Mortal Kombat
Machine: Sega Megadrive, and many others
Mortal Kombat is one of the most successful video games of the last decade; loads of different versions, a couple of movies, countless web sites about people's great experiences playing Mortal Kombat. To be sure, Mortal Kombat was a brilliantly marketed game particularly when it was released onto the home consoles and into the living rooms of lots of hysterical parents. There was a massive media frenzy about the violence in the game, the blood etc. It was the 'Fatality Moves' that really caught everyone's attention. For those of you who don't know, after you've beaten your opponent you can 'Finish Him!' This involves pressing a few buttons and watching something horrible happen to the hapless character. (Remember these were 1994 graphics, so it wasn't really that disgusting anyway.) If you saw it now, you would just laugh. If you saw it then, well, you would... just... laugh. It really was ridiculous.
So what about the game? Well, I hated it. I still do. The controls were really unresponsive and the game play felt really disjointed and flat. I never felt like I was involved. I think some of this was due to the graphics which were *digitised* and were so poorly animated as to make the whole thing virtually unplayable. The much vaunted Fatality Moves seemed to be merely silly pieces of animation and weren't really part of the game anyway: just a case of typing in a combination of buttons to make a really hard character turn into a chicken or something. Woo hoo. Mortal Kombat was supposed to be the answer to Capcom's unstoppable Street Fighter 2 series and financially speaking it did go someway to achieve this. But whereas Street Fighter 2 had fast and exciting game play with brilliantly designed characters, I ultimately feel that Mortal Kombat benefited from a great marketing campaign rather than well thought out game play. It's over boys, and in truth it never should have started. 'Finish Him!'
Bubbaray 22 Sep '03
If you hate Mortal Kombat, bin it and try:
Streets of Rage
A multi-player scrolling fighter that leaves a lasting impact. More...
Super Smash Bros.
Who's the best Nintendo character? There's only one way to find out...FIGHT! More...
