The History of Mortal Kombat - 2021 remastered arcade console documentary

[Music] in 1992 a fighting game was released that not only revolutionized the industry but also turned it on its head this fighting game while violent nature still had the playability to back it up to the characters to the sights to the sounds this was the perfect storm when it came to fighting games no i'm not talking about xena warrior princess the talisman of fate i'm talking about the 1992 ultra violent bloody classic mortal kombat what's the connection between this game and jean-claude van damme what was johnny cage actor daniel pozzina's major dispute with arcade manufacturer midway so get over here we are going to discuss the history of mortal kombat the year is 1991 and street fighter 2 was sweeping the nation with its unique style of gameplay arcade manufacturer midway had not only noticed the insane popularity but also those big giant dollar signs they had ordered their team to create a combat fighting game within a year the initial concept of mortal kombat came from midway's new young artist john tobias who was given a ninja themed project to work on along with lifelong friends daniel bozena and richard davizio who would go on to portray johnny cage and kano there were a group of friends that collected comic books played dungeons and dragons and practiced martial arts midway almost immediately rejected their concept during development of this game midway was approached to make a license game based on the movie universal soldier which starred dolph lundgren and jean-claude van damme john tobias initial idea was for a fighting game featuring digitized characters similar to the atari game pit fighter he had wanted to create a more serious hard-edged fighting game with elements of the movies bloodsport enter the dragon and a little bit of big trouble in little china thrown in for good measure the game was also heavily inspired by japanese mythology the original design team consisted of only four people ed boon was a programmer along with artists john tobias john vogel and sound designer mr toasty himself dan forden they wanted to do something different from street fighter so they had experimented with digitized characters as opposed to pixel art they all wanted something with a harder edge which would appeal to the male demographic they felt that the digitized characters would represent realistic violence and the addition of blood was just the cherry on top they ended up borrowing ed boone's father's video camera to film some test footage after seeing an animation of daniel giving a character an uppercut they were excited beyond relief because they knew they were on the right track midway had wanted the arcade game to be completed in 12 months but the team rallied together and it went from concept to finished arcade game in just under 10. mortal kombat sees seven martial artists join a secret tournament where the freedom of their realm is at stake the seven participants are sub-zero scorpion raiden [Music] blue kang kano johnny cage and sonia rather than mimic street fighter's six button controls they went with four attack buttons and a specific button for blocking for the first time since street fighter 2 was released there was an actual contender strong enough to knock it from its top spot although street fighter remained on top mortal kombat was a close second thanks to the unique gameplay in the excessive blood and gore another element that has become crucial to the series is the juggling if you are a skilled enough player you could pummel your opponent while they are helpless in midair this was discovered early on by accident in the testing but after seeing the positive response from fans it was expanded upon the fatality started out as a counter to the dizzy effect found in street fighter 2. ed boon liked the concept of a free hit but hated that it occurred in the middle of the match so they decided to put it at the end the original idea was for fatalities to only be used to get shang soon they decided to let you do it against your opponent instead and everybody loved it the higher-ups at midway never expected anyone to discover the fatalities since the game was released before the internet was mainstream secrets of the game spread through playgrounds to arcades to magazines clearly one of the main selling points that attracted the male demographic was all of the blood and gore thankfully there was a solid game engine underneath that kept the players playing long after the shock value wore off after defeating all of the other fighters in the game you have to fight a few 2-1-1 matches if you can make it through these in one piece you get to fight the sub boss goro goro is extremely overpowered and certain moves you attempt to pull off will not work on him goro is a stop-motion animatronic whose main inspiration comes from the movies clash of the titans [Music] and jason and the argonauts [Music] rumor has it that the stop-motion puppet used in the filming of this movie was actually based on my wife this would explain why i started to turn to stone when i first met her the grand master of the tournament and also the big nasty of the game is shang tsung originally known as shang lao he has the ability to morph into any fighter it will even with this ability he is not as difficult as goro once you defeat him you will get a personalized ending depending on the fighter that you picked [Music] the seven arenas that you compete in our warrior shrine [Music] palace gates [Music] goro's lair shang tsung's courtyard [Music] and the pit speaking of the pitch the very first stage fatality was introduced here in which you can uppercut your opponent off the bridge and down onto the spikes below the fatalities are not the only secret in the game every sixth match on the pit stage you will notice silhouettes flying in front of the moon if you can defeat your opponent twice without taking any damage and perform a fatality all without using the block button you get the chance to fight reptile the character was initially conceived as a cooler version of scorpion but was not made a playable character until mortal kombat 2. at the bottom of the pit stage if you look closely you can see the heads of ed boon and john tobias impaled on the spikes contrary to popular belief this was not the first gory one-on-one fighting game that distinction would have to go to palace software's barbarian the ultimate warrior i had this game on my amiga and i was pretty shocked when i saw the head decapitation move for the first time it also had the distinction of having one fine honey on the cover by the way her name is maria whittaker hubba hubba after every third battle the tester might mini-game occurs this consists of your players standing above one of five blocks of increasing difficulty you have to hammer multiple buttons until the gauge next to your character reaches a certain point you then have to press the block button to strike you start off on wood then move up to stone steel ruby and diamond initially they were trying to get the license for the movie bloodsport and wanted van damme to star in the game a deal could not be reached but instead they paid tribute to the action star in the form of johnny cage jean claude and johnny cage both have the same initials you can even do the dreaded nut punch of doom which is similar to what van damme did in the movie bloodsport as i mentioned the game was inspired by the movie big trouble in little china with the character of raiden being a direct rip-off of the character lightning right down to the type of hat that he wears in 1993 democratic senators joe lieberman and herb cole led hearings on video game violence two specific games were cited in the hearings the first one was night trap which featured 90 minutes of full motion digitized video with scenes that were considered sexually suggestive and exploitive the other game was mortal kombat with its realistic digitized price one the ability to use gruesome fatalities to defeat your opponent this led to the formation of a self-regulated ratings board called the entertainment software reading board or the esrb now i don't know about you but after i played a few rounds of mortal kombat back in the early 90s i always felt like ripping somebody spying out or at the very least ripping their heart out and holding it above my head johnny cage actor daniel pozzina was involved in a lawsuit with midway games he was paid 50 dollars per hour which does seem a bit low i was able to speak with him when making this video and he told me there was promise of more on the back end if the game was a big success of course it was an enormous success having sold over 1 000 arcade units when things got even worse was when you consider all the home ports that were released and that the actors did not receive any sort of royalties i was able to speak to richard d'vizio who played kano as well and he said that midway offered him a full mortal combat upright game at that time he declined but looking back he said he probably should have taken it they all received mild pay increases for mortal kombat 2 but again no royalties he ended up filing sued against midway games for unauthorized use of his image but the case was thrown out he did appear in full johnny cage attire promoting the competing arcade game bloodstorm which ended up paying him his entire mortal kombat 1 salary for only 45 minutes work thanks to the cutting room floor website some unused sprites from the game were uncovered there is a sequence where goro turns into stone which could be a dying animation johnny cage doing some sort of flip shang tsung having a laughing animation and even a sequence where shang tsung pulls out a sword and uses it apparently he was supposed to have a fatality where he decapitates his opponent there is a glitch in the game when playing as johnny cage when doing your fatality it is possible to punch multiple heads off your opponent you can accomplish this by doing the movement for his fatality very quickly after doing it the first time this led to the three-head punch fatality in mortal kombat 2 for the character according to ed boon all of the main characters are based on real characters from various sci-fi and martial arts movies kano has his infrared eye which is based on the terminator lou king bears the likeness of bruce lee and sonia is loosely based on martial artist cynthia rothrock midway was quick to cash in with a plethora of licensed items including comic books toys and cartoons sub-zero in 2005 jax pacific released a plug-and-play console for tvs everywhere the unit itself is actually the controller and for 20 dollars it feels pretty good there is an option to plug a second controller in for a head-to-head play this is not running on maim or some other emulator but a straight-up conversion of the arcade game so certain sacrifices had to be made there are hardly any background animations and no parallax scrolling the colors on screen have also been reduced a representative of the company said that the reason these cuts were made was so that the price of the game would not go above 20 dollars the graphics and animation though are still well done along with the sound effects the music has taken a drastic turn though although not quite queef worthy it's still not very good control wise it's very similar to the arcade game it has been emulated in maim though if you want to check it out in 2011 the mortal kombat arcade collection was released on playstation network xbox live and also steam this is a compilation of the original three mortal kombat arcade games all running under emulation so basically they are arcade perfect the coolest licensed item that i've seen has to be from manufacturer arcade 1up who would have thought that in this day and age you could walk into walmart and walk out with the miniature arcade cabinet of mortal kombat for under 300 this includes the original mortal kombat mortal kombat 2 and mortal kombat 3. these are all running under emulation so if it's the arcade experience you're looking for then this is it i haven't been able to test one of these myself but it does look fantastic they said it couldn't be done they said it wasn't possible but in 1995 we finally got a good video game movie adaptation after seeing the lackluster success of movies such as super mario brothers and street fighter 2 mortal kombat was released into theaters following the storyline for the video game the movie features all of the characters from the original arcade game the movie features a lot of action but the problem is new line cinema wanted a pg-13 rating so most of the blood and almost all of the fatalities are not included still though it's a good little action flick and leaps and bounds above their previous video game adaptation they also released a sequel titled mortal kombat annihilation which was absolutely stinky [Music] you're alive too bad you will die as long as the portal remains open your world becomes my world a brand new reboot titled mortal kombat was unleashed into theaters in 2021 instead of the first two movies pg-13 rating this was rated r due to the excessive blood and violence you know what that means we finally get fatalities on the big screen the critics absolutely hated this but if you were a mortal combat fan this was pretty much everything you could ask for according to the director he envisioned this as the first part of a trilogy i absolutely loved this movie and can't wait for the sequel this made a boat ton of money so i'm sure we will be getting one kano's biggest claim to fame has to be his memorable cameo in the movie wreck-it ralph although the character is listed as cyborg in the credits there was never any doubt that this was everybody's favorite one-eyed assassin especially after he ripped out that zombie's heart a claim snatched up the home ports and set aside september 13 1993 as the release date it was dubbed mortal monday and led to this classic tv commercial [Music] let's get this party started with the super nintendo version developed by sculpture software this version certainly looks the part with nice large detailed sprites and excellent sound the problem comes with the controls the same combos from the arcade no longer work you also cannot counter air attacks but the biggest sin of them all is the lack of blood and fatalities nintendo was a family-friendly company which meant that extreme violence or any kind of blood were forbidden instead of the buckets of blood that were spilled in the arcade game we get loads and loads of lovely sweat i haven't seen this much sweat since i was constipated and what about the fatalities you ask well first of all they had to be changed to finishing moves and not be called fatalities a few of them have been left unaltered but kano's big fatality excuse me i mean finishing move izzy reaches into your chest and pulls out absolutely nothing you can't get much more anti-climactic than that johnny cage no longer punches your head off but instead you get the big foot wiggle of doom nintendo finally got the message when the sales figures for this game came in and when mortal kombat 2 came out the following year it was complete and uncensored as far as mortal kombat 1 from the bottom of my heart nintendo this is just for you [Music] the sega master system is up next since sega was catering to the older male demographic they decided to let the blood flow like wine on their version of mortal kombat while the graphics look very good for an effect machine the animation is atrocious i've seen better animation in a flipbook also there are only two stages available and the game is missing kano the controls are pretty slippery as well the bottom line is the game is just not fun to play [Music] the game boy version is up next and honestly it's pretty bad first off the animation is so slow i thought i was watching a video on youtube that was buffering once again we only have two stages but instead of missing kano we're missing johnny cage the audio is super queefy and after listening to it for about 30 minutes i wanted to stab my eardrums with a screwdriver the controls are even worse than the master system on the plus side there is a cheat that lets you play as gorill which is the only home version this is available in once again the fun factor is missing thanks to its stiff choppy gameplay [Music] the sega genesis version is up next this was developed by probe software and it really shows thanks to a blood code this game was uncensored the problem though lies with the sound and graphics it's missing a lot of the voice samples and the graphics are very grainy compared to the super nintendo while it does lack in the audio and visual department it's more than made up in the gameplay you can get by with a standard three button controller but it's best to pick up the six button pad the controls are spot on despite the limited animation it does feel like you are playing the arcade game which is what counts [Music] up next is the sega game gear version in still shots it looks very similar to its big brother the sega master system version but once it starts to move it all falls apart while the sprites are large and detailed the scrolling and animation are absolutely terrible i think i had three seizures just from playing this game the audio was typical bloops and bleeps and the gameplay isn't much better once again the fun fun was nowhere to be found found when playing this version [Music] the amiga version is up next and despite only having one fire button it does play pretty good this is a part of the genesis version but the graphics do look a bit cleaner the speed of the gameplay is nice along with the animation plus better sound and music makes this a very good conversion somehow they were able to squeeze everything onto two floppies the ms-dos port is probably the best in my opinion this was ported over using the source code from the arcade game so this is as close as you're going to get in terms of graphics animation sound effects and playability for those without six button pads back in the day you were able to use the keyboard which i honestly preferred there were two versions for ms-dos with the first release being on three and a half inch floppies while this version features excellent sound effects the music is only average at best the absolute best port of the game would be the cd-rom version the major edition of cd audio puts this version in a class by itself [Music] the sega cd version is very similar to the genesis but it does have a couple of nice extras first off the animation is just a bit smoother but otherwise graphically it's pretty much the same as the genesis version the music and sound effects are straight from the arcade game and sound great it plays just as good as the genesis version and no blood code is required the downside though was the loading times especially when fighting against shang tsung since the game's inception there have been countless sequels and spin-offs with no signs of slowing down anytime soon the game was a cultural phenomenon and it helped establish the rating system that we use today with over 1 000 arcade cabinets manufactured i'm sure you'll run across one at some point give it a shot if you haven't already you'll be glad you did if you enjoy this video be sure to like share comment and subscribe also if you would like to support me on patreon please click the link below thank you so much for watching

Channel: PatmanQC - History of arcade game documentaries

Views: 28,156

Keywords: NES, arcade, SNES, amputee, Xbox, PlayStation, Sony, Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft, retro, video, gamesAtari, Colecovision, Intellivision, Jaguar, entertainment, system, Game, Boy, Genesis, Mega, drive, CD, X68000, Amstrad, spectrum, MSX, 2600, 5200, 7800, 400, 800, 1200, PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, 360, one, switch, GameCube, wii, wii-u, Ed Boone, John Tobias, streetfighter 2, street fighter 2, Dan FordEN, toasty, reptile, subzero, scorpion, Midway, raIden, Kano, PRobe, Sculptured software, Pacific, ShanG TSung, nIGHT TRAP, ESRB, Daniel PeSina

Id: sdaXDK-StNY

Length: 28min 8sec (1688 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021