Way back in the early 90’s the arcade fighter was really beginning to take flight. Street Fighter II was opening up the competition scene and in 1992 Fatal Fury secured the position of fighting games as the biggest genre of the time.
It was also during this time that the game developer Midway was looking to expand into the original games market. Development of MK as we knew it came from 2 guys; artist John Tobias, known for his work on like Smash T.V. Total Carnage and Programmer Ed Boon, Funhouse, Black Knight 2000, High Impact Football series.
“This would be one of the major selling points when Boon and Tobias began planning their first attempt at a fighter. While Atari’s Pit Fighter had already pulled off the idea successfully, Midway was working in the post-Street Fighter II era, and the rules had changed overnight. Mortal Kombat adopted many of the conventions popularized by Street Fighter, including blocking, projectiles, and special moves executed with controller motions.”
But it was style that set Mortal Kombat apart. Pulling elements from kung fu movies, '80s action flicks, and the over-the-top violence of the '70s exploitation era, the fighter was as dark as it got. It wasn't the most violent game ever -- Exidy's Chiller may still hold that title to this day -- but the pairing of lives actors and gallons of blood made people take notice. In fact, the studio did much to make the violence a selling point, adding "Fatality" moves that added nothing to the game play, but let you act out gory deaths on your defenseless, incapacitated foe. That cold-blooded brutality was precisely what made the title resonate when it was finally released in arcades. While many games don't achieve real notoriety until they reach consoles, the success of Mortal Kombat was simply too great to ignore. It seemed like every teenage boy in the country was playing the game -- much to the dismay of the media.
“Unlike DOOM, which came under fire as a result of the Columbine massacre, there really was no tragedy to bolster the claims that Mortal Kombat had some kind of negative impact on the youth, but the story, like the game itself, was sensational enough to sell. There was something unsettling about such a game being left out in the open of arcades, available to anyone that had a quarter to play. How could parents protect their children from this perverse pastime?
Konsole Kontroversy
The controversy in the media served only to fuel the game's popularity in arcades, and by the time the game was set to launch on the SEGA Genesis and Super Nintendo, it had reached critical mass. Even though the game was virtually ubiquitous in arcades across the country, parents were calling for the home versions to be censored. Attempts to censor the game in arcades had resulted in sharply decreased profits, however. The public demanded blood.
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The launch of MK on ‘Mortal Monday’ Sept 13th 1993 was backed up in America with a 10 million dollar advertising campaign, Unprecedented at the time, the gamble paid off. Acclaimed stocked 2 million copies of Genesis games in stores across the country, which all but sold out in the first few weeks. Kids wanted the blood and gore, and lets not forget, controversy! MK had them all by the bucket load.The game was a hit, more so than anyone, even Ed Boon and.. Had expected. The fans were demanding a sequel
“According to Ed Boon, their goal for the sequel was to double everything they had done in the first game. That meant they were under tremendous pressure to create a massive amount of content.”
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