Retro Corner: Super Nintendo Mortal Kombat
Published August 22, 2007
The Game
It's infamous. It was Mortal Monday, the day the arcade smash Mortal Kombat came home, replete with controversy and gamers frothing at the mouth. They loaded their cartridges, inputted ABACABBA, and there was Mortal Kombat.
At least, that's what you did if you owned a Genesis. Super Nintendo owners had Mortal Kombat, but they didn't have the version they wanted. That version was censored, infamously toned down to include sweat instead of blood. Fatalities were reworked to be less intense, and even Scorpion became polite when stabbing his foes in the chest with his spear. His special move call became "Come Here!" instead of the far more popular "Get Over Here!"
That wasn't the only problem though. Super Nintendo fans were plagued by inconsistent controls, though they did manage to see a strong version of the game graphically. Sprites are large, full of color, and the animation is superb in comparison to the arcade game. Audio also packs a heavier impact, with clean voice samples that simply crushed the Genesis port.
The Present
If anything, it shows the original Mortal Kombat wasn't especially deep or involving. Fans weren't willing to deal with the lack of gore, and moved on. Now, it's even more apparent that this shoddy port was hardly the focus of Acclaim's attention.
The first time a special move comes off a second later than it should or Liu Kang just stands there instead of performing his special, it's infuriating. You'll need to prepare for that happen quite often. This is a sluggish translation, arguably even more so than trying to run the PC version on a keyboard and ran slowly even on decent hardware at the time.
If you're looking for a Mortal Kombat fix today, you'll find yourself looking elsewhere, whether on the Genesis, slow loading Sega CD, or even a recently released Plug and Play. Even on the Game Gear or Master System you'll find yourself pulling off specials and the original fatalities.
Facts and Notables
While it was more than likely Sonic the Hedgehog that turned the 16-bit wars in Sega's favor, censoring Mortal Kombat and taking the "family friendly" approach definitely played a significant role. Perrin Kaplan had this to say to Steven Kent in an issue of Electronic Games from 1994:
"We lost $10 million in software sales. There is no way to estimate the lost hardware sales from people who decided to buy a Genesis to play the game."
Matt Paprocki is the former reviews editor for Digital Press. The deep game collection, which spans nearly 30 systems and 2,000 games, lines his walls for research purposes. Matt strives to bring credibility to video game journalism, and to aid the industry in becoming respected with all forms of entertainment media. He currently freelances for GameArgus.com and MultiPlayerGames.com.
- Retro Corner: Super Nintendo Mortal Kombat
- Published: August 22, 2007
- Type: Review
- Section: Gaming
- Filed Under: Gaming: Retro
- Part of a feature: Retro Corner
- Writer: Matt Paprocki
- Matt Paprocki's BC Writer page
- Matt Paprocki's personal site
- Spread the Word
- Like this article?
- Email this
Save to del.icio.us
Comments on this articleComments
Matt you poor bastard. The Gameboy version? So much lost respect.
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/67666)
Ah yes, the good old days of early MK.
I didn't get the first MK until Christmas of '93, when I asked for a Genesis (partially to play the good version of MK... and to get the Sonic games).
I already had SNES, but heard about the let down that was that version of MK.
The Genesis one was definately where it was at in terms of the violence factor, even despite SNES's graphical advantage.
I did eventually get the SNES version cheap from a friend of mine when he traded in his SNES towards the purchase of the original Playstation.
I got it mainly for the heck of it and to try out some Game Genie codes on it. I highly recommend using the Game Genie code to always fight Goro on SNES. It simply replaced whoever you should be fighting with Goro, and you can even do the Fatalities on him (though I think doing Kano's or Johnny Cage's will cause the game to freeze). It's really goofy, but fun.
I eventually rented the Sega CD version of MK at one point. In many ways the game was the best of both worlds... the graphics were better than Genesis, and it retained the blood. Though the loading made the game almost unbearable. Fighting Shang Tsung was a royal pain in the butt. You may recall other disc versions of the MK games having issues with having to load when Shang Tsung morphs... but not like this. Rather then having to load, and then having him morph all at once, it would basically stop to load after every frame or two of morphing animation, so it would have to do like 4 or 5 loads (maybe more... I haven't played it in years) in order to complete on transformation. It sucked!
The SNES version of MK2 was definately where it was at though for that game. Even the later 32X and Saturn versions were pretty crappy by comparison. I don't think a better port of that ever came out for console systems prior to the release of Midway Arcade Treasures 2 for the last generation of systems.
I miss the old days of Mortal Kombat.