The release of Mortal Kombat in 1993 shook up the gaming industry forever. This was not because Mortal Kombat (MK) was the first fighting game to burst onto consoles, after all, games like Street Fighter were established and beloved by many fighting game enthusiasts already, but rather no other fighting game had quite the shock value or incorporated a carefully considered story. Furthermore, MK was published by Nintendo, a company, which at the time was linked to easy-going titles like Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong.
These factors would change the course of the gaming industry, springing up heated conversations regarding the inclusion of graphic content in video games as well as urging competing games to reflect the narrative success of the MK universe. In this article, we take a closer look at how MK made gaming history.
Finish him
Anyone who has stepped into the MK world will be familiar with the staple line and quasi-marketing tagline ‘finish him.’ The single phrase would capture what many believe the premise of MK to be – inflict as much damage as possible on your opponent. As you pummel opponents to their last breath, the announcement ‘finish him’ echoes somewhere from the distance, encouraging players to perform a finishing combo and unleash a hellishly stunning combat cinematic. Sure, each installment in the franchise would propel players through a compelling narrative that would serve as the consistent intrigue of the universe, but, at its core MK is a fighting game that incorporates some of the most brutal and gory scenes audiences had yet to experience on console screens before. The line would resonate from internet cafes to LAN parties across the globe and usher in a game, unlike anything that had come before it.
Violence in video games
Haters gonna hate and haters surely did hate MK. The reactions from parents seeing their kids rip open the chest of their enemies and pull out their insides were less than amused. Parents banded together in protest of the incredibly gory game and game stores were demanded to be more strict with their game sales policies. In fact, MK is partly responsible for the formation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board which enforced game ratings. But, all of this controversy is largely the reason MK made waves in the industry. Every child with a console worked undercover with their older siblings to get their hands on the title and others were subject to detailed accounts of the brutal new finishing moves a peer had found out the night before. MK was a gaming phenomenon that sparked so much attention for its complete disregard of standard gaming conventions that were prevalent at the time of its release.
Unrestricted by its medium
Originally a game, MK’s success as a narrative-oriented fighting feature would secure its legacy not simply in the gaming world. The MK universes stories were explored more in comics and even a live-action movie adaptation later on. The sheer fact that the MK creators envisioned their game to exist within a world that offered players more than merely an arena to battle out on would inspire a culture of MK fans that they, at the time, did not know would go on to keep the legacy alive through comic con cosplay and fan fiction, something so many other games have failed to do since.
