When Street Fighter II became a mega hit most other developers took notice and wanted a piece of the pie. Back then video game violence was not nearly as prevalent as it is now, and the fact that developers were starting to include blood and the like was quite the hit with young audiences. That’s where Mortal Kombat came in. It impressed children with its explicit violence, but followed the same formula that the more colorful and cartoon styled Street Fighter II established. It was an instant hit, and console versions weren’t too far behind. The Genesis and SNES versions were hotly contested by fans of the respective systems. Sega fans had a leg up because the Super Nintendo version was heavily censored. Unfortunately the main selling point was the violence, and the Genesis version reigned supreme. Today I’m here to tell you why the game sucks, but today I’ll be focusing on the ‘better’ version on Sega’s 16-bit blast processing console.
The plot here in Mortal Kombat revolves around fighters from both Earth and a parallel dimension referred to as Outworld. An evil sorcerer named Shang Tsung has organized a tournament, and should he or his henchmen reign victorious the two worlds will be combined allowing the wizard to take over. Each member of the cast has their own reasons for joining the fight, but none are above being groan worthy. Fortunately the roster is full of colorful characters. You’ve got Bruce Lee wannabe Liu Kang, thunder god Raiden, the hollywood star seeking fortune Johnny Cage, the lone female Sonya Blade, token bad guy Kano, and two ninjas that are basically palette swaps with different battle poses and moves. Unfortunately I don’t really consider any of them particularly memorable except for the four armed strongman Goro who guards Shang Tsung. The roster leaves a lot to be desired. There’s only seven characters to choose from down from which is even less than the original release of Street Fighter II. A bigger roster might have evened things out a bit.
For being such a controversial game Mortal Kombat does little to make itself stand out. It’s a typical one-on-one fighting game wherein you start by selecting one of seven characters and fight your way through the lineup. Each character is armed with punches, kicks, throws, and special moves. Holding directions on the controller as you press the face buttons result in varying effects, but the only really significant one is the uppercut. Unfortunately this move is super overpowered and will wind up being the go-to for most players. Unlike other fighters your attacks are extremely basic. There’s only one basic punch, two kicks, and one throw. It’s extremely simplistic. Each character has only three special moves apiece. The fact that the number matches for every one makes it feel like the developers were just going through the motions. Everyone comes equipped with a projectile attack too which is boring in my opinion. To make matters worse the developers designated the Start button as block in this game. Simply holding back worked for Street Fighter II, and the alternative here is questionable and annoying in my opinion.
Things only get worse from here. For starters, the hit detection is spotty at best. It’s tough to judge because many attacks (especially aerial ones) seem to go right through your opponent if you don’t hit it just right. Characters react extremely oddly to being hit. It’s so bad that it’s almost comical. The violence is almost comical. Blood splatters out of each characters even from a simple punch. Now let’s move on to the major selling point; violence. The finishing moves are a very nice touch, but there are some issues. Most of the fatalities are downright hilarious with how over the top they are. It’s tough to imagine that this kind of thing was ever shocking because the animators did an awful job with it. The fact that this version of the game contains violence was a huge selling point for the Genesis itself, but what I didn’t realize is that you must first unlock the blood and many of the fatalities with a cheat code. It’s kind of entertaining for novelty sake, but I never felt the urge to input the code on subsequent plays. Blood and fatalities simply aren’t worth it.
Mortal Kombat is not a pretty game by any standard. The use of digitized characters may have been impressive back in the day, but they’re laughable now. This Genesis edition is the worst looking of the home console ports. The characters are heavily pixelated, and the colors are definitely off. To make matters worse there are several frames of animation missing from each of them. In some instances it looks like the fighters are having seizures. The backgrounds are awful as well. This version is missing a ton of detail, and because of the limited color palette even the single shade sky looks awful. The soundtrack doesn’t fare much better to be honest. The Genesis was obviously not even close to capable of re-creating the arcade soundtrack, and the developers opted to instead create new music for this port. Some of it is pretty decent, such as the opening and Pit Stage theme, but the rest kind of sounds like the composer was just hitting random buttons on a keyboard. It’s almost better to mute the television while playing.
It’s surprising that this game was popular because it’s just not very good. The graphics are awful, and compared to Street Fighter II the combat is simple and uninteresting. The developers couldn’t even match the roster of playable characters to the source material which is just sad. Fortunately the sequels are better and there’s absolutely no reason to seek it out. Even competing with a human player is not fun.
