The Beginning: Mortal Kombat (1992)
It was developed and published by Midway Gamesin 1992 as the first title in the Mortal Kombat series.
The game introduced many key aspects of the Mortal Kombat series, including the unique five-button control scheme and gory finishing moves. The game focuses on the journey of the monk Liu Kang to save Earth from the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung, ending with their confrontation on the tournament known as Mortal Kombat.
Mortal Kombat became a best-selling game and remains of the most popular fighting games in the genre's history, spawning numerous sequels and spin-offs over the following years and decades, beginning with Mortal Kombat II in 1993, and together with the first sequel was a subject of a successful film adaptation in 1995. It also sparked a big controversy for its depiction of extreme violence and gore using realistic digitized graphics, resulting in an introduction of video game rating systems.
Plot
The game takes place sometime after the events of Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero on a fictional island, with most of the game's events occurring in the fictional realms of the Mortal Kombat series. The original takes place in Earthrealm, where a tournament is being held at Shang Tsung's Island, on which seven of its locations serve as stages in the game. The player receives information about the characters in biographies displayed during the attract mode. Additional information about the characters and their motivations for entering the tournament is received upon completion of the game with each character.
The original Mortal Kombat is the only game in the series to not have an introduction video explaining its plot. The story was fully explained in subsequent games, starting with Mortal Kombat II. The introduction to Mortal Kombat II explains that Shang Tsung was banished to Earthrealm 500 years ago and with the help of the monstrous Goro is able to seize control of the Mortal Kombat tournament in an attempt to doom the realm.[5]
The storyline of the first Mortal Kombat was later adapted into Paul W. S. Anderson's film Mortal Kombat, including an animated prequel titled Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins, released direct-to-video. An alternate climax for the first game would be featured on the adventure game Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, which tells an alternate version of the events between the first and second Mortal Kombat tournaments.
Characters
Mortal Kombat included seven playable characters, all of which would eventually become trademark characters and appear in sequels. The game was developed with digitized sprites based on actors.[6][7] The protagonist of the game is the Shaolin martial artist Liu Kang, played by Ho Sung Pak, who enters the tournament to defeat sorcerer Shang Tsung, the main antagonist and final boss (also played by Sung Pak).
Elizabeth Malecki played the Special Forces agent Sonya Blade, who is pursuing the Black Dragon mercenary Kano (played by Richard Divizio). Carlos Pesina played Raiden, the god of Thunder, while his brother Daniel Pesina played Hollywood movie star Johnny Cage and the Lin-Kuei warrior Sub-Zero as well as the game's two other ninja characters. The blue color of Sub-Zero's costume was changed to yellow to create the ninja specter Scorpion and to green for the game's secret character Reptile (though the costume used for motion capturing was actually red).[8] Mortal Kombat would become famous for these palette swaps, and later games would continue it.
The four-armed Shokan warrior Goro serves as the sub boss of the game, being a half-human, half-dragon beast much stronger than the other characters, and unaffected by some of their attacks. The character's stop motion model was created by Curt Chiarelli. When fighting on the Pit stage, the player could qualify to fight the secret character Reptile by meeting a special set of conditions.[9] Goro, Shang Tsung, and Reptile were not playable in the original game, but would become playable in sequels. The Masked Guard in the Courtyard stage was portrayed by Mortal Kombat developer John Vogel.
Reception
Electronic Gaming Monthly awarded Mortal Kombat the title of "Most Controversial Game of 1993".[29] In 1995, the Daily News wrote, "the original Mortal Kombat video game debuted in 1992. Its combination of story line, character and mega-violence soon made it a hit worldwide. And the controversy engendered by its blood-gushing special effects only served to boost its popularity."[30] In 2007, CraveOnline ranked it second of the top ten 2D fighters of all time.[31]In 2008, Forbes called Mortal Kombat one of the "most loved arcade games" that was "king of the arcade" in its day, writing that the arcade machines of the original title go from a few hundred dollars to $2,500.[32] In 2011, Complex ranked the first Mortal Kombat as the 12th best fighting game of all time,[33] while Wirtualna Polska ranked it as the 19th best Amiga game.[34] In 2012, Time named it one of the 100 greatest video games of all time.[35] In 2013, the first Mortal Kombat was ranked as the best arcade game of the 1990s by Complex (the sequel, which "took everything we loved about the original and magnified it by about a million," landed at sixth place on the list).
The SNES port of Mortal Kombat was widely criticised by gaming media for censorship issues. In 2006, IGN named it as the eighth worst arcade-to-console conversion. Nintendo's decision to make the game more family friendly was also included on GameSpy's list of the dumbest moments in gaming.
Mortal kombat The Most Popular Fighting Video Game
Mortal Kombat (commonly abbreviated "MK") is a series of fighting games created by Ed Boon and John Tobias. The first four renditions and their updates were developed by Midway Games and initially released on arcade machines, and later to home consoles. The arcade titles were later picked up by Acclaim Entertainment for the home console conversions. Beginning with Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, Midway Games exclusively created home versions of Mortal Kombat up until Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Following Midway's bankruptcy, the franchise was picked up by Warner Bros. in July 2009 and became a part of the Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.
The development of the first game was originally based on idea of making a video game starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, but that idea fell through and Mortal Kombat was created instead and released in 1992. The original game has spawned many sequels and has been spun off into several action-adventure games, films (animated and live-action with its own sequel), and television series (animated andlive-action). Other spin-offs include various comic book series, a card game and a live-action tour. Along with Capcom's Street Fighter,Mortal Kombat has become one of the most successful and influential fighting franchises in the history of video games.
The series is known for its high levels of bloody violence, including, most notably, its Fatalities—finishing moves, requiring a sequence of buttons to perform, which, in part, led to the creation of the ESRB.[2][3] The series name itself is also known for using the letter "K" in place of "C" for the hard C sound, thus intentionally misspelling the word "combat", as well as other words with the hard C sound within later games in the series. Early games in the series were especially noted for its realistic digitized sprites (which differentiated it from its contemporaries' hand-drawn sprites), as well as an extensive use of palette swapping to create new characters.
This list contains all the games of MK¨s saga.| Title | Release | Original platforms | Ports | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mortal Kombat (1992) | 1992 | Arcade | Various | |
| Mortal Kombat II | 1993 | Arcade | Various | |
| Mortal Kombat 3 | 1995 | Arcade | Various | |
| Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 | 1995 | Arcade | Various | |
| Mortal Kombat Trilogy | 1996 | PS1, N64 | Saturn, Windows,Game.com, R-Zone | |
| Mortal Kombat 4 | 1997 | Arcade | PS1, N64, Windows | The first 3D game in the series. |
| Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero | 1997 | PS1, N64 | N/A | |
| Mortal Kombat Gold | 1999 | Dreamcast | N/A | An update of Mortal Kombat 4. |
| Mortal Kombat: Special Forces | 2000 | PS1 | N/A | |
| Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance | 2002 | PS2, GCN, Xbox | GBA (2003) | |
| Mortal Kombat: Tournament Edition | 2003 | GBA | N/A | |
| Mortal Kombat: Deception | 2004 | PS2, GCN, Xbox | N/A | |
| Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks | 2005 | PS2, Xbox | N/A | |
| Mortal Kombat: Armageddon | 2006 | PS2, Xbox | Wii (2007) | |
| Mortal Kombat: Unchained | 2006 | PSP | N/A | The PSP version of Deception. |
| Ultimate Mortal Kombat | 2007 | NDS | A update of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. | |
| Mortal Kombat Kollection | 2008 | PS2 | N/A | Includes Deception, Shaolin Monks andArmageddon. |
| Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe | 2008 | PS3, X360 | N/A | |
| Mortal Kombat (2011) | 2011 | PS3, X360 | PS Vita (2012) | |
| Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection | 2011 | PSN, XBLA | GFWL (2012) | Includes MK, MKII and UMK3. |
| Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition | 2012 | PS3, X360 | Windows (2013) | An update of Mortal Kombat (2011). |
