The Ultimate Guide to Mortal Kombat/ Games, Stories, Facts, Secrets
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! Copyright © 2017 MakeUseOf. All Rights Reserved ®. ! The Ultimate Guide to Mortal Kombat: Games, Stories, Facts, Secrets Written by Dann Albright Published October 2017. Read the original article here: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/mortal-kombat-facts-secrets/ This ebook is the intellectual property of MakeUseOf. It must only be published in its original form. Using parts or republishing altered parts of this ebook is prohibited without permission from MakeUseOf.com. Copyright © 2017 MakeUseOf. All Rights Reserved ®. ! Table of contents 1. Mortal Kombat Was Developed in 10 Months 4 2. Johnny Cage Is Based on Jean-Claude Van Damme 5 3. Scorpion Is the King of Kombat 6 4. Goro Was Made of Clay 8 5. Ermac Started as a Misunderstanding 9 6. Mortal Kombat Didn’t Invent the Fatality 10 7. The ESRB Was Founded in Response to MK 12 8. Not Every MK Game Is a Fighting Game 13 9. There Are 8 Minigames in the Mortal Kombat Series 15 10. The MK Mythology Is Astonishingly Deep 16 11. Mortal Kombat X References the MK Movie 17 12. The “Toasty!” Guy Is Mortal Kombat’s Sound Designer 18 13. The Two Movies Were Only the Beginning 19 14. Mortal Kombat Has Been in Print 20 15. A New Band Was Formed to Create the Soundtrack 21 An Immortal Tale for the Ages 22 Copyright © 2017 MakeUseOf. All Rights Reserved ®. ! Mortal Kombat is one of the most successful and long-running video game series of all time. With 25 games, two major movies, a slew of comic books, and even a Kombat Kon, the series has as much cultural impact as any other game out there — and maybe more. Even the most video game-illiterate recognize the name Mortal Kombat, and it’s hard to imagine that any serious gamer hasn’t played at least a couple entries in the series. But with over two decades of history, there’s a lot more going on than flying kicks and scantily-clad ninjas. Here are 15 fascinating facts, secrets, and stories about the MK universe. Some concern the team behind the games, some cover the games themselves, and others give insight into the cultural importance of Mortal Kombat. Check them out, and let us know your favorite trivia in the comments below! 1. Mortal Kombat Was Developed in 10 Months It’s hard to remember a time when games didn’t take huge teams years to develop. But a team of four developed the first MK game in 10 months. At the core of the team were John Tobias and Ed Boon. Tobias, a former aspiring comic book artist, created the art for arcade hits Smash TV and Total Carnage. In addition to creating Mortal Kombat‘s signature art style, he wrote the story that would become central to the MK mythos. Watch the Youtube video here: John Tobias talks about the early digitization techniques. Ed Boon got his start as a pinball game programmer before moving into video games. His lead programming on Mortal Kombat helped make the game what it is today. He’s still closely involved in the series, and stands as the creative director of many recent MK games. And he’s provided voice acting and motion capture for numerous characters. Artist John Vogel and sound designer Dan Forden completed the development team. Copyright © 2017 MakeUseOf. All Rights Reserved ®. ! 2. Johnny Cage Is Based on Jean-Claude Van Damme If you look closely at early characters, you can see some interesting influences. Take Johnny Cage, for example. Boon and Tobias originally wanted to digitize Jean-Claude Van Damme for their game. Unfortunately, he was already in talks with another studio for a different fighting game. His influence is still there, though. In fact, Cage is almost a carbon copy of Van Damme in Bloodsport. He shares his initials, his profession, and one of his signature moves: Watch the Youtube video here: Van Dammes Split punch Cage isn’t the only character inspired by Hollywood. Both Raiden and Shang Tsung took cues from Big Trouble in Little China. The influences are clear in this clip of the Three Storms and Lo Pan: Copyright © 2017 MakeUseOf. All Rights Reserved ®. ! Watch the Youtube video here: Big Trouble in Little China (1/5) Movie CLIP - The Three Storms (1986) It’s unclear whether Boon and Tobias used Big Trouble directly (though it seems quite likely). But they’ve mentioned movies of the period as important influences. The films Zu Warriors and The Swordsman, both directed by Tsui Hark, also helped form the eventual design of the games. 3. Scorpion Is the King of Kombat Depending on who you count, there are between 75 and 85 Mortal Kombat characters. That’s a far cry from the original seven in the first game. Of course, Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade, Kano, Raiden, Scorpion, and Sub-Zero have remained as mainstays in the series. But new characters like Reptile, Kitana, Noob Saibot, Kenshi, and Baraka have become fan favorites as well. Back in 2013, Dorkly ran a survey to uncover the most popular MK fighter. The survey received over 900,000 votes. Here’s the final ranking: 1. Scorpion 2. Sub Zero II 3. Raiden 4. Sub Zero I 5. Noob Saibot 6. Liu Kang 7. Toasty Guy (Dan Forden) 8. Kung Lao 9. Shao Kahn Copyright © 2017 MakeUseOf. All Rights Reserved ®. ! 10. Reptile 11. Smoke 12. Kitana 13. Johnny Cage 14. Cyrax (my own long-time favorite) 15. Ermac 16. Baraka 17. Goro 18. Sonya Blade 19. Sektor 20. Mileena Unsurprisingly, Scorpion reigns above the rest. He’s one of the most iconic video game characters of all time. His rope-dart move (along with the accompanying “GET OVER HERE!”) is similarly famous. In recent games, the Mortal Kombat series has seen some fun guest appearances, starting with Kratos from God of War (itself an impressively violent video game). He showed up in the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita versions of Mortal Kombat (2011). After that, the Xenomorph from Alien, the Predator, Freddy Krueger, Friday the 13th‘s Jason Voorhees, and Leatherface of Texas Chainsaw Massacre have all made appearances. Copyright © 2017 MakeUseOf. All Rights Reserved ®. ! Though you could argue that Rain, first seen in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was the first notable guest. He is Purple Rain personified (Ed Boon is a huge Prince fan). 4. Goro Was Made of Clay One aspect that set Mortal Kombat apart from other early-1990s fighting games was its use of digitized sprites. Midway hired real actors to portray the fighters, and captured video frames for each move in their arsenal. They used resulting images to create each character in the game. Except for Goro. He (and Kintaro, in Mortal Kombat II) was created as a clay model. Then the developers used stop-motion graphics to capture the four-armed behemoth’s movements. Midway used this type of digitization for the first three Mortal Kombat games before it switched to 3D graphics. The real-life actors will always hold a special place in diehard fans’ hearts, though. Back in 2014, ten actors from the first three games got together, and even after all those years they’re still Kombat-ready. Copyright © 2017 MakeUseOf. All Rights Reserved ®. ! 5. Ermac Started as a Misunderstanding Although he first appeared in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, people buzzed about Ermac much earlier. The red-clad ninja, in fact, was even named after the misunderstanding that spawned these rumors. The first Mortal Kombat arcade games had a secret menu known as the “game audits menu.” This gave statistics about the games, including how many Goro, Shang Tsung, and Reptile fights had taken place. Under these counts was an entry named “ERMACS.” Players who accessed this menu understandably thought that ERMACS was another hidden character. Little did they know that “ermac” is developer-speak for “error macros,” which help debug crashes. But the rumor was so persistent that Ermac did finally make an appearance. And he’s been a consistent character ever since. Copyright © 2017 MakeUseOf. All Rights Reserved ®. ! Image Credit: MortalKombatWarehouse Skarlet, who made a single appearance in Mortal Kombat (2011), also began life as a rumored secret character. 6. Mortal Kombat Didn’t Invent the Fatality Perhaps the MK series’ most defining move is the Fatality. But while Mortal Kombat certainly immortalized the Fatality, another game had done it first. Sort of. Most fighting games end in an opponent getting knocked unconscious. But in 1987’s Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior, a well-timed strike to the head would result in a decapitation and an early end to the fight: Copyright © 2017 MakeUseOf. All Rights Reserved ®. ! Watch the Youtube video here: Barbarian - Amiga version decapitation Of course, Mortal Kombat‘s Fatalities brought the idea to another level entirely. Even in the first game, Fatalities are remarkably brutal. Sub-Zero’s spine rip has lived on as one of the most fondly remembered: Watch the Youtube video here: Sub-Zero's Spine Rip Fatality Copyright © 2017 MakeUseOf. All Rights Reserved ®. ! Since then, though, Fatalities have increased in number, variation, and brutality. We’ve seen Animalities, where fighters turn into animals. Stage Fatalities, where a character dies from some part of the background. Babalities, where the opponent is turned into an infant version of their character. Even Friendships, where the winner allows the loser to live. Today’s Fatalities, like those of Mortal Kombat X, bring the brutality to an entirely different level. They are, frankly, stunning in how graphic, creative, and disgusting they are. Warning: The video below contains extremely graphic violence.