The Wonder Years 5.29.08: Week 57 - Mortal Kombat II

Posted by Owain J. Brimfield on 05.29.2008

Time to finish him! Or her.

Welcome to the column where all gamers of a certain age come to wallow in 16-bit nostalgia. I'm your host, Owain J. Brimfield, and I'll be discussing some of the hidden gems and instant classics of gaming's golden era. Some of these games may crop up in downloadable form at some point, some may be consigned to the annals of history. Either way, they're worth tracking down if you missed them first time round, or replaying if you were lucky enough to catch them. Let's take a trip to:

MORTAL KOMBAT II

(Midway, Genesis & Super NES, 1993)

Everyone knows Mortal Kombat, right? Possibly the most notorious game franchise of all time (although the Grand Theft Auto series looks set to be the natural heir to that particular throne), it's a fighting game saga rooted in brutality and violence at the expense of any in-depth gameplay system, although it manages to retain a rather knowing tongue in its cheek. Although there have been plenty of MK games, from the laudable (MK4) to the laughable (MK Mythologies: Sub Zero), the series reached its peak during the 16-bit days with its successful arcade ports. Opinion is often divided amongst gamers as to which particular entry in the series was the finest, with some pointing to the infamous original, and others opting for the seriously detailed Ultimate MK3, but perhaps the most popular in terms of the sheer number of people who have played it is MKII. Many were the gamers who found this title their entry point to the Kombat franchise, and it even became popular enough at my school to instigate some bitter arguments between the Sega kids, who adopted it as their own, and the Nintendo kids, who preferred Street Fighter. Needless to say, this soon spawned some particularly poor simulated fights in the schoolyard.

The game retains much of the original's ridiculous and fantastical storyline, with the added twist that the Mortal Kombat tournament is now taking place in the Outworld, the evil supernatural realm of warlord Shao Kahn and his lackey sorcerer Shang Tsung (you know, the guy that Robin Chou beat up in the movie) - the kicker, of course, is that should an Outworld combatant win the tournament then something or other will become unbalanced and Earth as we know it is doomed. Doooomed! Although the franchise has gone on, remarkably for a beat 'em up series, to develop a progressive and almost cohesive overarching plot, at the time MKII seemed like it was doing little other than the stereotypical fighter's trick of allowing for a multitude of random freaky combatants. For some reason, Midway decided not to incorporate the return of two of the original game's best-loved characters, Kano and Goro (although the latter does feature in a brief cameo just to reiterate that he's dead), and instead focus on introducing eight or so new outlandish characters to better suit the Outworld setting. Thankfully, although digitized actors were used to portray the characters, Christopher Lambert wasn't anywhere near the project.

Gameplay wise, MKII is far from sophisticated, being several steps away from the relatively detailed fighting mechanics that would appear two or three games down the line. Characters have very little to distinguish themselves apart from their appearance and handful of special moves and finishers; every characteristic apart from those is shared, from speed and agility to the basic movesets of kicks and punches. When a big black chap with metal arms punches with exactly the same effect, and jumps with the same grace, as a spandex-wearing white chick, you know you've strayed way too far away from the concept of "depth". Of course, MK is all about the finishers, which were developed in a big way here. Each character had a minimum of two fatalities, usually involving tearing the opponent's insides out in as graphic a fashion as possible, and stage-specific finishers also come into play, featuring such delightful treats as acid pits and beds of spikes. Should you find yourself in competition with a more delicate gamer, though, the option is there for you to deliver a "babality", turning your foe into a gurning little moppet, or even, perish the thought, a "friendship", which sees your two previous mortal nemeses hold hands and skip into the sunset while sucking on lollipops. Okay, it's not that egregiously saccharine, but it's not far off. The game also saw a return to the round-based victory system more typical of beat 'em ups.

As with all good Genesis/SNES ports, the two different console versions have slightly different tricks to offer from a technical standpoint. The Super NES port, coded by Sculpture, features some particularly blurry visuals at times but manages to rip the music and sound effects directly out of the arcade original. The Genesis version meanwhile, developed by Probe, features some smoother and faster gameplay at the expense of color depth and some re-composed music tracks. Whichever console you owned, of course, would happily remain home to the superior version in your mind, regardless of what your friends might say. The graphics themselves are pleasingly retro if you've been conditioned to the Soul Caliburs and Smash Bros. of this world, with the gory special effects looking so amusingly dated that you have to wonder what any of the fuss was about in the first place. Naturally, plenty of newspapers and "concerned citizens" proved quick to denounced the Kombat titles without ever bothering to play them, but the violence did lend the series an undeniable cult quality, which made us fledgling gamers feel slightly dirty, albeit in a good way. Kind of like eating an entire jar of jam with your fingers.

The game itself is pretty widespread these days, with ports of the arcade original having reached every format from the Amiga (believe it or not) to the PSP. It's also easily available via download on the PlayStation network, where it's a bargain at $5 (I think, my currency conversion math isn't entirely up to scratch) and features the addition of online play. It's also available as part of Midway's Arcade Treasures 2, although the emulation there is pretty poor. The original 16-bit cartridges are a little bit harder to come by (there's one shop on eBay selling a brand new boxed copy for somewhere in the region of $160), but it's so easy to come by elsewhere that there's not much point in that for all but the most ardent collectors. MKII is a top way of relieving a little stress and has a redoubtable retro charm - and if you've ever wanted to knock a man's head clean off his shoulders with your bare hands ala Jason in Friday the 13th Part VIII, this has to be your first port of call.

Mortal Kombat II trivia

• Perhaps surprisingly given the furor over the original game's level of violence, the game went uncensored by Nintendo for the SNES release, although the character sprites are apparently a lot more blurry than the Genesis version.
  
• The arcade version had a hidden secret whereby playing somewhere in the region of 250 consecutive vs. battles would unlock a version of Pong. Seems like a lot of effort if you ask me, you can play it for free on the interweb these days.
  
• Continuing the series' grand tradition of using simple palette swaps to introduce new characters, you can find that both Sub Zero and Scorpion, as well as hidden character Smoke, all in fact look identical apart from their color schemes. Lazy work, boys.
  

The Videosphere

Let's take a look at this week's video highlight of Mortal Kombat II in action. Everyone knows that by far the most interesting aspect of the MK series for casual gamers was the gruesome fatalities, so here's an unedited look at every fatality from the game (yes, even the cameo by Goro).




Reactions and interactions

Posted by: Suggestion

"Weren't you the guy who always posted what he was enjoying during the week? If so, bring that back... I liked looking into your suggestions (and sometimes laughing at them ;))"

I was, and indeed, I still am. Sadly the last few weeks have been very hectic here, so I've barely had the free time to do anything recreational. However, fear not, for this week sees the return of:


General indulgences

Every week in this section I'll endeavor to provide you, the faithful readers, with a fascinating insight into the various forms of entertainment currently dominating my spare time.

This week, I have been mostly enjoying:

Championship Manager 99/00, a game which has been sitting on my shelf untouched for years, until I remembered I had an old save game file backed up on a CD somewhere, so I loaded it up and haven't been able to leave the game alone since - I think I've played through two whole seasons in the past few days. Horrendously active.

Iron Maiden by, yes, you guessed it. One of the few albums by the British legends that I didn't actually own, and while it's undeniably a lot rougher around the edges than most of their other records, it still rocks a big fat one.

Little Miss Sunshine... oh no, that's right, I haven't watched it yet, despite having it out on rental for three weeks. Surely indicative of my complete laziness of late.

and this cool free beaker I got at work. Hey, I'm a simple man, it made me happy, and means I can take it along to the pub in summer months and not have to use those bloody plastic pint cups.


And finally…

Thanks for reading folks; as always, reader feedback and suggestions are welcome. Next week in "The Wonder Years" - it's nothing to do with Highlander, unfortunately. Until then - keep it real, keep it retro.