It's no secret that one of my oldest and dearest hobbies is playing video games, and that I generally prefer the older ones: games with simple control schemes and no learning curve, which are quaint and non-threatening and which I warmly remember playing as a child. Luckily for me, my tastes are very much catered for at the moment, as the last ten years have seen a rush of revivals, re-releases and nostalgic internet musings. People of my generation are starting to look back to their pasts, and want to play Super Mario Bros. and Zelda and Goldeneye all over again. Retro is in.
But one series of games that has curiously never been re-released (not properly anyway) is Mortal Kombat - the main rival to the brilliant Street Fighter 2, which invented and simultaneously perfected the 'tournament fighter' genre.
Mortal Kombat was one of the few imitations that almost surpassed the original. It had neat graphics based on animated photographs rather that standard cartoons, it had a cool oriental theme... and it had a comical amount of blood. And death moves. By today's standards these are silly and tame, but as a small child playing these behind my parents' backs, I remember feeling a wonderful hot flush of guilt at the back of my neck.
Death. Moves. You could rip people's heads off and everything! Or at least, Gary from number 12 said he had a friend who knew how to rip people's heads off. It was a secret move which no-one really knew how to do. I just settled for an uppercut as my standard finishing move, which I pretended was fatal.
Scorpion, seen here reassuring himself that that final knee-to-the-chest probably caused internal bleeding or something, as a legion of unimpressed John Malcoviches clap politely.So it was with enormous joy that I noticed today that whoever it is that bought up Midway have gone and released all three of the classic 2D Mortal Kombat games, in one package, on Xbox Live Arcade! Immediately I downloaded it and got to grips with a nicely-ported version of the arcade machine original. I played as Liu Kang, because I remembered how to do his moves, and bravely chose the 'normal' difficulty setting. As a kid I remember finding this game pretty tough and never daring to go higher than the insultingly-misnamed 'very easy' mode. But you know, nowadays I'm so much wiser and smarter. I have a beard of sorts. I bet now I can win it, maybe even properly!
All right, let's do this! It's time for MOOORDAL KAWMBAAAAAT! *and then techno music in my head.*
The following hour was interesting. As I played, I was mentally compiling the following instruction booklet. I wish I'd had this information available before I'd started. It might have helped me lose less.
---------------
FIGHT!
---------------1. Getting Started
Thank you for your purchase, and welcome to the curious and soul-destroying world of MORTAL KOMBAT (TM)! Here at Midway we pride ourselves on not just copying Street Fighter 2 outright, but rather putting time and effort into disguising that fact, and doing all we can to piss off your parents too (yes this is the game where you can rip people's heads off, and no, this booklet will not tell you how to do that.)
First, download and open your 'Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection' virtual game pak. After maybe a hundred company credits screens, the game will begin. Now press 'Start' and try not to notice the spelling and grammar errors in the load-screen instructions. The original classic MORTAL KOMBAT is the first game available, so just hit start. Now select a difficulty. These range from 'Quite hard' through to 'Bloody hard', 'Jesus Christ this is hard', 'How do they expect children to play this?' and 'Nobody even tested this.' Choose based on your tolerance for pychological pain and hit 'Start'.
2. The Story...
The story of MORTAL KOMBAT begins many centuries ago, when the Elder Gods separated creation into several realms: Earthrealm (the Earth), Outworld (a mixed lesbian and gay nightspot which did very well for itself), Netherrealm (Hell), Edenia (paradise) and the realms of Order and Chaos (filler). Upon doing this, the Gods decreed that should one realm's rulers wish to invade another realm, then they would have to stage a martial arts tournament known as Mortal Kombat (the Elder Gods were apparently dyslexic) and have one if its representative fighters win against those representing the other realm ten times in a row. Everybody got that?
The Elder Gods figured that nobody would ever win ten in a row (like, who has the time and stuff), but failed to realise that some of their new realms would breed distinctly better fighting champions than others. As such, Edenia and Order-realm were conquered pretty quickly, and the Emporer of Outworld starting getting ideas about Earth.
Ten generations later, the Emporer found himself sitting on nine straight victories and ready for a tenth. His finest general and martial-arts master, Shang Tsung, organised the most important Mortal Kombat tournament of all: the fight for Earth. Acting quite hastily, the thunder-God Raiden assumed human form and gathered a handful of top Earth-based fighters at the absolute last minute, explaining the rules and origin of the tournament en-route. Their questions about why he hadn't warned them, trained them or prepared the Earth in any way were brushed aside as he told them something about destiny and responsibility, which they weren't listening to.
Later that day, the dazed and baffled kombatants arrive at Tsung's mysterious private island, where the tournament is about to begin...
As one of Earth's chosen warriors (the first six guys Raiden could think of, chosen on the basis that they had cool names), you must save the Earth from invasion by defeating and ideally murdering the other contestants, two ninjas, the famous Prince Goro and finally Shang Tsung himself (yes, Outworld only picked two guys to fight for it). Do you have the strength, skill and inner harmony required to defeat the deadly gauntlet... of Mortal Kombat? No.
3. The Kharacters
You will be given a choice of seven martial arts experts, representing a range of styles and cultures from across the globe. All of them posess magical powers of some kind, but weapons are not allowed, unless you're Scorpion. Scorpion has some kind of disability scam going, but the details are cloaked in mystery.
Liu Kang is the canonical hero, despite the fact that he is Bruce Lee. Aledgedly. Similarities and legal disputes aside, Liu is a brave Shaolin Monk who has entered the tournament in order to save the Earth. He wears black pants and cuts his hair short. He is Chinese, and... makes noises like Bruce Lee.
Raiden is the ancient Chinese-I-Guess God of thunder, alive inside a mortal body, sunhat, apron and white hazardous materials suit. He has the power to shoot electricity from his hands, and can hurl himself across the room like a torpedo while screaming incomprehensible faux-Chinese gibberish. This all sounds good, but remember that he and his hand-picked elite squads have so far failed to win a single tournament out of the last ten. Might not want to bet on this guy.
Johnny Cage... looks nothing like you remembered. You were expecting a cool guy in sunglasses and black trousers, right, like in the movie? The real Johnny wears wierd pirate shorts with a sash, squats with his legs apart and hands up as if he's about to do the Walk Like an Egyptian dance, and his face is oddly long and serious-looking.
Sonya Blade is the girl. Got to have a girl. If she gets you with the sweep kick, she will automatically do this annoying move with her legs, thus effectively sweeping you twice. Also she is an FBI agent. For some reason she is wearing lime-green exercise gear.
Sub-Zero is a ninja who dresses in sky-blue and posesses the ability to freeze solid matter, but sadly not the ability to come up with a subtle or creative nickname. His freeze-move is extremely useful as it is hard to block and slows down the combat for a few precious moments.
Scorpion is exactly like Sub-Zero except that he wears yellow instead of blue, and he shoots an Inspector Gadget-style harpoon from his hand and yells 'Get ooover here!' in a deep American accent, thus overshadowing the obvious palette-swap effect by being the most fun character in the game. Like the freeze move, the Harpoon is much more helpful than most special moves.
Kano has a metal plate covering his glowing red eye, throws magic knives and in the film seemed to be a Cockney crime boss. However, is is rubbish.
4. How to Play
After you have selected your fighter, your opponents will be laid out in order of difficulty, and the easiest one will immediately begin kicking the everliving crap out of you. Don't worry - you paid your ten bucks, so you have unlimited continues! During the ensuing defeats you will learn that every fighter is able to high-kick, low-kick, furiously wail on the other guy with fast punches, sweep kick, block, perform specific special moves and of course... uppercut.
There are three ways to win a fight. Any other stretagy will fail.
1) Be Sub-Zero or Scorpion, and thus have an easy special move which incapacitates the other guy for a second. Abuse the hell out of this move. Shout 'Get oooover here!' to amuse yourself, but remember this is still no guarantee of victory in the cruel world of Mortal Kombat. The first time someone blocks your harpoon and proceeds to brutalise you in revenge, your heart will break.
2) Wail on that impossibly-fast jackass with high punches every time he gets close to you. You will look silly, but maybe you'll win and the game will not laugh at you or loudly applaud your defeat (it does this a lot).
3) Play the uppercut and sweep game. Once you're fairly close to your opponent, he will try to sweep-kick you. The trick is to be slightly too far away and then walk towards him to deliver the uppercut. And vice versa - that is, if he tries to uppercut, you sweep the leg, Johnny, and you sweep it good. Be aware that he will be trying the same thing. Don't keep trying to do one or the other - you must alternate between both moves.
If you do win, you will hear a deep voice cry, 'Finish him!' (regardless of your opponent's gender) and be allowed to perform a finishing move! You have half a second to do it, and the instructions (on the pause menu) are tiny, complex and incomprehensible. You will likely never accomplish this.
Every few levels you will be granted a bonus round. Here you will hear the deep voiced guy say, 'Test your might!' and in the following 0.034 seconds you must tap the punch button until you have built up enough power to hit 'block' and thus shatter a piece of wood before your power sinks back down. You will never accomplish this. The game is just trying to demoralise you.
At one point, you'll fight on The Pit Stage. This is a stage set on a thin stone bridge over a pit of spikes. The winner here is able to actually perform a finishing move, by simply uppercutting the loser and thus dropping him onto the spikes. This feels amazing and makes the whole thing worthwhile.
Liu Kang: "I'm doing it! I'm actually doing it!!"
Once five of your opponents have been beaten and one unfortunate soul has been thrown on the spikes, you will enter what the tournament spectators lovingly call 'The Padding':
- First the Mirror Match! You must fight an identical copy of yourself for unknown reasons. Here the game is able to dispel the false belief you have built up, that you are playing with any degree of skill. The computer-controlled copy will demonstrate how you were supposed to be playing this whole time, until you either replicate his inhumanly-fast style or get lucky with the sweeps and uppercuts.
- Then you will face the first Endurance fight! Here you fight two of the other fighters back to back! This is, as you would imagine, twice as hard as what you've been doing so far. Time to up your game, chum.
- Twenty minutes later, you face another Endurance fight! Same as before. You might want to get a cup of coffee or something. Count youself lucky you're not playing this on an arcade in the mid 90's, feeding a limitless supply of 50ps into it just so that maybe you can get to the next round, which is...
- Another fucking Endurance fight. You have now fought everyone twice, including the guy you killed earlier. You may begin to question the alledged 'mortality' of the Kombat at this point.
5. Almost There! Except...
Once you defeat the Padding, you will notice that you are shaking, exhausted and sporting a healthy stubble. Well done: this is the mark of a true Mortal Kombat player! You are now ready for the two final challenges - Outworld's two greatest fighters! The battle to save all of mankind!
But never mind that shit - here comes GORO!
Just another day for Goro. Here he is, preparing to crucify Scorpion with nothing but his bare fists and the air. The bones belong to Chuck Norris.
Goro is a half-man, half-dragon. Like Johnny Cage, he looks nothing at all like how you remember him or how he looked in the movie. He fights you outside a cave with glowing monster eyes peeping out from the darkness, and he is enormous and has four arms. You can't knock him over by uppercutting or sweeping, and he can kill you in three or four hits. Also, he growls constantly. Like, constantly. You grow to really resent that.
Goro's special moves include punching you so hard it kills you whilst growling, grabbing hold of you, growling and punching you multiple times and betting on whether you die on an even or odd number, throwing you so hard you lose consciousness and then punching you and growling, shooting a fireball which melts your flesh before it even hits you, jumping onto your head and stomping your body into a fine dust which he then sets sets fire to and stomps on all over again to put it out, and growling as he makes a sandwich out of your lungs, which he then serves to his giant, four-armed mates, who immediately punch the sandwich so hard it flies into outer space and burns up in the sun and then the sun explodes from the sheer force of the punch. Goro's salary is paid in 50ps.
This guy has been fighting Goro for less than a second, and already has no skin. This is a slow day for Goro, but don't worry - he's apparently about to bring about armageddon.
The final stage is Shang Tsung himself. No-one knows who he is, because no-one has ever defeated Goro. It's rumoured that he may be the the old man you see in the background on some levels, but nobody knows or cares any more.
At this point, I would like to say that I'm only kidding. Mortal Kombat has a strange and amusing storyline and it's unbelievably hard when you reach the later stages, and Goro, but hey. It's an arcade game, what did I expect? And its a damn good arcade game, too. The moody, vaguely-Chinese-mythological setting and music are fun and atmospheric, the uppercuts feel great, the Pit Stage is wonderful and the fatalities, should you ever get them to work, make you feel on top of the world. This nostalgic classic does hold up, after all this time, even now that the novelty and controversy of the blood has worn off. And it was worth buying just to have another crack at Goro. Besides, the difficulty level helps to create the sense of doom and dark fantasy that this whole experience is built on.
Maybe if I try 'very easy' mode, eh?
I recommend the new release: Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection. Just... don't expect to win. Ripping people's heads off may be possible with practice.
And as I remember things, the second game was much better! I got MK2 and 3 as part of this deal, so I look forward to testing them too. In the mean time, remember...
Thank you for your purchase, and welcome to the curious and soul-destroying world of MORTAL KOMBAT (TM)! Here at Midway we pride ourselves on not just copying Street Fighter 2 outright, but rather putting time and effort into disguising that fact, and doing all we can to piss off your parents too (yes this is the game where you can rip people's heads off, and no, this booklet will not tell you how to do that.)
First, download and open your 'Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection' virtual game pak. After maybe a hundred company credits screens, the game will begin. Now press 'Start' and try not to notice the spelling and grammar errors in the load-screen instructions. The original classic MORTAL KOMBAT is the first game available, so just hit start. Now select a difficulty. These range from 'Quite hard' through to 'Bloody hard', 'Jesus Christ this is hard', 'How do they expect children to play this?' and 'Nobody even tested this.' Choose based on your tolerance for pychological pain and hit 'Start'.
2. The Story...
The story of MORTAL KOMBAT begins many centuries ago, when the Elder Gods separated creation into several realms: Earthrealm (the Earth), Outworld (a mixed lesbian and gay nightspot which did very well for itself), Netherrealm (Hell), Edenia (paradise) and the realms of Order and Chaos (filler). Upon doing this, the Gods decreed that should one realm's rulers wish to invade another realm, then they would have to stage a martial arts tournament known as Mortal Kombat (the Elder Gods were apparently dyslexic) and have one if its representative fighters win against those representing the other realm ten times in a row. Everybody got that?
The Elder Gods figured that nobody would ever win ten in a row (like, who has the time and stuff), but failed to realise that some of their new realms would breed distinctly better fighting champions than others. As such, Edenia and Order-realm were conquered pretty quickly, and the Emporer of Outworld starting getting ideas about Earth.
Ten generations later, the Emporer found himself sitting on nine straight victories and ready for a tenth. His finest general and martial-arts master, Shang Tsung, organised the most important Mortal Kombat tournament of all: the fight for Earth. Acting quite hastily, the thunder-God Raiden assumed human form and gathered a handful of top Earth-based fighters at the absolute last minute, explaining the rules and origin of the tournament en-route. Their questions about why he hadn't warned them, trained them or prepared the Earth in any way were brushed aside as he told them something about destiny and responsibility, which they weren't listening to.
Later that day, the dazed and baffled kombatants arrive at Tsung's mysterious private island, where the tournament is about to begin...
As one of Earth's chosen warriors (the first six guys Raiden could think of, chosen on the basis that they had cool names), you must save the Earth from invasion by defeating and ideally murdering the other contestants, two ninjas, the famous Prince Goro and finally Shang Tsung himself (yes, Outworld only picked two guys to fight for it). Do you have the strength, skill and inner harmony required to defeat the deadly gauntlet... of Mortal Kombat? No.
3. The Kharacters
You will be given a choice of seven martial arts experts, representing a range of styles and cultures from across the globe. All of them posess magical powers of some kind, but weapons are not allowed, unless you're Scorpion. Scorpion has some kind of disability scam going, but the details are cloaked in mystery.
Liu Kang is the canonical hero, despite the fact that he is Bruce Lee. Aledgedly. Similarities and legal disputes aside, Liu is a brave Shaolin Monk who has entered the tournament in order to save the Earth. He wears black pants and cuts his hair short. He is Chinese, and... makes noises like Bruce Lee.
Raiden is the ancient Chinese-I-Guess God of thunder, alive inside a mortal body, sunhat, apron and white hazardous materials suit. He has the power to shoot electricity from his hands, and can hurl himself across the room like a torpedo while screaming incomprehensible faux-Chinese gibberish. This all sounds good, but remember that he and his hand-picked elite squads have so far failed to win a single tournament out of the last ten. Might not want to bet on this guy.
Johnny Cage... looks nothing like you remembered. You were expecting a cool guy in sunglasses and black trousers, right, like in the movie? The real Johnny wears wierd pirate shorts with a sash, squats with his legs apart and hands up as if he's about to do the Walk Like an Egyptian dance, and his face is oddly long and serious-looking.
Sonya Blade is the girl. Got to have a girl. If she gets you with the sweep kick, she will automatically do this annoying move with her legs, thus effectively sweeping you twice. Also she is an FBI agent. For some reason she is wearing lime-green exercise gear.
Sub-Zero is a ninja who dresses in sky-blue and posesses the ability to freeze solid matter, but sadly not the ability to come up with a subtle or creative nickname. His freeze-move is extremely useful as it is hard to block and slows down the combat for a few precious moments.
Scorpion is exactly like Sub-Zero except that he wears yellow instead of blue, and he shoots an Inspector Gadget-style harpoon from his hand and yells 'Get ooover here!' in a deep American accent, thus overshadowing the obvious palette-swap effect by being the most fun character in the game. Like the freeze move, the Harpoon is much more helpful than most special moves.
Kano has a metal plate covering his glowing red eye, throws magic knives and in the film seemed to be a Cockney crime boss. However, is is rubbish.
4. How to Play
After you have selected your fighter, your opponents will be laid out in order of difficulty, and the easiest one will immediately begin kicking the everliving crap out of you. Don't worry - you paid your ten bucks, so you have unlimited continues! During the ensuing defeats you will learn that every fighter is able to high-kick, low-kick, furiously wail on the other guy with fast punches, sweep kick, block, perform specific special moves and of course... uppercut.
There are three ways to win a fight. Any other stretagy will fail.
1) Be Sub-Zero or Scorpion, and thus have an easy special move which incapacitates the other guy for a second. Abuse the hell out of this move. Shout 'Get oooover here!' to amuse yourself, but remember this is still no guarantee of victory in the cruel world of Mortal Kombat. The first time someone blocks your harpoon and proceeds to brutalise you in revenge, your heart will break.
2) Wail on that impossibly-fast jackass with high punches every time he gets close to you. You will look silly, but maybe you'll win and the game will not laugh at you or loudly applaud your defeat (it does this a lot).
3) Play the uppercut and sweep game. Once you're fairly close to your opponent, he will try to sweep-kick you. The trick is to be slightly too far away and then walk towards him to deliver the uppercut. And vice versa - that is, if he tries to uppercut, you sweep the leg, Johnny, and you sweep it good. Be aware that he will be trying the same thing. Don't keep trying to do one or the other - you must alternate between both moves.
If you do win, you will hear a deep voice cry, 'Finish him!' (regardless of your opponent's gender) and be allowed to perform a finishing move! You have half a second to do it, and the instructions (on the pause menu) are tiny, complex and incomprehensible. You will likely never accomplish this.
Every few levels you will be granted a bonus round. Here you will hear the deep voiced guy say, 'Test your might!' and in the following 0.034 seconds you must tap the punch button until you have built up enough power to hit 'block' and thus shatter a piece of wood before your power sinks back down. You will never accomplish this. The game is just trying to demoralise you.
At one point, you'll fight on The Pit Stage. This is a stage set on a thin stone bridge over a pit of spikes. The winner here is able to actually perform a finishing move, by simply uppercutting the loser and thus dropping him onto the spikes. This feels amazing and makes the whole thing worthwhile.
Liu Kang: "I'm doing it! I'm actually doing it!!"Once five of your opponents have been beaten and one unfortunate soul has been thrown on the spikes, you will enter what the tournament spectators lovingly call 'The Padding':
- First the Mirror Match! You must fight an identical copy of yourself for unknown reasons. Here the game is able to dispel the false belief you have built up, that you are playing with any degree of skill. The computer-controlled copy will demonstrate how you were supposed to be playing this whole time, until you either replicate his inhumanly-fast style or get lucky with the sweeps and uppercuts.
- Then you will face the first Endurance fight! Here you fight two of the other fighters back to back! This is, as you would imagine, twice as hard as what you've been doing so far. Time to up your game, chum.
- Twenty minutes later, you face another Endurance fight! Same as before. You might want to get a cup of coffee or something. Count youself lucky you're not playing this on an arcade in the mid 90's, feeding a limitless supply of 50ps into it just so that maybe you can get to the next round, which is...
- Another fucking Endurance fight. You have now fought everyone twice, including the guy you killed earlier. You may begin to question the alledged 'mortality' of the Kombat at this point.
5. Almost There! Except...
Once you defeat the Padding, you will notice that you are shaking, exhausted and sporting a healthy stubble. Well done: this is the mark of a true Mortal Kombat player! You are now ready for the two final challenges - Outworld's two greatest fighters! The battle to save all of mankind!
But never mind that shit - here comes GORO!
Just another day for Goro. Here he is, preparing to crucify Scorpion with nothing but his bare fists and the air. The bones belong to Chuck Norris.Goro is a half-man, half-dragon. Like Johnny Cage, he looks nothing at all like how you remember him or how he looked in the movie. He fights you outside a cave with glowing monster eyes peeping out from the darkness, and he is enormous and has four arms. You can't knock him over by uppercutting or sweeping, and he can kill you in three or four hits. Also, he growls constantly. Like, constantly. You grow to really resent that.
Goro's special moves include punching you so hard it kills you whilst growling, grabbing hold of you, growling and punching you multiple times and betting on whether you die on an even or odd number, throwing you so hard you lose consciousness and then punching you and growling, shooting a fireball which melts your flesh before it even hits you, jumping onto your head and stomping your body into a fine dust which he then sets sets fire to and stomps on all over again to put it out, and growling as he makes a sandwich out of your lungs, which he then serves to his giant, four-armed mates, who immediately punch the sandwich so hard it flies into outer space and burns up in the sun and then the sun explodes from the sheer force of the punch. Goro's salary is paid in 50ps.
This guy has been fighting Goro for less than a second, and already has no skin. This is a slow day for Goro, but don't worry - he's apparently about to bring about armageddon. The final stage is Shang Tsung himself. No-one knows who he is, because no-one has ever defeated Goro. It's rumoured that he may be the the old man you see in the background on some levels, but nobody knows or cares any more.
--
--
--
At this point, I would like to say that I'm only kidding. Mortal Kombat has a strange and amusing storyline and it's unbelievably hard when you reach the later stages, and Goro, but hey. It's an arcade game, what did I expect? And its a damn good arcade game, too. The moody, vaguely-Chinese-mythological setting and music are fun and atmospheric, the uppercuts feel great, the Pit Stage is wonderful and the fatalities, should you ever get them to work, make you feel on top of the world. This nostalgic classic does hold up, after all this time, even now that the novelty and controversy of the blood has worn off. And it was worth buying just to have another crack at Goro. Besides, the difficulty level helps to create the sense of doom and dark fantasy that this whole experience is built on.
Maybe if I try 'very easy' mode, eh?
I recommend the new release: Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection. Just... don't expect to win. Ripping people's heads off may be possible with practice.
And as I remember things, the second game was much better! I got MK2 and 3 as part of this deal, so I look forward to testing them too. In the mean time, remember...
YOUR BROTHER'S SOUL IS MINE!
Shouldn't it be the 'Mortal Kombat Arkade Kollektion?'
ReplyDeleteYou'd think so, wouldn't you! They're surprisingly inkonsistent though. ;)
ReplyDelete