First Contact

I first came into contact with Mortal Kombat through its sequel, Mortal Kombat II. After seeing how crazy the game was in the arcades of L.A. Video, we decided to rent it for the SNES. I’ll leave my experience with that game for a later time. But about while into my owning of the SNES, I already amassed a good library of SNES games. Of course, two of them stopped working. As collateral, the ones who borrowed my two games (I think these were the same guys) offered to give me two games out of three they didn’t want. They were NBA Jam (which I previously played), Top Gear 2, and of course, Mortal Kombat 1 (all for the SNES). Since I felt I exhausted NBA Jam when I rented it, I chose Top Gear 2 to accompany Mortal Kombat into its new home. Once I popped in the game, I was ready to kick some bloody ass. In the end I ended up kicking… sweaty ass?

Memorable Moments

This is one thing that bummed me out when I got the SNES version. Instead of blood flying out of my opponent, it was just sweat. Nothing more, nothing less. As a kid, I suspected that maybe it was the fault of the SNES that it had trouble rendering MK‘s blood. Then again I played the sequel on the SNES it had all the blood intact. Eventually I came to the conclusion that maybe it was Nintendo’s (the company’s) fault, mostly based on speculation and Nintendo’s track record of being a “Family Friendly” company. It wouldn’t be until years later when my access to the internet (and thus information) confirmed my speculation that it was Nintendo, not the SNES’s power, that stained my hands in sweat. Many years later one of my cousins from Puerto Rico lent us the Genesis version of Mortal Kombat. It was here where I would see all the blood intact.

The next thing I remember was climbing the arcade ladder. It was less stylish than MKII, but it seemed to have some variety of match-ups to make up for the small roster. Things start off normal, then you’re pitted in a Mirror Match. I literally thought I’d be facing a physical mirror (I was really dumb back then). But I quickly realized that I’d be facing a copy or whatever character I chose. I chose Sub-Zero as my main, so I ended up facing him a lot. Then came the Endurance Matches, which were balls hard. You had to face to opponents elimination style. And you had to do this in one life bar… for two rounds! Of course I went the cheap way our and jump-kicked, uppercutted, and threw my way to victory. Then it was time to face the two large portraits at the top of the ladder. First up was Goro. “Oh shit!” was my reaction when I saw Goro. He was huge, had four arms, and was tough to beat. I tried jump-kicking, nope! I tried upercutting. Kinda worked, but when he wasn’t blocking it didn’t launch him high in the air. Throwing was near impossible, and sweeping was minimally successful. I did beat him eventually. Then came Shang Tsung. Since I played MKII before this, I came into battle knowing the usual transforming tomfoolery we would be doing. Easy win for me, and I got to see Sub-Zero’s ending.

Finally, there’s one thing that happened to me in the game that unfortunately I can quite find through Google or Youtube. I briefly mentioned this in the first episode of the podcast, but I’ll expand on it here. Back then I had gotten my hands on the Tips & Tricks annual Codebook (my bible back then). In it were codes for almost every game on every console leading up to that point (which were the N64, PS1, and Saturn, and Dreamcast). I looked inside to see if there were any codes for MK. Boy were they. They also showed the Fatalities, but we’ll get to that on a later day. One bitty that I want to talk about had to do with throwing. In it, they say that in order to activate this… code, feature, what-have-you…. you had to lose a certain number of times to the computer. If I did, the computer would then have the power to throw me from anywhere. I wanted to call bullshit on it, so I tried it. I think I had to lose either 15 or 25 times in a row. When I did, then I was prepped. I chose Sub-Zero and went into battle. As soon as the announcer said “Fight!” there I was, being thrown like a Mewtwo’s ragdoll! The opponent didn’t have to be nowhere near me to throw me. I was on the other side and he threw me. And this wasn’t no occasional throw. Ohh no. It was like seeing two invisible ping-pong paddles smack my character back and forth with the thrower acting like a net. It was some insane bullshit! If I can find that code/video, I’ll post a new article about it. It’s that crazy.