The History of Mortal Kombat II - Arcade console documentary

happy little games the era of the one-on-one fighter the genre really started to flourish with titles such as 1984's karate champ [Music] it translated well into the home computer market with games such as way of the exploding fist and international karate it wasn't until the early 1990s when a fighting game would appear that would revolutionize the industry its sequel would give new meaning to the term bestseller and would go on to become a worldwide smash hit no i'm not talking about super strip fighter 2 i'm talking about mortal kombat 2 by midway this game would take everything that made the first one so good and expand upon it in every way possible why was this the last mortal kombat game that johnny cage actor daniel pozzina appeared in was it really possible to attack a baby in this game so get over here and pay attention this is the history of mortal kombat 2. the year is 1992 when john tobias and ed boone are riding higher in their mega successful arcade game mortal kombat they had not envisioned a sequel but were instead looking to pursue a star wars game when midway's upper management insisted that a follow-up would be next on the agenda for the five of you who are living under a rock and don't know mortal kombat was released in the arcades in 1992 according to johnny cage actor daniel pozzina there were a group of friends that collected comic books played dungeons and dragons and practiced martial arts ed boone had told daniel bozena about his idea for a game and borrowed his father's video camera to film some test footage after seeing an animation of daniel giving a character an uppercut he was excited beyond belief and knew he was on the right track along with a handful of other people including artist john tobias and sound designer dan forden the game went from concept to finished product in just 10 months 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 not only did the game break box office records with its innovative gameplay and bone crushing fatalities but the home releases also spawned mortal monday which was september 13 1993 the date in which the games were launched the game along with night trap spawned the creation of the esrb ratings board when it came time to start work on the sequel all of their video capture equipment were given nice upgrades including a twenty thousand dollar sony camera when designing the highly anticipated sequel they went with the simplest approach which was to take everything the players had loved about the first game but expand upon it including ideas that didn't make it into the first entry the game ran on the midway t-unit arcade board but this time around they were able to produce a much more vibrant color palette and also included parallax scrolling the character sprites are also larger with smoother animation and more detail in the background there is a lot more blood with it even dripping down from the letters of fatality the sound was also upgraded from the previous yamaha chip to the new and improved dcs sound system which to be honest sounds absolutely fantastic great care was given to the gameplay with ed boone himself saying he wanted it to have a good feel he even simulated gravity into the game there were several characters that did not make the final cut including striker who would go on to appear in mortal kombat 3. a lot of characters went through refinements during the development process with the biggest changes happening to baraka initially instead of knives he had hook swords and a mask he would pull down to reveal his jagged teeth the retractable claws came from wolverine they had constructed a large mask but it was disproportionate to the actor so they bought a nosferatu mask and lee press-on nails were used for the teeth kentaro started out as a regular playable character and was based on a japanese mythological creature they were unable to construct the costumes so they changed it to a relative of goro and kept the tiger stripes and the name another character that was in the game early on was a female kickboxer named kathy long but was dropped due to time constraints the character of jax was supposed to appear in mortal kombat 1 but since there weren't any female characters in the game they decided to replace him with sonia he initially had a yellow outfit but it concealed too much of the actor's impressive physique so he went shirtless raiden had a staff for use in the game but it had to be dropped due to low memory constraints everyone in outworld was initially a part of baraka's race which meant everybody had gnashing teeth including shao khan this is also why when molina pulls down her mask she has the same gnarly teeth in certain shots of the game johnny cage had the word atomics written on his pants which is an actual brand this was later edited out due to copyright issues but if you do shang sung soul steal on the character you can still make it out various other moves were also cut due to time constraints such as a spinning blade move for baraka and also a mid-air ice projectile for sub-zero mortal kombat 2 was released by midway in the arcades in 1993 as the story goes shang tsung's master xiao khan is having a hissy due to the invasion of earth realm being thwarted shang tsung begs his master to spare his life and convinces him to hold the tournament in out world where the people from earth realm will be at a disadvantage he agrees and to make sure all goals according to plan he restores shang tsung's youth so he can take part in the tournament as well instead of the standard eight fighters this game featured 12 with most of the cast returning except for kano and sonia two of the least picked characters from the first game the cast of the characters include liu kang johnny cage sub-zero scorpion raiden shang tsung and new fighters jax katana molina kung lao baraka and reptile who was a hidden character you could fight in the first game instead of only one fatality per character this time around each character were given two fatalities as well as introducing a more whimsical aspect of the game you can now perform babalities which will transform your opponent into a cute little crying diaper clad infant the last time i heard crying like this my wife found out they were out of butterscotch ice cream also if you are feeling just a tad bit friendly rather than rip off your opponent's head you can do something nice for them and perform a friendship move instead kung lao pulls a rabbit out of his hat johnny cage gives you an autographed picture and blows a kiss you could only perform these by using kicks the entire round instead of only one stage fatality there are three this time around including uppercutting your opponent onto spikes in the ceiling uppercutting them off the platform into a stone pit [Music] and finally uppercutting them into a pool of acid the gameplay itself was tightened up with juggling of your opponent also being expanded upon standard moves have had several changes including crouch punch low and high kicks have greater differentiation and roundhouse kicks are more powerful similar to an uppercut speaking of the uppercut it is much more useful thanks to its extended hitbox the gameplay itself is also just a little bit faster than the previous entry each fighter has more special moves this time around making for a much more varied gameplay experience now let's talk about the thing that really drew people in with the original modal combat and that would be the fatalities they are back in all their blood-filled glory and are a lot more violent this time around jax will rip his opponent's arms off kung lao will take his hat and slice his opponent right down the middle cutting them in two barraca will take his knife and decapitate his opponent all with blood bones and intestines as far as the eye can see even lou king has a second fatality where he turns into a dragon and bites his opponent in half it's good old-fashioned family-friendly entertainment and that is just the tip of the iceberg the single-player mode has had the endurance rounds removed which was always a pain in the butt in my opinion the difficulty of the game starts out rather low and then after the third or fourth match gets really hard really quick the bosses are quite a bit more difficult than goro and chang-sung from the first game the first boss you encounter is kentaro a distant relative of gorilla who was just a bit more savage with the ability to teleport and fire projectiles the big bad boss of the game is shao khan and he doesn't take any guff from anyone while he is beating your brains in with his fast attacks he is also taunting you with various one-liners in his booming deep voice there are personalized endings for each fighter which really helps flesh out the story thanks to the secret character of reptile from the first game fans knew what to expect in the second one and rumors began to fly about what was buried deep within the arcade game i can recall going through this at the time and printing out a 10-page document from news groups on usenet suggesting that characters had five or six different fatalities including one where sub-zero turns into a polar bear and needs his opponent although most of these rumors were completely false the polar bear one did make it into mortal kombat 3. as far as the secrets for this game goes there were three hidden characters that you could fight jade which is a green female ninja smoke a grey ninja and also noob cybot which is a shadow ninja noob cybot is actually boone and tobias built backwards i will leave a link in the description down below if you're curious how to get to these hidden fights occasionally when you uppercut somebody a face will pop up in the lower right hand corner and yelp this is sound designer dan forte the game of pong is also a tasty easter egg but to do so you have to win 250 bouts in a row i never bothered to do this because it was just way too hard to keep people looking for secrets in the operators menu of the game there is something called kano transformations which led people to believe it was possible to use shang tsung to transform into him this was just a red herring by the developers and he is not actually in the game the game went through four revisions before it was finalized the first version was essentially a public beta test with some of the fatalities not even included nor the endings version 2.1 added a lot of content and fixed some of the bugs but one that was left in was the ability to input more commands after a finishing move was done what this meant was after doing a bay valley for example you could freeze the baby uppercut the baby or if you were really sick chop the baby up with varaka's knives there wouldn't be any blood or gore and a lot of times it would just reset the machine but it was just funny to see that happen the final version was 3.1 which fixed all the bugs and added even more additional content this would be the last midway game that certain actors would appear in daniel posina who played johnny cage elizabeth malecki who played sonia dr philip on who played shang tsung and catalin zamiyar who played katana all filed a lawsuit against the company mr posina specifically was promised that if the first arcade game was a success that he would get some sort of bonus which was never clarified this only irritated mr presina even more when he saw that the home version sold approximately 6 million copies but he was still denied a bonus initially he had asked for an arcade game but was told they were only going to produce 250 units so he was denied he agreed to appear in the second game with the promise of a bonus if again the game was successful once again after the game was released he was denied mr bazina along with three other mortal combat actors sued midway nintendo and sega for 10 million dollars for misuse of their likeness but lost out on both court cases he would later appear in promotional material dressed in an outfit similar to johnny cage for the rival fighting game bloodstorm there was a lot of merchandise available including t-shirts figures comic books and yes even a tiger handheld lcd game the arcade game was a massive hit with home versions releasing the following year due to the lower than expected sales volume of the original censored mortal kombat on the super nes nintendo relaxed its guidelines and it let the blood flow like wine the hype was incredibly high and it created mortal friday which was september 3rd 1994 the incredible hype train was helped along by another fantastic mortal kombat commercial [Music] [Music] when the home versions were released in the first week alone it generated 50 million dollars and at the time was the world's best selling video game until being surpassed by donkey kong country later that year first up on our list of home releases is the sega genesis version none of the home versions required a blood code to be put in although there were warnings put on the box this was developed by probe software and it plays fantastic while the sprites are large the colors are very limited due to the sega genesis hardware with plenty of missing frames of animation audio-wise the music is very good but most of the voices are missing all of the content from the arcade game is included except that the endings do not have the personalized graphics to go along with it there is also an exclusive fatality called a fergality which is taken after former probe employee ferguson mcgovern you can use the standard three button controller but for the most authentic way to play you really need to use the six button pad and if you don't look like a spaz enough there is even support for the sega activator [Music] sticking with the sega side of things if you had the chance to own a 32x back in the day then you were treated to a really good version of mortal kombat the game is based off the genesis version but only much better the sprites are a little bit larger with a lot of the missing frames of animation put back in place the audio has been given a significant boost with most of the voice samples and bone crunching sound effects restored this version does reuse the genesis music which still sounds really good the gameplay feels much more fluid over the genesis version thanks to the missing frames of the animation being put back in place the arcade attract screens are also present but the ending screens reuse the graphics found in the opening segments oh round two fight now let's put our beer goggles on and take a look at the game boy conversion if you were pretending to be the too cool for school kid back in the day rather than the actual jerk bag you really were then this was the version for you this received high marks when it was released back in 1994 with reviews often citing it better than the first one well that's not too hard to pull off considering the first one looked like a pile of puke this one still has the low frame rate and is also missing four of the fighters there is no blood to be found and only a few fatalities made it over the start button is used to block so otherwise you only have two buttons for your fighters to use control wise it's only okay but the shopping frame rate and missing animation just cannot be forgiven especially when they are much better fighters on the system such as fatal fury or king of the fighters the sega master system conversion is based on the game boy with the same roster except this time around we have a little bit of color we also have the inclusion of cantaro which was something the game boy version was lacking a little bit of color was added back in which really helps the mortal kombat vibe the speed of this version is also slightly slower than his game boy counterpart on the plus side the controls are decent but once again you only have two buttons to use so sacrifices had to be made the game gear version is very similar to this one only with a slightly more zoomed in screen the super nintendo version is up next and my oh my what a beauty it is similar to the sega genesis version this one shipped with a mature sticker on the box meaning no silly blood code was required i can recall going to the summer ces back in 1994 and seeing this run for the first time and i was completely blown away by how good it was even at this early stage i must have stood in claims booth for at least two hours playing it the graphics are phenomenal with the characters price being shrunk down ever so slightly but they are animated perfectly the sound effects and voices are spot-on with most of them making the transition over from the arcade original the controls are absolutely perfect with everything from the arcade game bundled into this humble cartridge i've seen some people say that the sega genesis version was rated slightly behind this one and whoever said that was out of their mind the japanese version did have some censorship though with the blood being turned to green and whenever a fatality is performed the screen turns to black and white as if you're watching some 1950s horror movie this version is fantastic although it's not the best one we are looking at the amiga version is clearly based on the sega genesis port although with much better music and more voice samples the animation is on par with the sega genesis version although the sprites appear to be a little bit more detailed although the blood and fatalities are present and even some of the hidden characters made it over as well control wise well you've got two options a one button controller or a two button controller and that is it now even though this is on a computer and you have an entire keyboard at your disposal since it is based on the sega genesis version there is no option to use it as you can imagine squeezing five buttons onto a one button pad does not work out very well similar to my wife squeezing into a size 14 jeans something else that you have to contend with is that the game shipped on three floppies meaning that there is an excessive amount of disc swapping and loading times this was a fairly competent version back in the day but they were much better versions to be played friendship the absolute best home version is the ms-dos version although the resolution is slightly lower from the arcade game the graphics otherwise look identical the animation is perfect and so is the gameplay speed none of the voices or sound effects are missing and they all sound great you do have the option of playing with the six button pad or the keyboard i always prefer playing it on the keyboard and it felt having spent hundreds of hours with the arcade original the msrs version felt most like the arcade game at home the game shipped in two variations the one on a set of floppies with chiptune music and the other on cd with red book audio obviously the cd version is much more superior everything from the arcade game has been included from the attract screens to each personalized ending with all of the graphics it is literally almost as good as having the actual arcade game at home [Music] up next on the agenda is the sega version graphically the game looks very close to the arcade original except for slightly smaller character sprites the animation is nice and smooth and it looks great the sound effects are nice and large and there's even remix music for your enjoyment although i would have preferred the original tunes the controls feel good especially with the excellent sega saturn pad it's not all gravy though as there are loading times when you pull off a fatality or when shang tsung morphs if you can get past these little inconsistencies it's an excellent version [Music] we might as well talk about the playstation version since graphically it's very close to the sega saturn port in still shots they look to be almost exactly the same the problem comes with the longer than usual load times not even when shang sung morphs or when fatalities are performed but when you're just doing certain special moves the game will pause and load that is just unbelievable sound wise it's almost exactly like the sega saturn version this was released only in japan and i can see why [Music] the game was released as part of midway arcade treasures 2 which was released in 2003 for playstation 2 xbox and gamecube in 2006 a version of this compilation was released for windows entitled midway arcade treasures deluxe edition in 2011 the mortal kombat arcade collection was released for playstation 3 xbox 360 and windows this started life as an hd remake of the early mortal kombat games featuring redone character sprites backgrounds and more all in high definition but for unknown reasons it was cancelled and changed to just a regular collection of mortal kombat 1 mortal kombat 2 and ultimate mortal kombat 3. the big addition to this collection was online play and achievements the absolute coolest piece of hardware that's been released for the home market has to be the mortal kombat arcade unit which was released by arcade 1up who would have thought 25 years ago you could walk into walmart and purchase one of these for under 300 the collection comes with the original mortal kombat mortal kombat 2 and ultimate mortal kombat 3. these are all running under emulation so these are essentially the arcade game at home this game was an absolute phenomenon when it was released both in the arcades and at home it was my absolute go-to arcade game and whenever i found it out in the wild i would have to play it no matter what in my opinion this is the best game in the series although they've come close it still has not been surpassed the controls the roster the blood the gore and just a little bit of humor makes this the perfect mortal combat game if you've never had a chance to beat your opponent within an inch of his life and then turn them into a whining sniveling little baby be sure and give it a shot you'll be glad you did i'd like to give a big shout out to daniel bazzina for taking the time to answer some of my questions thanks again daniel if you enjoyed this video be sure to like share comment and subscribe also if you'd like to support me on patreon please check the link below thanks for watching happy little games

Channel: PatmanQC - History of arcade game documentaries

Views: 266,285

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, Daniel PESINA, subzero, scorpion, GorO, kItana, Shang Tsung, BABality, Secrets, John Tobias, Dan ForDEN, toasty, arcade 1up, Shao Khan, fatality, Richard DIViZio, Ninja, outworld, SonYa, RaidEN, Johnny Cage

Id: w83ulLg6Xlg

Length: 30min 33sec (1833 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 07 2020