Together Retro: Mortal Kombat Trilogy

[noiseredux]

[CD AGES]

LOL!
Used to be a ninja guy myself up until the release of MK2 with the debut of the 2nd Shaolin monk, Kung Lao. He's been my main ever since. I've always liked his design, plus he's perhaps one of the earlier Dive kick tech characters which I enjoy using in fighting games to this day.

[ExedExes]

In various experiments I tried today all over the MK spectrum, I find that I can't do the one cool thing in this series well enough or even fast enough - the fatalities. Even with move lists in front of me, you only get 3 seconds per game to pull them off, it seems. At least UMK on the DS is a bit more forgiving, and the moves are always displayed on the second screen.

[CD AGES]

In various experiments I tried today all over the MK spectrum, I find that I can't do the one cool thing in this series well enough or even fast enough - the fatalities. Even with move lists in front of me, you only get 3 seconds per game to pull them off, it seems. At least UMK on the DS is a bit more forgiving, and the moves are always displayed on the second screen.

Have you tried in MK1? They feel real simple to do in that one.

[BogusMeatFactory]

In various experiments I tried today all over the MK spectrum, I find that I can't do the one cool thing in this series well enough or even fast enough - the fatalities. Even with move lists in front of me, you only get 3 seconds per game to pull them off, it seems. At least UMK on the DS is a bit more forgiving, and the moves are always displayed on the second screen.

You should play the Game.com version, because it is the same button combo for every character!

In all seriousness, I am loving everyone's Mortal Kombat stories. Hearing about this game and rushing to the Arcades, or having clandestine fight clubs away from parents was part of what made this game series so special when it came out.

For me, I was introduced to the series on the Sega Genesis. I was a big arcade kid growing up and never saw a Mortal Kombat arcade cabinet in the nearby arcade until Mortal Kombat 4, so having it on the console was where it was at for me.

We rented the original game from our library and would bring it over to our cousin's house to play. We would play winner like in the arcade days and it drove people wild, because I was always locked in to play. My history with fighting games as a kid was steeped in pain. I would win all of the time and being the youngest of three brothers made my victories all the more painful. Imagine being 7 and 9 years older then your little brother and having him pulverize you in every fighting game you had. They would stoop to trickery like unplugging my controller, turning the TV off, covering my eyes and tickling me to try to win.

Sometimes it did lead to physical violence as Genesis controllers were ricocheted off my head and controller cables firmly entrenched in my throat. Those were the days.

With Mortal Kombat, it was different. I made a rule when playing that game that I would win without using a single special move as incentive to get my brothers to play with me and they took the bait and I still would win. I remember having the manual included with the game and we would read the notes etched in the manual from players who rented it previously. Fatalities, were like mystical runes of power, revered and glowing with destructive energy. We loved the first and second in the series and from there it slowly tapered off.

To be honest, I very much preferred the 3D titles that came out after 4. I found them to be a lot of fun, but really the highlight of the series is the more recent versions. They really combined the ease of play that the 3D titles had, with the traditional trappings of the 2D games. It really does cater to a broader range of skill levels and they are excellent.

I will be playing Trilogy and trying my darnedest to beat the game with as many characters as possible.

As for who I played as... hmmm. While I tend to play as everyone, I always preferred Scorpion. It is so weird to see these color-swapped ninjas and how they really had their own unique style of play. It really made you look past the fact that they were visually almost identical. Few games could pull that off now a days that is for sure.

GET OVER HERE! ....AND GIVE ME A HUG!

[Cronozilla]

Friends would hate when I played as Cyrax ... which I did all the time, because his moves are really easy to pull off and he's got a devastating 7 hit combo that is hilariously easy to use. (Tap HP and HK simultaneously while tapping back) It was usually Cyrax, Liu Kang, or Sub-Zero. All instigate anger when playing against friends. I used to start every match with Liu Kang's bicycle kick.

I think Sektor is a cooler character, though. (Even though these guys were Pallet-Swap-Ninja 3.0. I remember in an EGM where they were making fun of it by showing all the upcoming Ninja variants, there was like brick ninja and burnt sienna ninja.)

I always thought Kabal was awesome, but I still have no idea how to use him. I actually thought a lot of the new characters introduced in MK3 were seriously awesome ... I just never figured out how to use them very well. I do have that GameFAN MK3 guide, I might bust it out.

[foxhound1022]

It's cool how everyone had so many varied experiences with the series growing up.

I was always a Raiden guy, but when MK 2 brought Baraka, he became a new favorite, then Kabal in MK 3.

[alienjesus]

In MK2 my character choices were always Reptile, Mileena or Kitana. In 3 I liked Sindel, Cyrax and Sector. I liked Shang Tsung a lot in both.


I played these games a lot as a kid, when I was like 7-10, especially MK2. Nowadays I just can't go back to them. The game controls are really clunky and the AI is too hard for me to enjoy myself.

I won't be joining in this month, but you all have fun!

[Ack]

I was always a Scorpion/Ermac man myself, though I have at times ventured into Kung Lao or Kabal territory.

[Nemoide]

I might as well share my nostalgic reminiscing...
Like others, I was a Mortal Kombat fanatic as a kid. It had everything I wanted in a fighting game: supernatural ninjas and over-the-top blood/gore.
I first saw the game in a 7-11 when I was little and thinking Goro looked like the coolest guy possible. But my mom would never let me play it.
A while later, I got MK for Game Gear, the only system I had, and played the hell out of it. Other kids had the Game Boy version and would take that to school, but even though I couldn't play Game Gear with anyone else (I did have another friend with Game Gear who eventually got MK... but neither of us had a link cable), I knew the GG version was way better than GB.

Later, I'd go to a friend's house who had (or at least rented on multiple occasions) Mortal Kombat II for Genesis. The game was AWESOME. It had another ninja (I know Reptile was in MK 1 but since I only really knew the GG version I wasn't aware of him until later), it had crazier fatalities (along with babalities, friendships, etc.) and with this game I experienced the great URBAN LEGEND RUMOR MILL AROUND MORTAL KOMBAT. Surely I'm not the only one who heard stories about secret Nudality finishing moves? You'd play as Mileena or Kitana or found a secret way to get Sonya playable and do this SUPER SECRET SPECIAL MOVE and they'd take their clothes off. You could maybe play as them naked during regular fights if you do it right.
The game had so much craziness (Johnny Cage punches people in the balls and signs autographs for them) that to my child-mind the Nudality seemed plausible. Obviously it never actually existed but I feel like so many people would talk about it that it's part of the game's lore in my mind.

Around the time Mortal Kombat 3 came out in arcades, I finally got a Sega Genesis and not long after that a Sega CD and 32X (both were at clearance prices). I managed to get Mortal Kombat for Sega CD from a comic book store that sold used games. It might not be the best version of the game but compared to the Game Gear version, it totally blew me away. Then I got Mortal Kombat II for 32X and played a TON of that; I remember many childhood sleepovers involving staying up past midnight playing KMII. I didn't actually own MK3 for a number of years afterwards, eventually getting Ultimate MK3 for Saturn and regular MK3 for Genesis - I had rented UMK3 for Saturn before owning it (and FINALLY played the arcade version) but never really got into it the way I did the first two.

The movies also deserve a mention IMO! I felt like the first one totally lived up to what an MK movie could be and I loved it lots as a kid. Even as a kid, I didn't like the second one. But I remember renting the second one during a birthday sleepover when I must have been turning 12 and I think that was a time when I was down to only one real friend (the one who owned the Game Gear: he didn't like the second movie either).
There was also a pretty bad direct-to-video animated thing: even as a kid I thought it was kind of weak but, since it was Mortal Kombat, I convinced myself it was worth watching multiple times.

As far as playing the games, I played as a decent number of characters: in the first one, I mostly liked Liu Kang, Scorpion, Sub Zero, Kano, and Raiden. In the second one, I'd mostly play as all of them along with Mileena and Baraka. I think I beat the game as every character... I really spent a lot of time playing those two games! Although I think I used to crank the difficulty down to "easy" a lot of the times...

I still have some nostalgic fondness for the series, but it's no longer something I'd say I'm a fan of. As I've gotten older I've learned that Street Fighter II really was the better game, even though it didn't have a guy with a cyborg eye who could tear out a ninja's heart and (maybe?) take a bite out of it. My attempts to revisit the series as an adult have never been that enjoyable. I'd be open to replaying them if I had someone else physically next to me wanting to play, or if I could find an actual arcade cabinet, but I don't see myself actually participating in this month's TR, beyond rambling nostalgia-heavy posts like this one.