The first installment in the Mortal Kombat series takes place on a fictional island in Earthrealm, where a tournament is being held at Shang Tsung's Island, on which seven of its locations serve as stages in the game. The introduction to Mortal Kombat II explains that Shang Tsung was banished to Earthrealm 500 years ago and, with the help of the monstrous Goro, is able to seize control of the Mortal Kombat tournament in an attempt to doom the realm. For 500 years straight, Goro has been undefeated in the tournament, and now a new generation of warriors must challenge him.
Just like Street Fighter II, the game revolutionized the popularity of fighting games, which caused more and more fighting games to be released for many consoles, computers, and even Arcades, thanks to Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat. The gameplay is a typical fighter with some additional features thrown in it, like loads of blood and gore, to the point it caused a lot of controversy. No matter what you will do in order to see the blood and gore, you will have the ability to see the blood and gore if you will uppercut your opponent or perform the fatality.
What I really like is that the game uses digitized sprites based on real actors. Not to mention, they look like they were actually from real life, due to how great the sprites look. No matter which actor had a role for a character, the sprites will never be bad. Also, semi-realistic fighters, as they were all recorded on the camera. This is basically one of the fighting games where the characters were all recorded on the camera, thanks to their acting.
The story is very nice, even for a paper-thin plot, which gets more better and better in the next games of the Mortal Kombat series. And each character has a great ending that has 2 pictures of the character you played as and some info.
Once you beat your opponent in both rounds, you may make a cool finishing move called fatality, if made successful, you get more score for it. And for each port of the game, Scorpion, Sonya and Liu Kang's fatalities stay the same and were never modified. Also, Liu Kang's fatality isn't actually a fatality, but a non-lethal finishing move. However, making him the only character that doesn't kill his opponents is an interesting and creative concept. What's even better is the line "Finish him" became one of the most iconic lines in games, and it's very memorable, which would make you never want to forget that line ever again.
There is also a minigame called "Test Your Might", where players can get bonus points by breaking blocks of various materials by filling a meter past a certain point through rapid button presses. Each one of them gets more challenging. It also boots up every 3 fights. The controls, however, aren't always responsive, compared to the other games.
I do love the soundtrack, especially in the Arcade version. You would even want to get the soundtrack to your own head or simply listen to it for too long just to believe how good the soundtrack was composed.
This game sparked a trope of hidden boss characters in any fighting games that required to meet certain conditions in order to face the hidden boss character, starting with Reptile (whose name was "Scorpion" in the health bars) in this game. In the second game though, Reptile was one of the playable characters.
The PC version is the closest port to the Arcade version. It looks like it was actually the Arcade version, just with some stuff that tries to fit the PC standards, which are the graphics, music, fonts and more. It even had 2 versions, the floppy version, containing midi music, and the cd version, containing the original arcade music and more sounds.
The console versions, on the other hand, can be problematic:
- The SNES and Game Boy versions are very disastrous ports due to Nintendo's infamous family-friendly content policies, and the Tiger handheld versions are even worse.
- The Genesis/Mega Drive version, has worse graphics and sounds than the arcade version, and the blood is censored, with the Pit fatality being even turned off if you don’t use the blood code (A, B, A, C, A, B, B,)
- The Game Gear version doesn’t have Kano as a playable character. This can be caused because of the screen resolution of the Game Gear.
It is unfortunately responsible for spawning the creation of the ESRB, a rating organization that rates games in North America. This is their rating system:
- eC (Early Childhood), games only aimed at very young audiences and mainly have educational/edutainment/informational value. There is also an exclusive description to this rating: "Some adult assistance may be needed."
- E (Everyone), games that are intended for )almost) everyone to enjoy (equivalent to the MPAA's G rating and low PG rating).
- E10+ (Everyone 10+), games that are intended for (nearly) everyone to enjoy, but parental guidance is suggested for kids under the age of 10 (equivalent to the MPAA's high PG rating and low PG-13 rating, but that's pretty cheesy). This rating wasn't added till later.
- T (Teen), games that are recommended for those 13 or older and parental guidance is suggested for those under 13 (equivalent to the MPAA's high PG-13 rating, but that's pretty cheesy).
- M (Mature), games that players under 17 are not allowed to play...unless accompanied by a parent or adult guardian (equivalent to the MPAA's R rating).
- AO (Adults Only) is the rarest rating in the ESRB's system, this rating only permits adults (18+) to play them. There are only 22 games with this rating and most of them are made for the PC, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft will generally not allow any AO games on their systems due to their adult nature (equivalent to the MPAA's rare X/NC-17 rating). Sony and Microsoft, for example, do not publish games with such ratings. Ubisoft, however, has notably published some of the 22 games with such a rating.
I'm not saying that not everyone will enjoy this, but I still enjoy this game more or less. Highly recommend.