat animated films. Some of which were pretty decent.

And in 2021 we got a new live action Mortal Kombat movie. While not as well received as the original, it seemed to have done ok. Certainly a lot better than Annihilation anyway.

But I’m jumping ahead a bit here. 2 years before the new movie in 2019, NetherRealm released the third and final game in this era, Mortal Kombat 11. This one felt different compared to the previous games. It was a slower game focused more on fundamentals.

It also changed the meter system from a standard 3 level bar to two bars of defensive and offensive meter that could be spent on different things. Breakers were removed, replaced by a new breakaway system where you could roll out of juggles, and there was a new crushing blow system which rewarded you for using special moves in specific circumstances.

While none of this was necessarily bad, it didn’t sit well with a lot of players. Some found the changes detrimental to the overall experience, finding it all needlessly complicated, while also feeling far closer to Injustice than Mortal Kombat.

Another aspect of the game that was contentious was the new Variation system. Rather than have 3 set Variations, you could make your own with a selection of different moves. While this sounds awesome, and was fun to an extent, it wound up lacking the elegance of MKX’s Variations.

It made every character feel incomplete. Like they never had access to all the moves you wanted to have. You could argue that X had a similar problem, but in X the Variations felt like actual variations. There was a clear game plan each offered whereas 11’s felt less cohesive.

And competitively the variations were locked to default ones NetherRealm themselves created. It wasn’t until the Ultimate edition where they let players create custom variations in tournaments. So for the longest time it wound up not adding much.

And you had to unlock all of them too. On top of all the different colours, costumes, intros and outro animations which wound up making it feel like a tedious grind. It was some of the worst parts of games as a service, right down to having microtransactions. Albeit ones that weren’t too intrusive.

It wasn’t a bad game by any means. It still had plenty of the content you would expect, you still had a big story mode, with an additional story mode being added in the Aftermath expansion, different arcade towers to do some of which had co-operative elements, and the Krypt was expanded to be a pseudo adventure game. Which was cool even if it killed off a lot of characters for no reason.

It still wound up getting good reviews, but the reception among players was a bit more mixed than usual. Some of the criticism was respectful and even understandable, some of it was completely toxic and uncalled for. Which leads me to the Mileena debacle.

Remember when I said Mileena had a really dedicated following a while back, well they weren’t happy as Mortal Kombat 11 didn’t include Mileena in the base roster. So for months going on years, they would bombard Ed Boon and NetherRealm studios with demands for Mileena as a DLC fighter.

Now a lot of this was harmless, just some fans asking where their favourite character was. Understandable, but some fans took it too far. Outright sending death threats to the developers over a character not making it into a fucking videogame. Even when they added guest characters like Terminator, Joker, Robocop and Spawn, the latter of which was heavily requested since X, it didn’t satiate their Mileena thirst.

I need to make it crystal clear that this was not the majority. While there was disappointment over Mileena’s exclusion, most were respectful and didn’t let it bother them too much. But this small contingency of nutjobs left a sour taste in everyone’s mouths.

When all was said and done though, Mortal Kombat 11 was still a big hit, selling over 15 million units. Ending Mortal Kombat during this era of fighting games on something of a high note. Which brings to the current era of fighting games we’re in right now.

I can’t say much about this era since it’s only just begun, but so far it looks like it’ll be another great time for fighting games. Street Fighter 6 was excellent, Tekken 8 is looking great from what I’ve seen, and we’re seeing more and more indie games make a name for themselves in the genre. Even big companies like Riot Games are getting involved in it.

And it looks like Mortal Kombat will once again be a major player. Mortal Kombat 1 is just a few weeks away at the time of writing this and everything I’ve heard from the previews have been positive. Only time will tell of course but given how consistent Mortal Kombat has been over the years I wouldn’t worry about it.

Look I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. Maybe Mortal Kombat finally hits the wall and starts to lose relevancy. It could happen you never know. But as it stands now, I feel confident saying Mortal Kombat will always be a core pillar of fighting games.

I mean just look at how consistent it’s been over the years. It was a major fixture in arcades, it had big success on home consoles even when fighting games were considered dead, and its recent entries have only grown more and more successful as time went on.

We’re dealing with a series that nearly died twice, even having its own publisher croak, and it’s going strong. If that doesn’t tell you how big this series is I don’t know what will.

Love it or hate it but it’s always going to play an important role in the genre and its legacy at this point is too big to ignore. I mean it created the entire videogame rating system for God’s sake. That’s something you can never take away from it.

So good luck in the future Mortal Kombat. I’m sure we’ll have many more years of head ripping, spine snapping, eye gouging, incinerating, eviscerating, heart crushing fun. Seriously though where’s Shaolin Monks HD? Give it to us you cowards.