Mortal Kombat is iconic. It started life as an arcade game attempting to do the impossible. Take on Capcom’s Street Fighter II machine which had been ruling arcades. The key to the success of Mortal Kombat was the imagery and match endings. Ed Boon and John Tobias knew they had to stand out and stand out they did. Before you could not literally kill your opponent in a fighting game. Now gamers were going to get to do this in their own homes.

Rocky road to the home

Mortal Kombat in arcades was known for great graphics. These were real people acting out the moves, not cartoon characters. Immediately the difference is visible and jarring for many players. This helped Mortal Kombat reel in passerby in arcades.

The home ports were visually more subdued. Honestly, all home ports from this time were graphically lacking. There is simply too much detail to reliably convert over.

It was evident graphics were going to take a hit on Sega Game Gear and Nintendo Game Boy. The real question was which home console version would be superior to the other. Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo?

The essence of Mortal Kombat

The portable ports were rough, missing characters on top of lacking graphics and sound. I view those as cash run releases – “just because” if you will. Especially the Nintendo Game Boy version which was censored on top of everything else.

Still, the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo ports of Mortal Kombat gave gamers a conundrum. Do you go with graphics closer to, but not quite, the arcade version? Do you go with the version that has fatalities but lower graphic quality?

Rather interestingly, Mortal Kombat is probably the single release that forced Nintendo’s hand. The Sega Genesis version sold multitudes more than the SNES port. In response, before Mortal Kombat II was brought home, Nintendo revamped their policy on blood and violence in their games.

This was the birth of the “Play it Loud” ad campaign that Nintendo launched.

Basically, Nintendo was not happy with losing out to Sega in any way. Even to the point of revamping their corporate policies. No other game in history forced Nintendo to do this without going to court first.

Finish Him!

While neither home port featured the fatalities out of the box, the Sega Genesis version did hide them. Using a code (who remembers it?) you could unlock the fatalities on the Sega Genesis version. SNES fans were left with sweat and modified fatalities for everyone but Sonya and Scorpion.

It was clear, gamers spoke, the Sega Genesis won this round. Unfortunately, later rounds would be much closer in contest – Sega not always the clear winner.

When did you first encounter Mortal Kombat? Was it in arcades or was it on a console or portable? You can relive those memories with tons of ports available on eBay and Amazon. Everything from PlayStation to the original home ports. This franchise has been kept alive and well for decades.

Carl Williams

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