Goro lives…
I’m a big fan of beat em ups, and I remember fondly my first experience with the genre. A good friend of mine was probably one of the first person in my hometown who bought a Super Nintendo. I’d seen the marvels of the nintendo 8-bit console at another friends house but this was a whole new league of gaming. 16 whopping bits of super power left me gawking at his tv screen as mario jumped onto my retina’s in stellar 15-bit rgb colours. Back then money was sparse and I didnt have enough to buy one for my own, but I was able to see and play a lot of great titles thanks to my friend. ( Cheers Ed, wherever you are.)
One day at school my friend asked me to come over to check out a new game he bought called Street Fighter II. He explained to me that it was a beat-em-up where you’d fight eachother one on one and you could pick from a range of cooky characters. When I got to play it I was blown away, the competetive nature of the game was very addicting the the genre immediatly took hold of me and never let go. When I ran home I was dragon punching and Hurricane kicking all the way (several people were injured in a martial arts related car accident that day).
So real it hurts, when arcade cabinets beat up small kids!
Time passed and my brother aquired a Sega Genesis in a very interesting manner (i’ll get back to this some time) and we were able to spend our scrawny savings on all kinds of games ourselves. because we liked to game together and the beat-em-up virus had grabbed hold of my brother as well we always kept an eye out for brawlers. So we started to buy magazines to get a better view of what games were coming out. Of course those magazines were expensive as well and we weren’t able to buy them every month, but each magazine was an adventure by itself. they were filled to the brim with screenshots and stories of games to come and we would read them till they fell apart.
Mortal Kombat.
At the end of 1992, we bought a copy of a magazine called Sega Mean Machines, and on the cover the text “MORTAL KOMBAT for GENESIS REVEALED!” was slapped into your face. What? Mortal kombat? whats that? and why is it spelled wrong? I opened the magazine on the mentioned page and was stunned. It was like Street Fighter! but… with real people! is this real? At first I thought it was fake, nothing looked that good. The characters looked like they were photographed from real life. I stated to read the article while my eyes constantly veered off to the screenshots. There was mention of blood, violence and something called a “Fatality”. These kind of things make a 10 year old boy VERY curious.
That's basically all you need to know.
Mortal Kombat was released on major consoles in 1993 and immedeatly caused a shitstorm. The game featured the afformentioned fatalities, which allowed you to kill your opponent in a gruesome matter after defeating him. Hearts were pulled out, people were set ablaze and heads were ripped off with spinal cords included. There was already some discussion about the arcade version, but the console release brought the violence to the masses and under the attention of the media. The game was censored for it’s home console release, but violence was there nonetheless. To make matters worse, the Sega Genesis version had a hidden code that would enable the blood and original fatalities! (A,B,A,C,A,B,B. Never forget people!)
According to talk shows, moms were horrified by the violent nature of the game and forbid their children to play it. It eventually lead to the creation of the ESRB rating system. Now that’s impressive!
Of course all that stuff sounded amazing to all the kids who wanted to play it. Unfortunatly my parents caught wind of the whole situation and forbade me to play the game. So I did what every obedient child does, I went over to my friends place and played it there. And I wasnt the only one! The room was filled with kids from school who wanted a peek at the game. The stories of the violence spread like wildfire and everything your parents forbid is interesting to kids that age.
A Toasty Fatality.
The game was amazing, the whole 90′s Budget Kung-Fu Bloodsport movie atmosphere totally immersed you into the game. As you pressed start, the loud ringing of a gong welcomed you to the character select screen, and man did it look good. Ninja’s, assassins, movies stars and Bruce lee lookalikes were displayed in near photorealistic sprites with smooth animation. The battles took places in ancient temples, Shrines and even on a small walkway above a spike filled pit during a full moon. It looked so real, wich made the violence extra convincing.
The gameplay was very interesting, each character basically had the same moveset of roundhouse kicks, sweeps, punch combo’s and the trademark uppercut. It made the fights feel really balanced. What made each character unique was their special moves. One ninja would throw harpoons at his opponent and pull them towards him while shouting “GET OVER HERE!” another would freeze their adversary with an ice bolt. Thunder gods would fly across the screen screaming and ramming their victim against the wall while murderers would throw knives at your face. It was a sight to behold, and most importantly, incredibly fun!
The famous Pit Stage
Mortal Kombat remains one of my favorite beat em ups to date, it was followed up by an even better sequel and the series continued to grow as the years went by. This year marked the release of the ninth installment of the series and after some dissapointment in previous releases this one goes back to it’s dark roots and is better then ever . But I will never forget the impact the first game had on me, as I finished up this “review” I noticed I told more about my experience around the game, rather then getting into detail about the gameplay. Perhaps that is what made this game extra special to me.
Flawless Victory!
Good read! Brings back memories! cheers!