Recently, I went waltzing down memory lane and was reading up on some my favorite, old (Mortal Kombat Trilogy back, not Mortal Kombat 4 forward) MK warriors. In doing this, I got the bug to play the games again so I picked up a copy of Mortal Kombat Trilogy on the PS1.

Unfrortunately, I was reminded that some things need to stay buried in the past despite the fondness we once had for them.

I can't seem to shake my post-MK4 opinion that these games suck anymore, or suck unless you have a human opponent to play against. It's funny how in MKI the computer AI is non-existent and then in MK2 and MK3+ the AI is litterally bat-sh!t insane.

Again, I will alaways have a soft spot for the characters like old skull face (Scorpion), my favorite plain-lace underdog Stryker, and the purple Prince-influenced Rain, but these games leave a lot to be desired 10+years later.

Asked when I was in sixth grade MK would have beat out Street Fighter no contest; now its the other way around.

Street Fighter was always the predominant fighter of choice around these parts.  I naturally took an interest at the peak of its popularity (I played a mean Mileena back in the day), but the MK series always felt more like window-dressing posers than games actually meant for true, competitive play.  I mean, pulling off a Fatality or Friendship is nowhere near as gratifying as a well-timed Shoryuken KO.  Floaty gameplay, needlessly complex joystick movements, and the notoriously cheap AI for single play sessions did it no favors, either.

The best thing to have come out of Mortal Kombat, though, was this line from the first movie.  Lambert, you're a god.  A literal god:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNv1cmI0zwc

Sorry to disappoint you, Ashley, but the Mortal Kombat games have been pretty much ass from day one.
Although I did spend some time with the PC version of MK1, and MK2 could be kind of enjoyable when it wasn't being insanely cheap, all of these games are seriously boring and dumb.

The biggest problem is that every fighter is exactly the same as any other. Each character only has 1 move that sets him apart from the rest, all kicks and punches are exactly the same, it's LAZY beyond belief.

The series lives off of its gore entertainment value, and everyone knows it.

I need to replay MKII on the SNES, because I don't recall that version being as cheap as the PSN version, but really the Mortal Kombat phenomenon was helped more by Capcom than from the longevity of competitive gameplay as Angela describes.  As Capcom dwelled with what appeared to be rehashes of the same game (SFII, SFIICE, SFIIT, SSFII, SSFIIT, or however it went), Midway quietly released its MK revisions but fulfilled with an actual sequel going from MK to MK2.  I agree with Amazingu, the series' popularity pulled from its gore as well as its controversy (oh, idiot Lieberman, how are you still around today), though I felt the first two were fun enough despite their novelty.  I lost interest with what I felt was the disappointing MK3, barely cared for MK4 (again the novelty but in 3D!), and hated all the 3D MKs to follow (with the exception of MKvsDC, because I never played it).

Though I'll be honest, I do intend on renting the new Mortal Kombat, because nothing pairs better with novelty than nostalgia.

Completely unrelated to Mortal Kombat, I always cringe when people fail to use the word "anymore" properly.  I don't understand why this seems to be such a common mistake.

Anyways, I'm with Amazingu on this one.  Mortal Kombat has always sucked, and the only reason the games succeeded was due to the novelty of the gore at the time.  I recall losing interest around the time MK3 rolled around.

(Edited to fix my own damn typo.  How embarrassing.)

Seconded. Like I want to say this sounds as bad as a double negative. But it's not.

Also no Mortal Kombat game has come anywhere near the popularity of Street Fighter. It's pretty much crap. I played MKII back in the day as Kitana simply because it was available, though.

MKI grabbed my attention with its digitized graphics, which were way beyond anything I'd seen at that time.  I devoted a decent amount of time to the MKII arcade unit, again for the graphics and also for the hidden goodies and small semblance of a story.

I lost interest at MKIII as the characters were too silly for my tastes and the graphics past their prime.  Then once the graphics went to 3D and I outgrew the gore factor there was really no point to the series anymore (it amuses me to hear Ed Boon still talk enthusiastically about the latter).

And no, "anymore" really shouldn't be used that way. A "these days" or "nowadays" would fit in nicely.

My wife uses 'anymore' incorrectly. Drives me bananas. Off-topic though...

Like Adam, MK2 impressed me. I loved the look, especially some of the character designs. While the play system was simple, many of the special moves were plain cool. I would have probably enjoyed the fatalities but they were a ridiculous memory exercise that I didn't really take part in. I have more important things to remember than fatality input codes, like where I put my keys or what day it is. That's also why I never got into Killer Instinct and then MK3 with it's preset combos and, to a large extent, the Virtua Fighter and Tekken series).

But I liked the general mythos, until all the characters sort of got this Batman and Robin facemask feel and I felt the design plummeted and it all got complicated. Never stuck with it in 3D - I couldn't even say what those games are like. The series never would have survived with the digitised graphics and yet, without them, it was sort of nothing for me.

I enjoyed the movie too.

I liked Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks, because I could play co-op with my brother. There was always a lack of cooperative two-player games like that. However, I tried playing it solo later on and quickly lost interest.

True, but I can still remember most fatalities to this day and can still pull 'em off flawlessly.

Agreed. MKSM is a ridiculously fun co-op experience.

Mortal Kombat died when they replaced Ho-Sung Pak with that other guy. I wasn't a fan of the new Sonya, either. MK3 in general looked much worse to me than MKII, really. The character sprites were quite a bit smaller, and the new character designs were just lame. What were they thinking with Kabal?

The upcoming reboot does admittedly look fun to play. The 3D games were far too slow, so it's nice to see the game return to a faster-paced system.

Interesting....

http://www.trmk.org/news/13089/mortal_k … pment.html

I feel like I'm in the 90s again and I'm loving it. Why UMK3 instead of MKT, though? Then again, perhaps they're going the Street Fighter Alpha Anthology route and will have a hidden mode where you can mix and match settings.

If they're going to the effort of recapturing the characters, I'd love to see more frames of animation. I'm not sure how feasible that would be since it would require changing the game's code, and even Capcom didn't go to the trouble for SF II HD.

I'm sorry, I won't get it unless they rewrite the code; something have got to be done about the freaking CPU AI.

Spent my lunch break watching part of the Gametrailers special feature Fatality Fridays -- collections of every fatality featured in all of the Mortal Kombat games.

Made it up to Episode III, and I'd forgotten how absurdly hilarious some of the ones in Mortal Kombat III were.  Liu Kang having the MKI arcade cabinet fall on his victim?  The enlarged Jax boot stomp?  Sub-Zero's eye gouge that turns the screen completely black as seen by the victim's point of view? 

Smoke's all-conclusive world destroying mines take the cake.

Please stop bumping this terrible grammatical atrocity

Why are you always so mean anymore?

You've known me for like 11 years, you can't tell me there was ever a period where I was "nice". Amicable, perhaps.

Quoth the raven, "anymore".