I was about eight years when I first played Mortal Kombata one-on-one fighting game that outraged parents and politicians in the early 1990s.
I was playing with my cousins ​​in the arrivals hall of Toronto's Pearson Airport when I unknowingly unlocked a secret finishing move.
The ninja I controlled, Scorpion, took off his mask, revealing his skull, and spat a fireball, setting his opponent on fire, leaving nothing but a charred skeleton.
The word “FATALITY” flashed in green capital letters.
My eyes widened in shock. I looked at my cousins, we were all wide-eyed. This incredible moment was just one example of why Mortal Kombat became a must-play game in 1992.
Mortal Kombat: Legacy Collection is the latest release from Digital Eclipse, which specializes in extensive collections of classic game series while also documenting their creation and history through extensive developer interviews and archival footage.
This approach is mainly manifested Mortal Kombatbut the otherwise strong documentary simply glosses over the moral panic that resulted from its chilling action.
Hybrid collection of games and documentary
Heritage Collection includes 23 Mortal Kombat games released between 1992 and 2003. The main attractions are probably the six original arcade releases and home versions for consoles such as the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo.
It's probably the most comprehensive collection of the era, with unexpected inclusions such as cut-down versions for handheld systems like the Game Boy and spin-offs like a combat/action hybrid. MK Mythologies: Sub-Zero.
Timeline, which is part of an interactive documentary, spends a significant amount of time preparing and releasing the original. Mortal Kombatinterviewing key creators including lead programmer Ed Boon and artist/designer John Tobias.
To his credit, he doesn't leave out important contexts that a less scrupulous storyteller might have ignored. Mortal Kombat seem even more revolutionary than they actually were.
This wasn't the first breakthrough one-on-one fighting game: it Street Fighter II, which Boone and Tobias took as a model.
It also wasn't the first to use large amounts of blood or digitize photographs and videos to create realistic human characters. NARC did both in 1990, and Atari introduced the first fighting game with digitized characters. Pit fighter in the same year.
Longtime fans will appreciate the depth of archival footage, such as footage of the motion capture actors under the direction of Tobias and Boone, as well as footage from the promotional video that tried to get Jean-Claude Van Damme to star in the original.
And yet, other than Sal Divita and Kerry Hoskins, who play Nightwolf and Sonya Blade respectively, we see and hear almost nothing from the actors.
Moral panic also doesn't get enough attention. There is less than a minute of video footage of the 1993–1994 U.S. Senate hearings, although Boone, Tobias and others reflect on the aftermath—the creation of the first video game rating system, now known as the Entertainment Software Rating Board.
WATCH | From the CBC archives – the Mortal Kombat “controversy”:
It would be helpful to hear from any living politician who attended these hearings, or from those who were part of concerned parent groups at the time.
This may be beyond the capabilities of a game-focused company like Digital Eclipse, but the package feels incomplete without diving deeper.
Old games, for better or worse
If I talked more about documentary material, maybe it's because Mortal Kombat the games are like Jack Daniel's whiskey: distinctive and energetic, but ultimately lacking in depth and nuance.
At the same time, no one drinks Jack for the sake of nuance. Echoes of the uppercut from Mortal Kombat still resonate, and the colorful cast is as memorable as ever. But early Combat the games were never as challenging as even other fighting games of the time, and have aged poorly.
The home versions from Sega and Nintendo—with their muddy graphics, missing frames of animation, and unresponsive controls—may seem like odd inclusions compared to the polished arcade versions.
But it's important to remember that many more people played these games at home than in slot machines, which were already in decline when the games first appeared. Mortal Kombat first released.
Not only that Mortal Kombat: Legacy Collection heavy dose of nostalgia, it's also fun to compare and contrast where some versions went wrong while others succeeded.
Some entries may even surprise you. Game Boy version Mortal Kombat II quite playable, despite huge technical limitations, and Being Mortal Kombatcool soundtrack surpasses, I believe, even the arcade original.
It's almost inevitable Heritage Collection fails to capture the mark the series has left on popular culture as a whole. But while it's not a perfect victory, it's the best way to relive one of the biggest chapters in Western entertainment, and it's likely to remain that way for some time to come..
