After several masterpieces of the eighties ( Defender 1980, Gauntlet 1985, Rampage 1986) The American slot machine industry ceased to exist. Teenagers from the United States and other countries carried sacrificial tokens to licensed Japanese machines with Double Dragon , Space Harrier And Final Fight , And since March 1991, the only superhite has remained in the game salons – Street Fighter 2 from Capcom.
But in 1992, the Chicago company Midway Urgently released the American response sf2. First Mortal Kombat It was developed for six months by a team of four (including programmer Ed Boon and Commissioner John Tobias) and turned out to be not only the first American fighting!.
The first approximation
Although formally, the same rules were observed in MK as in SF2 (a couple of oaks is thrown into each other with fireballs against an exotic background), the approach to the topic among American developers turned out to be completely different. Firstly, the heroes were not drawn, but digitized from the videos of living masters of eastern martial arts-even if all their movements were constrained and similar to each other, the action still reminded the real film. Secondly, if in the Japanese standard Ken was just filling the face of a blade, then the fighters asserted the spine to each other in MK.
It is difficult to say that more influenced fragile teenage minds – the very fact of bloody bullying over the defeated opponent (the word “fatalics” quickly entered everyday life) or the fact that pexels in multi -colored kimono, but practically living people were engaged in tearing spine and hearts. In any case, MK liked the young players, caused indignation among their parents and led to the creation of the American rating association ESRB … Consonic versions were badly affected by censorship: to turn on the blood on the Mega Drive, it was necessary to know a special code, and on SNES instead of blood from fighters flew Gray sweat and fatalics were modestly called finish bonuses. But on the PC, the first MK came out in all arcade splendor.
It was impossible to play Mortal Kombat from the keyboard, but there was nothing wrong with that – an unbalanced, unfinished and clumsy fighting game was absolutely incompetent even in the original version for a slot machine. Behind the mighty advertising campaign (with high-budget clips and the release of the Techno Album of The Immortals of the same name), delights about the four-handed boss of Goros and the opportunity to blow up the opponent’s head to such trifles somehow did not pay attention.
Their name was "fatalics"
Intellectual attraction
Mortal Kombat 2 – This is again an advertising campaign worth $ 10 million, again a hype about sadistic fatalities (now it was possible to tear off the enemy’s hands or blow it inside and admire it to the intestinal levels). But for the first and last time in the history of the series, a magnificent fighting game was hidden behind all this shock, verified to the last movement, as in the best Japanese patterns.
Fatalii remained the main attraction – but, waiting for the chance to put the enemy on the spikes on the ceiling or to cut it into two neat halves with a hat with steel fields, you can fight very well in MK2. Even on PC. The port published in 1995, again, was no different from the version for slot machines-in the CD version it was possible to listen to the original arcade soundtrack!
In the SF2 and other Japanese fighting winging, the block was placed tilt the handle back, and the supervisors demanded fast thickets of the handle by a quarter or third of the turn or to a complete revolution. It was not easy to repel the enemy’s attack and quickly switching to a response supervision on the cross -car of the gamepad – what can we say about the keyboard with its unfortunate arrows ..
In the Mortal Kombat series, the unit was suspended by a separate button, and for fatalities did not require special accuracy and speed of movements. The usual super supervision were so elementary (backward, kick) that after fifteen minutes of training, the newcomer began to perform Shadow Kick no worse than any veteran. In the second part, this combat mechanics was finally able to normally realize-they solved all the issues of speed and priority of strokes, figured out captures, blocks and hooks. The management turned out so elementary that the victory in MK2 did not depend on the ability to handle the gamepad, but exclusively from tactics.
This is the most intellectual 2D-fiting in the history of video games. While players in SF2 are feverishly knocking on handles, players in MK2 are sitting in the block, scratching chins and reflecting on the next move. With certain skills, you can throw the enemy into the air and remove all the energy to him before he has time to touch the earth (although it is much more difficult to win the battle with juggling than in the first MK), so the price of the first error is very high.
Threemer destroys the world
Already in the next series – Mortal Kombat 3 (1995) – the developers broke all this carefully constructed match structure, adding a “run” button to the game and a compos system. Any battle could be won, stupidly running up to the enemy and conducting a throw (from this, they could not get rid of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 , nor in Mortal Kombat Trilogy ). Superders were replaced by memorization and a set of meaningless combo for 10-15 movements. So from the most democratic fighting game MK turned into one of the most unfair.
In 1997, he came out Mortal Kombat 4 – quite accurate UMK3 remake in the training grounds. On slot machines and consoles, MK4 was lost against the backdrop of Black Magic Casino real large 3D fitings ( Tekken , Virtua Fighter ), but on the devoid of all this PC was the second most popular game of the series. In 1999, Tobias left Midway, and in 2002 in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance Bun demonstrated the complete misunderstanding of the laws of three -dimensional fighting plays: with three combat styles for each character Deadly Alliance, by non -gravity could argue with the first part of Mk!
Further three -dimensional MK (with the exception of the ingenious Beat ’Em Up Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks ) were so terrible that in 2000s from the franchise there were only vague memories-and even then not about games, but about ridiculous films, comics and animated series 1990-. IN Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe -The swan song by the bankrupt Midway-the proud sub-ziro, Liu Kan and Shang Tsun acted as harmless mascots, who did not spill a drop of superhero blood for the entire game. And finally, the ninth Mortal Kombat, in which Bun promises to return the game to the game and three -dimensional battle with two -dimensional laws (as it will be – read in the heading "first hand").
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The new series will probably turn out better than Mortal Kombat: Depation (2004) or Mortal Kombat: Armageeddon (2006),-Ed Boon should have learn something in all these years. Mortal Kombat still has a chance to take a vacant place for the first normal American 3D-fiting.
But in our time, the three-dimensionality in the fighting wings is just an illusion, and the developers make desperate efforts to recreate the first games with which they once started in the training grounds … So the maximum that we can get from the Buna is a three-dimensional remake of Mortal Kombat 2.
What it was? The only good Mortal Kombat series. The only successful fighting game from an American developer. The only successful game for slot machines from an American developer. The only fighting game perfectly adapted for playing PC. Well, just – the only.