In 1992, an attempt to salvage a licensed game starring Jean-Claude Van Damme built by just four people arrived in arcades. Nobody had any expectations for it. Its arrival was barely noted by the gaming press beyond the usual rewriting of press releases and mentions that, hey, Midway has a new fighting game out. As it arrived in arcades and bowling alleys, Mortal Kombat arguably changed both how video games were seen and the direction of video games as an art form, to the degree that you can make a case it’s one of, if not the, most influential video game ever made.
It Infuriated Just About Everybody
Mortal Kombat marked, really for the first time, video games meaningfully entering the national conversation as an art form. It seems strange to say because the game itself is such a collection of what teenage boys loved in 1992, it’s actually kind of painful to look at now. Did we really love ninjas and hair metal that much?
Nonetheless, the fatalities and general gore started a moral panic that was faintly ridiculous at the time and now seems like an outright waste of time. Consider that there were Senate hearings about a game where you could do this:
In truth, even some of the team thought they overdid it. But the controversy only bolstered Midway’s profits, and it triggered a chase for a more “mature” audience that one can argue is still happening. Speaking of which…
It’s Arguably The First Modern ‘Western’ Game
In 1992, video games were pretty much defined by Nintendo, who did a lot of the heavy lifting when it came to saving the video game industry. But to do it, they had to clamp down hard on developers, creating a rigorous process for third-party games that required a “seal of quality” on the cover. Over time, this calcified into a family-friendly image the company wasn’t willing to shake, and rival companies weren’t willing to stray very far from.
Similarly, the video game crash of the early ’80s had decimated developers in the West, and mostly by default, the majority of video games were developed in Japan and sold to Japanese consumers first, Americans second. It was a system that worked well, as the sales numbers proved, and there was no reason to change it. Even Midway, the company behind Mortal Kombat, mostly had found success in arcades in the early ’80s adapting Japanese games instead of developing their own.
Mortal Kombat was the first to shake this up in any meaningful way. The graphics were as “photorealistic” as was possible at the time, ditching the anime stylings of many games. The control scheme was, almost accidentally, designed to be faster to use and simpler to understand, instead of just copying Street Fighter II. And, of course, it was basically the fantasy of every teenage boy at the time; a cheap, gory action flick taking place inside a series of Iron Maiden album covers. There was, quite literally, nothing else like it.
It Was Accessible
The most important aspect, though was that Mortal Kombat was easy to play. You didn’t need a console, you didn’t need a PC, all you needed was to go to the local bowling alley and put in a quarter. It’s estimated the game grossed more than half a billion dollars between 1992 and 2002, only topped by the sequel a year later.
Mortal Kombat showed that there could be more to gaming than cute platformers and manga-inspired fighters. It shifted the conversation about video games from whether they were expensive toys for children to whether they were works of art with merit to be enjoyed by adults or shameless exploitation of a teenager’s need for spectacle. It showed that Japanese developers didn’t have a stranglehold on making a breakout hit.
While the game has faded, the conversations it started and the gold rush it kicked off are still with us, and had a profound influence on the direction of gaming as an art form. So, let’s give Mortal Kombat credit for what it is: a game that changed everything.