Retronauts - 627: Mortal Kombat 4

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

Digitized no more, Diamond Feit, Stuart Gipp, and David L. Craddock enter a new dimension as they podcast about Mortal Kombat 4. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This Weekend Retronauts, this is not a brutality. This is a podcast. Hello, welcome back to Retronauts and welcome back to another fist-poundingly intense episode of Retronauts. That's right, we're going back to The Well, because the series isn't over yet. We have more Mortal Kombat to talk about. And if we're talking about Mortal Kombat today, that means I'm joined by the same guests as last time. First of all, in the United Kingdom. Yes, hello, I'm Stuart Jett, and Shujinko is an idiot.

all right well thankfully he's not appearing in this game that's good news and in the united states i am david l cradoc i'm the author of long-lived mortal combat and seconded shujinko sucks okay wonderful and my name my name by the way is diamond fight and i'm a fresh cliff diver do not attempt this at home so what are we talking about this week we are talking about we're not talking about shi jinko i'm sorry i'm glad it's finally we agree he sucks but he's not here because we're talking about Mortal Kombat 4. That's right. One, two, three, four, the fourth Mortal Kombat, a very much, you know, a landmark title in certain ways, and that they had to do a lot of new things and also the end of an era because it was the final arcade release for Mortal Kombat. The series that began in the arcades would leave the arcades. But for now, let's get started and let's talk about, let's talk about Mortal Kombat for like the late 90s. Mortal Kombat, I think we can all. agree. Mortal Kombat, you know, we've already

recorded two episodes. We talked about the original Mortal Kombat Kombat 2. We talked about Mortal Kombat 3. We talked about Mortal Kombat trilogy, which was just, you know, an extra thing we did because we love it so much. So now, all those games are out. It's the late 90s, and I think we can all agree. Mortal Kombat, very much a big deal in the late 90s. Can we agree on this? Very popular? Yes.

Yes. Yes. All right. I mean, the 1995 movie, big hit, you know? It's 1970s, you know, if you could put yourself And you imagine it's 1997 right now, and there's a second movie coming out. Everyone's excited to see what that second movie's going to be. Can't wait to see it. Merchandise.

There's merchandise everywhere. You know, you've got all kinds of things for kids, for adults, there's comic books, there's cartoons. There is a live tour. There are actors going around the country, pretend to be moral combat characters, and punch and kick each other on stages. And let me tell you this. Let me tell you this.

I was shocked to learn this. Apparently, on that tour, Lexi Alexander, Future film director, director of Punisher Warzone, played Kitana on that live tour. I did not know that. I did not know that either. That's pretty badass. She is a martial artist. She is a martial artist, and she was out there playing katana in front of fascinated children, you know?

And then went on to make a pretty solid Punisher movie as well. Yes. Yes, I believe, if we can take a sidebar, Punisher Warzone, underrated. Let's say that right now. Underrated. It definitely captures something of the vibe that the comics had at the time, yes. It's probably the best Punisher movie.

But to be honest, that's not saying a huge amount, unfortunately. I also have to say, I find it kind of hilarious that the Mortal Kombat Live Tour was so popular with families, considering this is Mortal Kombat. I mean, no one was disembowed on stage, fortunately. But it's kind of like Sonic the Hedgehog. It started as this attitudinal alternative to Mario, and now it's like super popular with,

kids, and that's happened with Mortal Kombat, which is just a weird thing to me. Yes, well, I guess that they do have the advantage of a live tour doesn't require an ESRB rating, so you can just show up there and, you know, that's true. You promise, you say, hey, kids, welcome to this show. And then you show up there and you just start laying curse words on them, just spraying ketchup everywhere. I think the 90s kids, they all flocked to the taboo and the controversial, but the kids nowadays, the millennials, oh, dear.

Oh, they don't like any of it. Oh, no. Oh, yeah, with the TikToks. You can't be telling them on TikTok. You've got to unalive them on TikTok. You got to un-alive them on TikTok. I put it up my TikTok of pulling someone's heart out and then pulling the spine out. And it was banned and I was banned. And it wasn't fair as far as I'm concerned. The government's going to step out on this, I'm sure. It's ridiculous. But yeah, Mortal Kombat. Again, also, besides the arcade games, you've got home versions. Every arcade game has a home version. These home versions are all selling millions of copies. kept buying them, even, you know, at this point, you've got, you've got the cartridge-based, the 16-bit versions, you've got the disc-based 32-bit versions, you've got handheld versions, which don't even look good, but they're still making them. Someone's buying them. Someone's

buying them. I don't know who, but they're selling. One of my friends as a kid had Mortal Kombat on Game Gear, and I don't know why. I really don't understand that decision. I got to tell you, I had it on Game Boy first, and I'll tell you why, because that was the only platform I had that hosted Mortal Kombat when it came out. I thought, it's funny, my Mortal Kombat is this ladder where I started with Game Boy, went to Game Gear, full color blood code, my mind was blown. Then I went to Sega Genesis, and then I got it for DOS, which was nearly arcade-perfect. There's a term you don't hear very often anymore for obvious reasons.

But, yeah, I went up this ladder of Mortal Kombat tech and hardware and finally got to the PC versions. It was very helpful. I like that. It's like one of those ladders you choose at the beginning of, like, M.A.3 is going up from the Game Boy. I mean, from there, you really can't get it. any worse. So it's a great way to start, I think. So with all this going on, with all this happening, with everyone just excited and just they can't wait to get moral combat. People who make Mortal Kombat are excited to

make Mortal Kombat. We have a swerve, a surprise in the fall of 1997, because what we have is not Mortal Kombat 4. What we have is Mortal Kombat Mythologies Sub-Zero. We're going to take a little side. We're taking a detour here. We talked a little bit about this game. We went to talk about last time. Mortal Kombat Mythologies Sub-Zero. Now, Stuart, in your expert opinion, please describe what is Mortal Kombat Mythology Sub-Zero to the audience? Mortal Kombat Mythology Sub-Zero is an adventure game slash platformer with the model combat sort of fighting engine that puts you

in the shoes of Sub-Zero as he is deluded by the sorcerer Quanchi into doing things for him more or less in excellent FMV cutscenes which we'll get into is one of the most maligned games in the series and perhaps

of all time. If you look at like what's the worst game I've the top ten worst games list this one will usually come up I don't agree I think it's Okay. I think I understand the problems with it, but I think if you are in the mood for something like this, it can be quite rewarding. And it's much more about direct storytelling than the series has been so far. It has obviously been law. It's never been presented so directly as like, here's a narrative experience in the Mortal Kombat world that you play. I don't know what else to say about it. I like it. I recognize the problems with it, but I think there's a lot of cool visuals and ideas that I wish they'd had the chance to develop. And they kind of Kind of did, but we'll get to that much, much later in another episode. Yeah, I recognize the problems with it as well, although I agree with Stewart. I did like it.

If you were interested in the, and here's the obvious pun, the Mortal Kombat mythology, then you were going to play this game. You know, you wanted the storyline. I think the main issues with it were that the platforming had some gotcha moments, especially in the first two levels, which if you're going to gotcha, the player, maybe don't do that there. But otherwise, I thought it was a pretty fun game. yeah it's a game where you really do have to kind of you can't really play it quickly if you unless you already know what you're doing because there will be something that just comes from the ceiling and crushes you because that happened to me again when I played it for this episode because I'd forgotten that that was there and I just ran directly into the path of it

died instantly you've got it edged through which is a little it's funny you know but you really have to edge to that game because you don't have that much health at the beginning as you mentioned it's really those first couple of levels that put the worst foot forward and after that. I do think it gets a bit better. But that's also because you've leveled up by then. You can take more punishment. You can do more damage. Yeah, I guess that's kind of a through line from its adventure

game roots, because you hit the nail on the head. It is an adventure platformer slash action game. And just like adventure games, there are some moments that just feel kind of out of left field. And it is too bad that they're in the first two levels, because if you keep going, you've got a lot of cool story stuff happening. I think it's a game that with a few tweaks

could have actually been really popular, but also it was released in an era when two D games were really kind of on a losing on a loser to begin with because they weren't really wanted like in the media so speak you know um and mortal combat even by this time I would argue as we'll see in in the next couple of years they were on that they really are on their way to 3D I mean what we've got tech and out by now surely oh sure that yeah tech and see I think tech in three is is maybe not out of it coming very soon yeah so so it does have a dated sort of feel

to it. It's a shame because again later in the game you see some really quite cool polygonal characters like the prison guard and giant dinosaurs and things like that. But it's those early levels where you're just fighting the same kind of monks over and over and you can't even throw an ice projectile at the beginning.

You have to earn that. It's really a very tough cell because you really can die incredibly easily that early on. It's very difficult, but it's got charm. It's got a lot of charm. If there's like cheats, play it with those, I guess. Yeah, I never really thought about

that, how you're sub-zero at the very beginning and you're chosen for this super special mission, but you can't even throw ice yet. Like, there must not have been any other Lin-Quay ninjas around just like, hanging out, waiting for work, you know? I'm also recalling that the other frustrating element of it was, like, a lot of beat-em-ups,

you can get attacked from both sides, and you had to manually turn by pressing a button, which if you're having a fighting game engine, which you do, you're used to holding back to move backwards. So it was just really awkward to turn and fight multiple opponents at once. Yeah. Yeah, it's a shame. This game is a good game that's hampered by some weird decisions. Using the MK engine of the time, which I assume it did, like, not only are you juggling

special moves with their full inputs, you know, they're not just tied to a button, you have to remember the inputs. You've got items that you can use, that you've got to juggle through a sort of inventory for. And as you mentioned, the turn button, which is never a great sign, means 3D, for example. Not a good game has a turn button. Guilty Girisuka has a turn button. There's a pattern here. They're not good games.

I would love if someone did like a hack of this game to make it better, like one of those improvement hacks. And I'm sure it could be made into something very, very enjoyable. But at the time, obviously, it wasn't, it really was kind of,

it wasn't in a great place, I would say. It wasn't released at a great time for something like this. And the, I mean, the N64 version is even less impressive. You know, it's just, it's just missing a lot of the stuff that people would want from a Mortal Kombat game. Yeah, and I think it's significant to mention that this was the first time that Ed Boone and John Tobias were not designing Mortal Kombat games together. They'd been working together for so long that, you know, they were still fine, but they were wanting to do other things. John Tobias, obviously, is kind of the lead scribe, wanted to do more with story.

Ed Boone was kind of heading up Mortal Kombat 4, while John Tobias, while still helping design Mortal Kombat 4, was heading up mythology. So you had this weird split that had not happened in the series so far. I know we've spent quite a bit of time on this one, but I think it's more significant that initially seems because, you know, a lot of the characters in this game introduced in this game did turn out to be really important, like all the way through to, like, Mortal Kombat 11, they were turning out. It's Chinok, you know. And there are some cool ideas here. I like the way you defeat Chinok in this game where more or less you sort of I think you freeze him, run behind him and pull the

sort of amulet off his neck and then he goes all apes shit and turns into a giant monster while you bail. And it's just something kind of cinematic about all of it that works. It's just a shame it's in this clunky kind of engine that doesn't refit it. You compare this to

like a later game in a similar vein Shalin Monk's very good game on PS2 which is sort of almost what this should been, although obviously there's more power there, but it could have been like that, I feel. It could have been something special. It's a shame. It's a stepping stone, but oddly enough, it's actually an incredibly important Mortal Kombat game that not many people have actually bothered playing. Yes, well, I remember certainly me and my friends getting this one, and we were excited

because, you know, we all enjoyed Sub-Zero, and we certainly, you know, we definitely had an interest in the stories of Mortal Kombat, and we wanted to know, what's this deal, what's new characters here, okay, what's happening? And, yeah, I don't think we got very far because I think we got frustrated. We got irk. There's a lot of platforming, which I was not, you know, I don't really think, I think

beat them ups with platforming is always going to be hard. Yeah. And this one definitely has a lot of platforming. You got to jump and you got to like hang on to edges and climb things and things turn around. It's a very unusual game because you've got the actors playing the characters and they're moving on a 2D plane

but all the environments are in 3D so sometimes you walk on a 2D plane and then you'll rotate a little bit and then you're walking on a new plane but all of the combat is taking place on one plane so it's not like a double dragon or a final fight

you've got to move up and down a little bit but you're not doing that here it's all on one plane basically that causes a lot of problems on the Fujian stage I think it is where very early on level two you've got these rotating blades you've got to jump on

and you can't really tell where they are because it's 3D and you'll just fall through them like four out of five times and I think a lot of people probably just gave up there I mean, I mean, gotta be completely frank with you. I don't think I've played this without safe states because why, for God's name, would you

why would you bother at this point? You're not going to make it anywhere unless you're really good. But yeah, again, love it. I really do love it, but I really also hate it. Yeah, it's just got that adventure game charm where when it works, it really works. but there are these ultra-specific things you sometimes have to do that can just gate the game for a lot of players.

Yes. I couldn't find any sales data, so I don't know how well it's sold. I know that critics at the time were very mixed, and certainly as time has gone by, its reputation has only sank. Although at this point, I think most people discover it as sort of a weird curiosity, and I think there's a lot of people who will probably stream it on Twitch unless, like, what am I even looking at? what is this game why did I just get squashed by a giant rock like it's it's strange it's just very strange

it's better than special forces oh yeah it's got that going for it which you know ironically special forces had more in common with Shalom monks I should say Shalemunks ended up having more in common with special forces and that was this full 3D beat them up game which is maybe what mythology should have been

but this was also a time and we'll get more into this when developers were making this awkward transition from 2D to 3D. They were learning how to reinvent the wheel and make it polygonal. And, you know, that probably just was not an option for mythologies at the time, considering that all of Midway still had this arcade mentality where as soon as one game ships, you've got to go, go, go on the second one and get it out within the next, you know, six to 12 months. Well, speaking of Arcade, let's go back to the main event. Well, speaking of Arcade, let's go back to the main event.

Let's talk, let's talk about World Combat 4, because that is, that's the, that's the primary draw here. And as far as we know, development of Mortal Kombat 4 began in earnest in 1996, which is when Ultimate Moral Kombat 3 was finished. And I believe that they were always, they were always convinced that they had to do this in 3D, and they knew it would take time to get it right in 3D.

But while they were working on Mortal Kombat 4, you had another team, internal team at Midway, who was making war gods, which is another 3D arcade fighting game. It's not the same as Mortal Kombat 4, But it certainly has a lot of moral combat elements to it. And there are fatalities that are just straight up called fatalities, I believe. And there was some friction there.

I think, David, you cited this in your book. You said there was some friction between Ed Boone, who was like the moral combat guy, who looked at George Petro, you know, a longtime midway guy, who's like, hey, George, what are you doing with your war gods there? Yeah, you know, they ran on the same technology. And also, like, blatantly, war gods use Mortal Kombat's control panel layout instead of run, they had a 3D button where you could, like, roll into the background or something, which was becoming a popular thing to do in 3D fighters.

And really, this dates back to Killer Instinct, where John and Ed were trying to, you know, single out mortal combat. They already had enough competition with Street Fighter. And then Midway goes and publishes Killer Instinct, which they kind of look at as internal competition. And now there's this War Gods game, which is literal internal competition. And also War Gods, Wargods kind of took a little bit of the wow factor out of Mortar Combat 4 because it was a 3D fighter from Midway that came out before Mortal Kombat 4.

So it was just kind of frustrating all around. It also was not very good, which did not help anything. Yeah, I think, I don't suppose there's actually a really a good news situation out of that. Like, if it comes out and it's a big hit, then everyone's going to play that and their anticipation of Mortal Kombat 4 is going to be lessened. But if it comes out and it does badly, which I would argue war gods did, then everyone's like, oh, well, that's what Mortal Kombat looks like in 3D, huh? I guess I don't really care.

So I don't really think it's a win-win situation. I don't think it's a lose-lose situation no matter what happens. But in fact, it did not do that well. But it certainly was in arcades and it came to NDAX4. I saw a lot of copies in the world. I don't know if they made the profit or not. I can't speak to that. Certainly, I think, again, much like mythologies, critics were kind of like, oh, this isn't great.

This isn't great. Yeah, I played it. I remember playing it out of curiosity because it was midway. It was a fighting game. I was a Mortal Kombat nerd, and I had to try it. And it was just one of those 3D games at that time that just not only has it not aged well, it came out and didn't age well, like right away. It was a trial run for BioFreeks the following year.

Oh, that's right. Yeah, I don't want to get too much into Wargods, but one thing that is interesting about Wargods to me is that instead of having traditional polygonal models, it's like, They made them, like, a 3D image, and they sort of, they took photographs and then stretched them over a 3D image in what, like, almost like a skin, and you sort of have, like, these sort of blocky-looking characters, but they have, like, real, like, they actually photograph real people, which they didn't, like, Mortal Kombat 4, like, they used, you know, motion capture, and they had, you know, reference photos, but it wasn't like, War Gods was actually, they had models, and they were photographing models, and then taking those models, and putting their images onto, you know, 3D images, which is a very strange sentence that I said out loud. But that's what they did. And that's why if you look at it, it looks weird.

It's a very strange-looking game. Yeah, a fun bit of trivia. Carrie Hoskins, who portrayed Sonia in MK3 and MK4, played one of the characters in this game. I could not tell you her character's name. I could not tell you a single character from War Gods, but that is a bit of trivia that is in fact true. Yes, I believe Brian Glynn, Glenn, who did ShaoCon,

I think also is one of the muscle guys. Yes. So, yeah, I mean, you know, Midway obviously has these people's, you know, names and phone numbers in their Rolodex. They're like, okay, we need some good-looking people to show up and wear a costume. Let's get them in here. Yeah, I forgot. I found Carrie Hoskins character, too. I just know that she's wearing like a metal bikini.

So it's like, you know. Yeah. Good for her, I guess. Good for her, good for her. As opposed to Sonia, who's wearing kind of like a workout bikini. But, you know, kind of a through line in the work here. So 98. on N64, we're talking World

Combat 4, we're talking water guards, we're talking Mace the Dark Age, and those are all Midway titles. They're making Rod for them back there, I think. Someone's buying. Someone must be. Someone did, yes. Any sort of Mastor Dark Age superfans

are there, please get in touch. So Mortal Kombat 4, as I mentioned, they've decided to ditch what, you know, and certainly for me at the time, what I viewed as their signature, you know, quality, Mortal Kombat 4 drops the idea of having actors play the character. Now, certainly, they have actors come into the studio. They do motion capture. They have costumes. They have voice actors.

They have voice acting. But the images you see on screen are all computer generated. They're all 3D generated. Everyone is made at polygons. There's no JPEGs inside. There's no gifts inside. It's all images. Now, to get this thing working, they have developed a custom graphics chip, which they call

Zeus, which, I mean, look, it's a computer part. Call well, the computer part, what you will. But I know for me, as a young person, reading that, like, they call this Chip Zeus. I'm like, aren't you going overboard here a little bit? Like, it's a computer chip. It's up there with the emotion engineering. You got to give it a cool name, man. It's cutting edge.

It's got, what is it, like 10 times as powerful as N64 or something like that. Yeah, if you go back and you view promotional materials and interviews, you will see this line powered it a lot. They will talk about how it makes, you know, it can. generate 1.2 million polygons every second. Multiple people will say this out loud. They will say 10 times as powerful the N64, which

for me is kind of strange, like at that point, aren't you working with Nintendo? Aren't you going to sell this product on Nintendo 64 eventually? But whatever, they really want you to know that this arcade game is better than Nintendo 64, which is like, okay, it's probably a high bar. It probably drains 10 times more power than an

N64 when it's plugged in. Yeah, and this was still a weird time where even though Midway had a home to division and the coin op division, they were still kind of at odds with each other. Like the arcade division wanted to, you know, arcade, you had the arcade master race, if you will, at this time before the PC master race was a thing. Arcade designers wanted to make sure everyone knew that, hey, you can have your consoles, but the definitive experience is still in the arcade, and so they had to promote these things.

They were sort of, I don't want to say angling for sort of more mature audience, but they were angling, they were removing a lot of what they saw as kind of the silliness and trying to get to a sort of a darker feel for the game is my understanding. I mean, my problem with that is ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is just laced with their confidence. You know, they know exactly, they know what they're doing, they know what they're bringing in. If you're putting in things like friendships and babalities, then you are very confident in your product and in removing that stuff and making it sort of more serious. I feel like this game comes across as awkward

and I don't really have faith in it. And that's more of a sort of a psychological aspect to the game. But when I played MK4, I always kind of just feel like this is Mortal Kombat trying to be in 3D and not really quite getting there because it doesn't feel like Mortal Kombat to me. It doesn't really look like Model Combat.

but it's very, it's not really kind of gaudy, you know. Mortal Kombat's very silly, and this is very normal. Yeah, we'll get more into this, but it was a really weird game, and this is kind of the point where, you know, from Mortal Kombat 1, 2, and 3, you had characters, all of which became popular. Mainstays inside. Mortal Kombat 9 was almost literally a remake of Ultimate MK3.

But in this game, we'll get more into the characters, but there were really only one or two faces that kind of made the transition from game to game almost regularly, like the cast of two and three. Yes, I think when you look at the cast, when you look at the fatalities, when you look at a lot of elements, I feel like a lot of decisions made during the production of MK4 were saying, well, what do people not like about Mortal Kombat 3, and we need to make sure we change those things? And I think in a lot of cases, they overcorrected, which I think is, it's, honestly,

I wouldn't put that all on Mortal Kombat. I think a lot of long-running series have the exact same problem. I think whenever you have an entry of something and there's a problem with it, you know, if it sells, you know, 300 million copies, then everyone just says, oh, make another, make another one. But if it doesn't sell, if it sells anything less than what the previous sold, then everyone's like, oh, no, what do we do? What do we do? And they might make changes that are very drastic. And I think one thing that you can point out, and we'll get to this, we talk to the characters, but if you look at the character lineup, everyone in this game is either a brand new character

or someone established from the first two games. So no one introduced in Mortal Kombat 3 is here as a base playable character in Mortal Kombat 4. They add some for the home versions, but like if you look at the base arcade lineup, it's all either brand new faces or familiar faces from 1 and 2. So the cyborgs are gone, Night Wolf is gone, you know, a lot of characters they just created and seemingly put a lot of work into and, you know, are in arcades, you know, over the course of many years with Mortal Kombat 3

and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Just a huge chunk of that roster has disappeared now because, like, well, here's some new people. We watch if we do enjoy these new characters and, well, we'll get back to the characters later, maybe. And I think you see a similar case, you know, different error, of course, but I think you see a similar thing where you look at Street Fighter 4. Street Fighter 4 comes out after a very long,

gap after Street Fighter 3 struggled, and guess who's not in Street Fighter 4, at least the base version? Anyone from Street Fighter 3, there are no Street Fighter 3 characters in Street Fighter 4. Some get added as DLC later, but again, the baseline of Street Fighter 4 is all Street Fighter 2. And I think you see that here. Mortal Kombat 4 is like, oh, very much, it's 1, it's 2, and we got some new people, and they're very important, but three, I don't know, I don't know, no robots, no robots. I kind of admire the fact that they didn't just go back to the well so much.

They made up a bunch of new characters with new storylines. And they did continue doing that into the PS2 era, you know, Deadly Alliance deception, until Armageddon, when they just went, Sod it, let's just put everyone in. And there's something to be, I mean, even the modern games have new characters like Aaron Blackhill who instantly just called as shit, you know. And I kind of respect that. The problem is in this game, the only new character who, who I immediately loved was Quanchian.

He's not even new. He's from mythologies. Yeah, he was new if you skipped mythologies, right? Which a lot of people did, and it might not even have known about. And just to jump ahead a little, it was kind of, they were walking this line. They were on the fence between Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat 4. They were like, well, do we make these all new? Or do we kind of make sure there are a lot of throwbacks? Like, if you look at Jerich, he's basically Cano.

Because for one of his fatalities, he rips your heart out. For the other fatality, he inexplicably, shoots a laser from his eye, even though he has no laser eye. That was that was Cano's thing. And so it was almost like they were like, well, let's have Cano in the game, but not Cano. And it was just a weird kind of wishy-washy decision on that part. Yes, I think it's a challenge for every single fighting game that comes out. You always have to weigh your options.

How many characters are we going to bring back? How many new characters are we going to implement? And I feel like the smallest mistake can really upend a lot of things. You know, we talked about Street Fighters already. Certainly for me, as a King of Fighters fan, I didn't remember what happened when King of Fighters 12 came out. And it was a game that took a lot of many years and a lot of animation, and it's a really impressive visual feast.

But also, they forgot my Shiaenoy. And the fans really were not happy with that omission, that my suddenly, you know, a character who had been there since the beginning of K-O-F just wasn't there. And fans were very vocal. Like, well, where's my? Where is it? I mean, pretty much all of KOF12 is like it's all returning characters. I don't think they had any outright new characters, but they also were missing a lot

of familiar characters. And so, yeah, it's hard for anyone, but I think it's more okay about four. It's also especially hard because they're going up to a new technology. They've got to, obviously, every game they restart from scratch, but this time they're really starting from scratch because they're not even doing photography this time. They've got to have 3D models for everything, and they've got to learn how to make 3D models. They've got to learn how to do collision. They got to learn how to make backgrounds.

They've got to learn how to do all the stuff as they're making the game, which is certainly, you know, no small feat. One of the interesting anecdotes I found, which I thought made me laugh, was, so for the motion capture, obviously you had, you know, a lot of the usual faces came in to do, you know, Richard DeVizio's there. I think, at least, you know, Carlos Piscina, I think is there doing, you know, punching and kicking for the computers. But apparently, for some of the women's animations, they had John Vogel. They had, you know, Midway's John Vogel because he has a very distinctive walk. He was just walking around and sashing, I guess, and that was how a lot of the women were recorded, which I just think is very funny. But I guess if it, if it looks good on screen, then, you know, more power to John Vogel, I guess. Yeah, it was, this was, this was, there was so much going on behind the scenes, as you said.

And I think one significant point to mention here is that for the first time, this was such a Herculean effort relative to Mortal Kombat that had come before. For the first time, Ed Boone was not this old programmer. He needed a team for this, including his brother. So it was just, there was a lot going on here in Mortal Kombat.

It was a very rough transition in a lot of ways. And I love Mortal Kombat for it. It's actually my favorite of the arcade era, for reasons we'll get into later. But it was, as Stewart said, this was kind of a game that had trouble finding its identity

right out of the gate. Yes. It's funny to use Herculium, because, you know, the Zeus chip, you know, at this connection there. From a control standpoint, it's pretty much the same. You've got the same buttons in the Morrill Combat 3. You've got your high punches, your high kicks, your low punches, your low kicks. You're still blocking with the block button.

You're still running with the run button. The primary change now is that you can use the run button. You can also use the run button to sort of move to the side a little bit. It's not quite free movement. You can't just sprint in all directions, but you can step to the side a little bit to take advantage of the fact that the game is in 3D. Yeah, which was a move that nobody really did, just because it was kind of...

I mean, you might see it once in a blue moon, right? Like, it was very useful to quickly sidestep projectiles and then run at the opponent while they're still stuck in their projectile animation. But it just wasn't...

Again, this shows that they were on the fence. This was basically Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 gameplay in a 3D engine, and they weren't quite there yet. You couldn't fully circle opponents like you could in say Tekken 3. So it was just... The sidestep was just awkward.

I never really used it other than to kind of do it at first and go, huh, that's cool. Mortal Kombat's never done this. And then I just played it the same way. I played Ultimate MK3. And along that lines, the combos are back, combos with a K, of course, and they work very similar to how they work in Mortal Kombat 3. You need to run the opponent. You start your combat combo, you hit some buttons and you usually, you know, juggle them or whatever. The big difference this time around is that Mortal Kombat 3, every character basically had their own bespoke commands to enter to make a combo. You know, some characters more than others, but they all basically had their own structure.

And you, like, in order to play them, you kind of had to learn their combos. You couldn't just figure it out. You had to, like, learn them. And for World Kombat 4, they decided, okay, well, everyone's going to have sort of a similar combo starter, if you will. Which I would compare almost like to, like, to Kailor Instinct, and that you could sort of, like, you have a few buttons and a few commands that you know you can use to start a combo. And then, depending on the moves, you can finish it and do different things in the middle of the combo. But everyone sort of has a basic way you can start the combo, which I think is good in that it makes it easier to understand and learn these combos. But I think, again, as we said, over-correcting, all of a sudden, everyone just kind of has the same combo now, so they're less distinct, which is an issue into itself.

Yeah, this is one of the more divisive elements. I really like this combo system for two reasons. One, I think it's more accessible. The problem, as we discussed in the previous episode with Mortal Kombat 3's combos is, They were kind of like phone numbers in the era before speed dial. You either knew the phone number or you didn't. And if you didn't, you were at a very distinct disadvantage. But in this game, Mortal Kombat has always been more about accessibility than I think, say, Street Fighter.

It wants anyone to be able to jump in and learn. And so it definitely lowers the barrier of entry. Number two, even though everyone had kind of the same universal combos, it was great in that there's more room for self-expression. You know, I've seen Ultimate MK3 players chain together those bespoke combos in really interesting ways, in ways that only pros could, to the point that a lot of them have touch-of-death combos, where if you get caught in one, that's it, that's the round for you. But with Mortal Kombat 4, even though a lot of the combos would start the same way, you could kind of choose when and where to input universal combos, when and where to insert special moves, and do some really cool stuff, including with weapons, which I think we'll talk about later, that wasn't possible in any other. other Mortal Kombat game. So my Sub-Zero, I don't think it would be completely different than, say, Diamond Sub-Zero or Stewart Sub-Zero, but different enough that you might go, oh, I never thought

of trying that combo with that special move in that way before, and you might try that and kind of add that to your repertoire. It would definitely be different from mine. It might be like, how do I turn ice clone again? How do I slide it to all the buttons again? I can't remember. Well, for talking about combos, we used to talk about the brand-new feature for Mortal Kombat 4, which is maximum damage.

Yeah, a feature in massive. Converted comments that. Yes. And I would imagine this is, this probably came about because not only do you have, you know, Mortal Kombat 3, of course, had infinite combos, you know, they were, there were too many, I think, but there were certainly, there were characters who you could, if you got the right moves together, you could do just way too much damage. You know, certainly Cabal. Cabal and Vanilla MK3 was like, was insane, insane amount of damage. And they had to really tone him down. So I think to get the jump on, that to avoid having anyone run away with it early on, they decided to include this maximum damage feature. And what happens is, if you're doing a combo, once you pass the 40% damage mark, I don't know if it's the exact number, but usually about 40%, what happens is a big text appears to screen and a voice indeed says, maximum damage. And the game kind of just knocks you down. Like an unseen force knocks you down and knocks you apart. It's basically saying, you know, it's supposed to like a referee saying, hey, go back to your corners, go back to your corners,

your corners. Good job. Break it up. Break it up, guys. And what this means is that if you're really, you know, if you get a combo and you figure something out and it gets really crazy, the game will basically stop you and say, okay, you've, you've had your fun. Now let's keep going back to the regular game. Now, of course, even with this in place, there are still ways to get infants in this game because there are ways to sort of work around what the combo counts as a combo. The weapons also get Fudgy, we'll talk with the weapons in a second. You're allowed to turn it off, of course.

It's a way to turn off the combo, the maximum damage counter. But it is there, and it's on by default, and it is sort of, to me, a very strange sort of way of saying, hey there, you're playing the game in a way we didn't expect you to quit it. Yeah, I mean, for me, this falls into the

sort of lack of confidence thing. I know that's quite nebulous. I really am trying to justify it, but the game It's Mortal Kombat. You shouldn't tell the player, okay, you've hurt them enough. Stop. It's a really...

I mean, I don't want to over sort of lean too much on it, but to me, it's almost like emblematic of what's wrong with MK4 for me. It's compromised. It feels compromised.

They'll say, oh, we didn't include this feature or that feature because it was too silly. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't in line with the mood we wanted. And I'm like, well, was it that or was it just that it was quite hard to do it in 3D?

That's what I'd like, You know, I would rather, I don't know, I just think maximum damage is not a good idea for player expression. I guess it's only pros that we're going to be seeing this thing regularly anyway. But if they're that good, then let them keep punching. Let them cook, as the kids said. Yeah, yeah. It just feels inherently limiting. For the record, for the record, it's Mortal Kombat.

It's Mortal Kombat. So let them cook is spelled K-O-O-K. Let them cook. That's right. No, I can't disagree with anything Stewart said there. The only thing I would add is that, again, this was about accessibility. You know, there's so many times new players would play a Mortal Kombat game, one, two, or three, and then just instantly die if they were up against someone who knew a touch of death combo.

And it was very frustrating, especially in an arcade where you're losing money. I would say that the only redeeming factor of maximum damage is you can get creative, as Diamond said. If you have a combo that does, say, 37% damage, you start thinking, well, what kind of I tack on to the end to add as much damage over 40% as possible. That was kind of how I looked at it. I looked at it as sometimes limitations are a good thing. And I want to see what combos I can come up with that cross that barrier, you know, that let me leap that line as far as possible before I am sent back to my corner by the referee. I mean, if you're playing someone good enough to hit you with one of these once, they're going to be able to hit you with one of these twice. Yeah. It's just it feels so flawed from the outset to me. I mean, I would say that it is. Yeah.

I see what they're going for, but like, it's like, okay, now this brand-new player facing this person who's able to execute full maximum damage combos has a chance to get caught in a second maximum damage combo and then probably get one projectile and die. I don't know. It's, bha, nah. I think the breakers they introduced later are better than, you know, that you can spend your bar to knock people back when they've caught you in a combo

that they introduced in. I want to say deadly alliance. Well, there are breakers here, but they're not quite what you're describing. Yeah. They're like a different kind of throw wherein you sort of purposely attack an opponent's, like, arm or leg or back, and it makes a big cracking sound, and it looks like, it looks very painful, but it's also not really a permanent effect. It's just, it's just kind of like a different kind of throw. I don't know. I don't see much of a difference other than cosmetic.

I don't know, David, do you have, am I out of the line here? No, no, I would fully agree. It's funny that the breakers were the first time that, and this happened in other games, you have the, I can't remember what they're called, like the X-rays will call them, where a lot of these moves look more brutal than the brutalities or the fatalities that the characters have. Like, Reptile in Mortal Kombat 4 for his breaker forces you to your knees and then snaps your neck and then you just get back up, like he's, you know, some sort of chiropractor that just did you in favor. it's it's yeah they're just different throws and they look kind of cool but you know oftentimes the throws are more effective because you get more distance from them that's you know it's innate to throwing whereas like reptiles move you're still right next to him when you get up so he could launch into a combo if you're not prepared for that yes i know some some throws you can actually

juggle right you can juggle out of the throw which i don't think the breaker because because the breaker kind of brings everything to a full stop i don't know that you can juggle out of a breaker I don't think you can. Those are usually, like, breakers do a pretty significant amount of damage, like 15%, 20%, something like that. So it's, it's, there are sometimes where if you're quick enough, before your combo counter ends, you can, again, part of the strategy, even though the system is flawed, I fully agree, you can tack a breaker onto the end of a combo and go pretty far over that maximum damage 40% line. Well, if we're talking about these combos and the offensive capabilities, we should probably talk about the weapons, because this is a brand new feature of World Combat 4, and everyone has a weapon. Now, it's not like Samurai Showdown. They don't just walk into the arena carrying a big sword.

They walk into the arena the way they always do. But every character has a certain command. And if you enter its command, they will pull out a weapon. We don't know where it comes from. We don't want to know. But it's there. And once you pull out your weapon, you now have commands you can do with the weapon.

It's not just a matter of, it's like a beat-em-up where it's like, oh, now you press the punch button and you swing the weapon over again. Every weapon has, like, commands unto themselves. You can throw your weapon at the opponent for damage. You can drop your weapons. You can pick up your opponent's weapons.

So once a weapon is in play, it is a permanent object in the game that either player can pick up and use and throw back and forth. Also, on that note, some stages have things on the ground that you can pick up and throw at each other. So weapons and throwing objects are just part of like one more thing. added the game as, I guess, another tool you can play with. And certainly this comes up a lot in combos because given the fact that weapons, some weapons have very large hitboxes when you swing them, it's possible for certain characters to just juggle your opponent multiple times, perhaps

forever, if you swing the weapon at just the right time and just keep popping them up, copping them up, and as long as you keep hitting them, the combo is still counting, and the damage that goes down, but you can still do an incredible amount of damage overall without even triggering the maximum damage thing. Because it's like a cheat almost. It's not cheating, cheating, but like, you're, again, you're going outside of what they expected

and you're reaping the benefits. Using weapons in a martial arts fight is absolutely cheating. I feel, I mean, it's interesting to me that, like, I know we shouldn't jump too forward, but those are the games I'm most sort of experienced with. It's a faltering step towards

Deadly Alliance, which had weapons just as one of the stances you could hold, I believe. I'm maybe thinking of deception. Well, you could, like, bring them into combos effortlessly by tapping L1 during certain sort of dial combos. But also, having the weapons become part of the stage you could then pick up is very, like, MKX interaction with the background kind of thing. So these ideas they had in this game, which maybe didn't quite work, they did ultimately develop into really functional, enjoyable systems, which is nice to see. it's interesting to see how it all started here and with the breakers they definitely

do recall or not recall but they foreshadow the x-rays big time because some of those are just you would just simply be dead like but they get round two yeah I think the weapons for me were more of a novelty there are some that are really good

I mean sub zero's ice one for me is one of the best just because it gives anyone who picks it up a stun move I think weapons were most useful, as Stewart said, you can take them out in the middle of a dial combo, and those do a lot of damage. A weapon inputs in the middle of a combo do a lot of damage. And I like Reptiles' axe, his broad axe, where he does this pirouette, where he can spin all the way across the screen just swinging this axe, which is pretty cool. But for the most part, most of the weapons were

so slow and awkward that when you got hit and you dropped it, it wasn't really worth the effort to try to pick it up because you just leave yourself open to a combo. But they were cool ideas, and Stuart's exactly right. Like, weapons were fully realized in Deadly Alliance, where they were just the stance, and you couldn't drop them. They were yours. No one could take them, and you could do a lot more really cool combos with them. You know, it was pretty cosmetic, but to me, I always think of weapons sort of appearing in Immortal Combat 3, in that some characters when you would land a combo would just somehow have weapons in their hands.

Yes, I felt about a lot. Yeah. Like Scorpion with his axe. Yeah. Yeah, Scorpion had an axe. Of course, Cabal had his little, like, sword things. So... Striker had a gun.

That's right, that's right. But it's weird. It took him two games to actually use the gun. Very strange. Everyone's favorite character. He has a really creative touch-of-death combo with that gun, though. Once you see it, it's very impressive, but also frustrating to be on the receiving end. But, yeah, like, his grenades and stuff, that's very true.

Like, there were weapons kind of hinted at in further games. And I guess in this one, Ed, Boone just said, you know what, let's make them more of a thing and give everyone. I don't know if this was true in the arcade, but I know that in the home version, if you would highlight a character, hold a button, press another button, you could kind of, you'd spin their portrait around to get a second costume. And then if you spun it around again to get a third, they would also have a different weapon. So it was kind of, again, another creative way to play around with characters and their

repertoire and see what you could do with their combos and their weapons and stuff. The home version of this that I had, which we'll again get to, was gold, the Dreamcast version, and I could never figure out to use the weapons. That's all. Well, let's talk about characters. I think Moro Combat is a game that lives and dies and murders itself with his characters. The H-K cast of characters. Yes. Can you spell characters?

Is it K-H? Let's do it. Let's do it. Characters. Excuse me. It's too late for me to be Jewish right now. Characters. So let's talk about the lineup.

Very notably, we talk with the lineup, and we have to talk about lore a little bit. Not too much. I don't want to get into it because I know if you don't know the lore, it's going to be confusing. But very simply to the fact that after three games about Outworld and Shepard,

Shaqan and Shang-sung, there really is a change at the top here. So, Shang-sung and Shao-Kan are out. They're out. They're not in this game at all. So the big bad guy in this game is, in fact, introduced in mythology, and he has a Shang-sung of his own, basically, and these are, like, the new bad guys for this game. And in the case of one of them, it's like he's the poster child of the game, and that his face is one that literally sitting on the outside of the cabinet, and it's now basically

a meme on the internet, because you've got a Twitter account that just posts. the same picture every day of this cabinet. And it's kind of always funny. I'll be honest, it's always funny. It is true. It is actually always funny, yeah. But another advantage of making a 3D game, and I think every developer realizes this, is that once you make a 3D game with 3D models,

you no longer have to worry about sprites. You can just change the models. So every character, as you mentioned, you can change people's looks. So every character kind of has an alternate cost. a little bit, and it's not just a palette swap. It's like the costumes are a little bit different. Likewise, Sub Zero and Scorpion, while they're still like a yellow guy and a blue guy, they're not identical anymore. They have distinct, you know, apparel by default. So the era of, you know,

infinite ninjas is just gone. You've got, every character has their own thing now, basically, even though some of them, you know, look more similar than others. Yeah, this was interesting where they even had so in the 2D games because they were sprites everyone had their own version of like flying kicks right

where the hip boxes were kind of more or less the same but the animations the poses were different in this one they could have gone a lot further than they did I think there are only like

two variants of the flying high kick for example everyone has more or less the same flying low kick and it's because of the mocap they did so you have different aesthetic like with

Sub Zero and Scorpion but the the material differences, I think, aren't as pronounced as maybe they could have been. But again, this was kind of a stressful development. So we got what we got. But it was different enough that, yeah, like, Sub-Zero and Scorpion being kind of the poster children for the series, they were different enough, especially one of Sub-Zero's costumes where his arms are frozen and there's like, you know, vapor rising from them, which looked pretty cool. That is so yeah. Yeah, and like Scorpion, one of his variants, you have the mask off, so you see a skull.

Like, it was just really cool to see this, especially, again, as a Mortal Kombat fan, if you knew the lore, you knew this was a really cool thing. I think it's cool. I know we've talked about it, but MK Mythologies, like, they're really, I mean, that was almost like a teaser for MK4 at this point, you know, what with Shenok and Kwanji. But even, like, in mythologies, there's a sequence where you can choose to perform a fatality on Scorpion, which later, if you do the fatality, you will fight him in sort of his sort of spirit form, his sort of demon. sort of demon, I don't say demon, but you know what I'm talking about undead form, but doesn't really seem to have any bearing on the ending, although this game sort of fills in the blanks for Scorpion from MK Mythologies. So you kind of do have to have played it to get the full extent of the story out of MK4, which is an interesting choice. I was wrong when I said

that only Kuan Chi was like cool, and was carried forward, because Tanya turned up again, right? Tanya's become quite a popular character. She's all right. And, you know, Fujian as well, he was, I think he was DLC in one of the PS4 games, and, yeah, he was pretty cool, too. It's just, there's a lot of people with Kay's in their names here. I mean, that makes sense, given the series, but, you know, Jaric, Ray, Raiko, and Kai is just kind of chill out. Yeah, it gets to be a bit much. I think Kai especially was not really a great character in any sense. Like, he was another Shalemun.

For whatever reason, this is almost a Jerich situation. They were like, well, let's not bring back Kung Lao, but let's have another Shaolin monk, maybe just this, you know, world building. Like, hey, there are more than two of these monks. But Kai, he had this, like, it reminded me of Sindel's flight move in Mortal Kombat 3 where, like, it was novel, but no one would do it because you had basically no defensive options. Kai could stand on his hands and, like, mule kick, which was kind of funny, but you don't actually do that. That's not useful at all. You can't block. You can't do anything.

One of his vertical fireballs, I think the overhead one was so slow that it wasn't really, worth doing. But the one that came, the one that came from under you was really fast. And so that was a cool way to start a juggle combo. But the characters here are sort of the proverbial mixed bag. Even Chinok, you could tell they wanted to do Shang Song. Like, I believe the reason Shang Song was omitted had nothing to do with lore. It was a technical thing where they couldn't actually morph polygonal figures. So Shanak still had, they didn't call them morphs. They called them something else, but basically morphs where he could assume any other character's stance and move set. But he was kind of a lame

character to play on his own because he had no special moves. You either knew the morphs and how to withdraw his spear or you just had a guy who could punch and kick and do a breaker. And that was really it. So really weird characters. Some were really great. Not these, though.

It's kind of interesting. He was he's the big bad, but he's playable, unlike you know, Shalkan or Kintara or any of the other sort of big bad. in the previous games without sort of codes or home versions adding them.

It's an interesting choice. Yeah, and this was the first time where when you played the arcade version and you got to the final boss, you didn't feel like you were being overtly robbed of your quarters because Chinok would never use his morphs. He might take out his spear, but usually not. He was very, very easy to just bait into moves

and beat very quickly. You could double flawless him without a problem. So, like, a weird, weird final choice for a final boss. It is because something that's a lot of fun in fighting games in the single player, specifically, is the intimidation factor when you read to a character who you can't play at. You don't know what they're going to pull out of their other asses, you know? But Chinok, you're just like, what's he going to do?

Oh, it's nothing. In a way, it sort of makes sense because Mythologies makes him out to be quite not passive, but he's just kind of there while Kuan Chi does all the stuff for him. And when you defeat him, you don't really properly. or he fight him. So it sort of makes sense canonically, but wouldn't it have been cool if he turned into the big monster form

when you fought that or something, even anything to make him different from the base Shernok? Yeah, it's just a weird choice. And he's on the cabinet, as Diamond said. So you figure this guy is going to be like a much bigger deal, but he's really not. He's like marginally cooler than Shujenko, say,

lore-wise, but... I'm not more than Shujing. He's way cooler than Shujink. Chichinko's like bottom of the barrel. He sucks. What a dick. He has moved. Nice going idiot.

Sorry. Sorry, we're skipping. We're jumping the gun on there. I apologize. Well, you got to, it's a comparison. Shonak and Shadinko. I mean, come on. Yeah.

Well, we're into it now. So let's go to the character one of a one. And indeed, we're starting off by going in order on the character screen. We'll start up with Kai. And as you mentioned, David, Kai is, Kai is the new character, but also he's not very distinct. He's basically black Lukang. he has unusual moves and that he can throw fireballs vertically

like up and down that like sort of come at you from different directions but based on my research he seems to be sort of across the board agreed to be like low tier he's not very interesting he's not doesn't seem very interesting and doesn't seem to be very good character to use

so kind of not a great first impression no he's I mean even lore-wise he's not that interesting he just kind of ends up being oh I'm another shallow monk In fact, I think Kai has only appeared in MK4 and MK Armageddon, which everyone was in it. That was basically MK Trilogy 2, where, you know, the gang's all here. I don't think he has appeared again.

I could be wrong, but like even Midway slash another realm found Kai pretty forgettable. Right. I mean, they sort of, he's almost like a proto like Takeda or something, I think, with the characters in the later games who they were able to flesh out a lot more due to the sort of story focus. I mean, I don't think it's an inherently bad idea to introduce new characters in these, like, air quotes, factions, so to speak. I think it's a pretty neat idea, but they didn't do much to distinguish them, make them, you know, likable or have really much for personality, even narratively or to play as. Next is Raiden, and we all know Raiden. Raiden is basically back and doing what he always does. He's got a familiar outfit on.

He's got his divine, divineness. He speaks with a very big, rich baritone, and there's an echo effect. on his voice. I always thought it was strange that Raiden summoned a hammer. That really didn't fit my image of Raiden as a weapon, but... He's a thunder god. Hammer of Thor. Thunder? I mean, that kind of makes sense. So here's the thing about that.

In his second fatality, he uses a bow staff to electrocute you. So why not fight with the bow staff? I was always very confused by that. Can I take this opportunity to ask Mr. Craddick as M-K-H-H-Lory and a quick question about Radin? Why, sometimes he spelled

R-A-Y-D-E-N, and sometimes R-A-I-D, and is that just a mistake that they put in some of the ports or something? So this was a little bit of a tug-of-war. It was not a mistake. It was a tug-of-war between Acclaim and Midway at first, where a claim, I think they published Riden or Raiden Shoot-em-Up, and it was spelled with an I, so they spelled it in their version with a Y, and Ed Boone and John Tobias kind of resisted that and continued to spell it with an eye, but, you know, it just, now forevermore, in different versions, it'll

be spelled differently depending on who's in charge of writing text for these things. I'm very satisfied with that answer, thank you. I mean, they did eventually just stop and settle on R-A-I-D-E-N, correct? They did. They did. They were like, what if people see him and think that he's a little

spaceship in a schmop? It's a silly reason, but I'm satisfied by it regardless. More importantly, there's a character in Fatal Fury who is spelled R-A-I-D-N, and it's perhaps the dabble Japanese way, which is Ryden, which is a different

character altogether. But I guess no one word about S&K at this point. Same way with Metal Gear Solid, too, right? Solid's, the second playable character, is Ryden, not Raiden. Yes, exactly. Let's move on. Next one is Shinok. So, Shinok is the new bad guy for this game.

He is, he did appear in mythology's first. He is officially an elder god, so he's one of those, he's one of those guys who just, you know, seems to be in charge of things. Large in charge. Yeah. As we mentioned before, he is, even though he's the last boss of the game, you can pick him and play him as much as you like. He is basically a person, you know, he's not like. Shau Khan was much taller than everybody else. You know, Goro was bigger than everybody else.

Shinnok is just basically a first appearance of God. Like, he has no pupils. He's got some weird fashion choices, but he's basically a person. He's got drip. Come on. I don't know. I got to say, as for me, from a character design perspective, I don't really think much of Shinnok's appearance. I really don't.

I think Kwanchi is a much more striking appearance, which is why Kwanchees on the cabinet. But Shinnok, to me, just looks like he's wearing some kind of like, I don't know, like a pillbox hat? I don't know. I like Chinok because I'm a fan of the archetype of villain who's the guy who's really, really evil, but he just kind of doesn't do anything. He's just kind of in the background and he's like on top of everything. And it's just like, no, you go and deal with this while I sit here and be evil.

I like that about him. I think there's something quite a Saturday morning villain about him, which I find quite appealing. But Quanchi is great and we'll get to Quanchi. He's one of my all-time favorites. It just, just to show kind of the discordancy here. You know, in the previous games, there was always a sub-boss and a final boss. You were always going to fight Goral before you fought Sheng-sung. But here, you don't always fight Kwanji before Shanox, so there's really no, like, pageantry or grander about this character at all.

Like I said earlier, just a very odd choice for a final boss. I thought it would have been so badass if you got to the final boss, and it was like Shinnok in the background on a throne or something. and he just jestered at you, and then Quanchi came out. I would have loved that, just having him sit there and watch you like Shaqan's style. Anyway, a scan of competitive message boards also indicated that Chinok seems to be generally low-tier, not very popular, people are not a fan of him competitively. So, yeah. Again, bad look, bad look for your new big bad guy that no one seems to actually think he's aggressive.

I don't think that they really redeemed him until, like, Mortal Kombat 11 where he's back, and he's quite cool in it. But then again, everyone's quite cool in that game. That's a great game. It is. And you're right. It wasn't until Mortal Kombat 11, or 10, I don't remember. But whichever game where he came back, he was finally what I think Ed Boone and John Tobias back then probably envisioned him to be actually lived up to the hype.

I just love the fact they didn't just drop him. And they just don't drop anything. It's one of my favorite things about Mortal Kombat. They'll always go back to ideas that may have failed and they'll do it right. It's very appealing about it. Yeah, and going back to, I think you said it earlier, Stuart, like, you kind of liked that they would go back to the drawing board on characters and not just bring back all the old favorites. Yeah. I've always, even though there are a lot of characters in four that didn't really do anything beyond four in Armageddon, I've always considered Mortal Kombat the boldest fighting game franchise in terms of their choice of characters.

Like, they left Scorpion out once. They regretted that, even though he was intentionally held back for Ultimate MK3. but other than A sub-zero and a Scorpion, you never know who you're going to get. I mean, not even Lou Kang has been playable in all of them, and I always thought that was pretty cool that they were willing to take those chances, including with this game. Yeah, it's what

brings me to the series over and over again is the characters. I'm not that much of a competitive fighting game player, but I will play these games for the stories every time, for the towers and such, and that's what keeps me coming back. I want to know what's going on with these guys, and when an old character like Chinok or Quan Chi

turns up, I'm hype. I'm like, yeah, what's up what these guys are up to? You know, they've done a really, and there's no other fighting game series that does that

formula, even Street Fighter which has really well-drawn characters, they just haven't managed to get that level of just like, there's a lot going on with these guys. You know, there's a lot of ties.

I mean, when you get the new characters even in games like Daddy Alliance, you've got new characters like Lee Mae, but then, you know, sometimes you end up with havoc and that's not so great,

but even he, even he gets alluded to later. They never drop anything. It's fantastic. It's something that really I think gives it the fan base that it's got is the fact they don't forget about these, they don't forget about them. It's like

you get the impression they genuinely sincerely really care about these characters and that comes out in the game and it's what, even through sometimes them being quite janky, like Deadly Alliance isn't the best through any fighting I've ever played, but even through that you're

compelled to finish it. You're compelled to open all the crypts, or compelled to do everything because you want to know what's because the story is and I love that. Yeah, and I would say just as a quick tangent, for the relatively recent as of this recording, Mortal Kombat 1, which is still not a great name, I thought that they were very bold in their choice of characters. They brought back a lot of characters from the 3D era, and there are even popular fan favorites who only returned as cameos, which means you can't play them. And they've had a lot of pushback to that. And who knows, maybe with the DLC, we'll be able to play as Sonia instead of just choose as a cameo.

But I thought that was very bold to say, like, no, no, no, we're doing this and this is what we've decided. And, you know, that kind of started with MK4, where we're not just going to bring, it's not going to be ultimate MK3 in 3D. You'll play as loads of flavor of the month characters from Amazon Prime TV shows, and you'll like it. Well, speaking of returning characters, next up is Raiden. Reptile. Reptile is back. And Reptile, I would say, has got a bit of a glow-up. He's no longer wearing a human face.

He very much looks like a reptile, in fact. But speaking of faces, he has a fatality where he eats your face, which I think is one of the more shocking fatalities in the game. He just eats the skin off your face. Yeah, this is kind of the game that started the debates between fans of which model of reptile is the best. Because there are definitely games starting with this one where he looks more, you know, beastial. And then there are games where he's more of a ninja. And in fact, one of his secret costumes in the home version is his ultimate MK3, you know, green ninja outfit. So they were kind of, they wanted to have their cake and he did too, which maybe speaks to the lack of confidence that Stuart has alluded to.

Well, they sort of progressed through to, like, I think in Deception, he's almost like killer crock or something. He's like a big lizard. But then after that, like in nine and such, I think they started to dial that back a bit, which is nice. Reptile is still cool, though. He's reptile, you know, he's awesome. He's the only one in the movie who gets his name announced when he appears. There's nothing. You've got to love reptile. That's right.

I'm sorry, David. I don't want to call you out like this, David, but we have to set the records straight here. It's not cake. It's face. He has a face, and he is too. face and he eats it too. You're absolutely right. I stand corrected. Please. Corrected with a K. When I first read the note, I thought it said he will eat feces. And I was like, that's

disgusting. Why don't they bother putting that in? But no. Reptile will go place as no one else goes, man. Yeah. We don't know what his regular diet is. We honestly don't know what that is. Comparified you with a K. Sorry, that's the worst joke I've ever made. I'm going to get fired now. Oh, thank God I wasn't drinking. I wish I was drinking. Sorry, go on, go on, go on.

Scorpion is back. I feel like Scorpion hasn't changed that much. He still hates Sub-Zero. He's still basically dead. Although he has a lot more to do with Kwan Chi now around. Apparently, as part of his ending, he finds out that Kwan Chi killed his family, not Sub-Zero. So, like, he's been seeking vengeance of the wrong person all this while, which is whoopsie-doodle, I guess? Yeah, whoopsies.

But then, of course, they run with that in his redemption arc that he gets after this. You know, he gets his redemption story. He gets his own movie, for Christ's sake. Diamond, I have to correct you. It's not whoopsie. It's whoopsie. Yes. Nice.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you for kit and keep me honest. Jacks. Jack's also back. Jacks is back with metal arms. And he's, he's Jacks. I don't know if it didn't strike me as that different.

Yeah. When he slams you now, when he does his quadruple slam, there's actually a fifth slam. So that's, you know. Quinduple slam. Yeah, quintuple slam. So that's a big, that's, you know, Jack's, I don't know. Does he say five time? Does he say five time, five time, five time, five time, five time.

Yeah. I mean, Jack, I mean, for all, whatever you can say about Jacks, he is the one who gets to say, this is not brutality. This is a fatality. Fatality. Which you, of course, I did too, at the top of the episode. Yeah. Yeah. Put a pin in that.

We will actually discuss that later a little bit, because I need to get, we need to explain what the hell that was all about. You need to play the full audio of that, like, for people. Well, maybe, maybe our editor, Greg, we'll do that for us. I'm not going to put, I'm not going to put word in Greg's mouth, but maybe he'll play that for us later. Do it, Greg. Next up, speaking of, not speaking at all, really, is Raco.

Now, RICO, if you look at that and say, hey, that looks like a Japanese girl's theme, and you're right, but no, this is a man. He's a man. In fact, costume-wise, costume-wise, he kind of looks like a ninja. He's got, like, these purple sort of bars, and he gets to make up in his face. But he's not wearing a mask, so he's not a ninja, but he has some ninja qualities. And in the lore, he's apparently an ex-Shinnock believer. He used to hang with Chinok.

He does not hang with Chinok anymore. So he's kind of a bad guy, kind of a good guy. And I think for me, what's one of the funny things about him is that if you beat the game with him, it just sort of ends. Like, he just sort of, like, walks away. You really don't understand who he is or what he wants. He's a non-Jer. Yeah, his ending to me was always the most intriguing because it kind of continued into Mortal Kombat Gold,

where in Mortal Kombat 4, he just walks through a portal and then it's over. But in Mortal Kombat Gold, he walks through the portal, comes out the other side, and then sits on Shaul Khan's throne. So that kind of got people speculating, like, oh, is this Shaqan a Shaqaqan back? And in later games, it's revealed that, no, he's Shaqon's. general, but he still looked like he wanted to put on that skull hat. He definitely still wanted to do that. I think a skull hat would, would accessory as well with his outfit, although

I do enjoy his eye makeup. His eye makeup is very similar to that of Shang Song in Mortal Kombat 3, which, as we discussed earlier, I very much enjoy. It is, and he's always looked like Nightwing, the Batman character to me. Yeah, yeah. He's got some Nightwing elements to him. I don't think he's as hot as Nightwing, but he's got... No, I was going to say, does he have the ass of Nightwing. No. Although when he walks into that portal, he's strutting his stuff. Oh, shit.

Well, whom's among us has a nightwing ass. Whomst among us? None of us. No. None of us, no. It's absurd to suggest even remotely that it could be achieved by a real human being. Speaking of ass, here's Johnny Cage. Now, Johnny Cage is back as playable character, and he is now, you know, completely divorced

from Daniel Puccina. He's, but he's basically Johnny Cage is to expect him to be. you know, they've baked the arrogance into the character. I know his ending, he goes up on the stage and gives a speech and people throw things at him. Like, he's, like, he seems to be popular but not actually popular, which is a weird, a weird kind of line that I guess Jenny Cage is always going to walk because he's a jerk, but he's also a strong man. You can't have Mortal Kombat without Johnny Cage, really, I don't think. He's always been a bit of a black sheep in the cast for, I mean, by design, you know, he's the guy who rocks up almost like, yeah, this is going to be fun. This is all game. This is all for my movie. But then, no, he's actually

getting his very real spine pulled out and thrown on the ground. His ending is also one of my favorites because, as you said, the crowd kind of turns on him. But what's great is as soon as he says one arrogant comment, all the cheers cut off instantly. It's just dead silence. And that really tickles me. I really love that ending. Everything about it is just pure comedic gold, which I don't think all the endings were supposed to be that. But we'll talk about that later. Yes, and on that Yes, and on that note, let's talk about Jarek.

We already mentioned Jarek a little bit, but yeah, Jack, Jerich is the new Black Dragon guy, and he really is Diet Cano. Like, there's no other way to explain it. It's like, they made Cano again, but without anything that's really remarkable or distinct or, like, attractive. It's just, I don't know, Cano 2, no Bugaloo. I feel like, apart from Cano and, you know, Cabal, for some extent, where they've really haven't done a great job making the Black Dragon. Like, I mean, Jarrack is sort of a nothing character.

And, you know, what's his name, Cobra? In, uh, he's, he's even worse. He's like American Gladiators or something. Diet Ken Masters, he looks like. Yeah. I guess the only cool one would be Aaron Black, who was technically in the Black for an alternate timeline, but, uh, that and in deception, you get Kira. Oh, yes.

I like her about, Kira. Yeah. That's how much there is to say about Jarek. Tanya is a major new character. Tanya is an Edenian traitor. So she is, you know, she's like Katana and Molina, but she's, she looks like she might be good, but she's not good. She, in fact, is evil.

She works for Chinok. She is very popular because the competitively wise, people love her. People think she is top tier. So she will, I think she becomes a major recurring character. People are really into her. She also is one of the funnier endings, which we'll get to in a minute. but big Tonya stands out there in the chat apparently. Yeah, I like Tanya a lot.

And in fact, her model was used for Katana and Molina, I think, in Mortal Kombat 11. But she was just one of those interesting new characters, one of the few interesting new characters. She was just a lot of fun to play. She was really fast. And yeah, as you said competitively, she's kind of the tippity top. Yeah, she's one of the few characters from this game that was introduced in this. game that had sort of longevity because she's back in like deception she's back in even the newest one mk1 i think uh as playable um and i've got i'm gonna i've got to say it and i'm really

sorry i think sex appeal is a factor there as well because she's kind of the sex appeal character in this game right for the sort of uh the guys the dudes i mean there's only two women i think she definitely is there's only two women in the game and she's she's here and she's dressed kind of sexier than sonya blade is even though sonya blade is played by a professional model, so. Yes, I say that not to undermine the characterization, obviously. It's just kind of a factor in these games. Well, that's just the thing that happens at all fighting games. I think whether the character is competitive or not, whether the character has interseen personality or not, if you make a character who's extremely hot, that character is just going to have a lot of fans

and a lot of fan art, and, you know, that's just what happens. I think how you treat the character and how you use them moving forward is, you know, up to you as, as a creative team. But I think popularity is going to come and is just going to come and you can't always predict that's going to happen. Yeah, that's true. We haven't yet reached the sort of Ndia, which is the final unlockable costume for I want to say, katana

in Mortal Kombat 9 when you beat the tower. That real ones know what I'm talking about. Interesting side note, Jarick is actually an anagram of a jerk. Burn. So, let's talk about Fugin.

Fugin is a character who actually appears in mythology's first. He is the wind god, god of wind. His name is literally wind god. Fugin, Fooz the wind, and Jin is the sheen, isn't God. I think it's kind of unfair that Fugin can just pull a crossbow out and shoot a crossbow any time he wants. I don't know if that's really, I mean... It is kind of cheating.

Stu, you allude, you said earlier that any weapon is cheating in martial arts, but really a projecto weapon, to me, seems especially cheating. Is, I have a... A question about his name. Is Foo, like Onomatapia for wind blowing? Like, foo. It's just how you read the kanji, but I don't know, I don't know if that plays into it. But, yeah, a lot of...

A lot of words with that kanji in it are read as foo or sometimes poo, you know, shimpu, but it comes a lot. A lot of fighting games have wind in there somewhere, because it's an elemental thing, and it just sounds good, you know. Yeah. I mean, Afujian is cool, and he's another one who had some longevity turned up in much the same sort of games as Tanya, MK11, and Armageddon, obviously, I think he's in deception in some capacity as well. I like his look better than Chinok, I must say. I think he's got a better look. Yeah. Yeah. I think the idea of introducing the other sort of elemental gods is a good one as well. I'm not sure they ever got around to finishing doing that, but he's one of the more compelling characters in this game, I think. Yeah, he's a lot of fun to play. His crossbow is kind of cheating. So it's almost an unspoken rule.

Kind of like throwing used to be back in the arcade days. Like, we don't throw. We don't just do a move that does 25% damage. But he's still, he's really fast, and you'd kind of expect him to be. Like, a lot of his special moves will carry him across the screen. They really kind of leaned into the win theme, and it worked out really well. Sub-Zero, Sub-Zero's back. He's back to his classic look.

No More Muscle Man with Scar on his face. He's got, you know, his blue and black outfit. Also, a very strong character. and again, it's kind of funny, he's a very strong character, and again, because of the Ice Clone, the Ice Clone was devastating in Mortal Kombat 3, and it's still devastating in Mortal Kombat 4. Yeah, this is still the younger brother, so he actually does still have the scar, but it's really only prominent in his character Select Screen Portrait. This is, yeah, he's really powerful here.

I think this is one of the best incarnations of Sub-Zero in the series. He's a lot of fun to play, very quick, very strong, whereas in a lot of a lot of later games, such as MK9, he's still strong, but he's slower, and so people didn't gravitate to him. So this isn't the same Sub-Zero as the one in Mythologies, then, presumably. No, no, it's not. It's, I mean, he wore the classic, he wore the classic costume in MK2 when this, you know, the younger brother character was introduced, but no, this is, in fact, still younger

sub-zero, which is still, they kind of retcon parts of Sub-Zero and Scorpions sort of, well, actually, no, they don't retcon. So all the endings in Mortal Kombat's arcade games are speculative. Like if Scorpion wins, this would happen. But if it doesn't win, it won't. And if you beat Mortal Kombat 2 with, I think, Scorpion or Sub-Zero, one of them, Scorpion realizes like, oh, my bad, you're not the same dude. I'll protect you.

And I don't think that ever became canon. So they still just fight, even though Scorpion could, you know, or Sub-Zero could just say, like, hey, let me take off my mask for a moment. I am not the same guy. Notice my eye. You know, they never really cleared up their differences there. You know, David, that's a very good point. I did not realize that they had mythologies and this game come out late 1990, 97, and yet, those are different sub-zero's not the same sub-zero.

They did not really make that clear. It almost would have been wiser to just have him leave the mask off, which is one of his, I think that might be Player 2's Sub-Zero outfit. If it's not, it's one of the secret costumes in the home versions, but you can't unmask him. So what's about Quanchi. Kwanchi is here. Kwanchi is on the side of the. the cabinet. Quanchi, even though it's a model, it's a 3D model in the game.

Quanchi is basically Richard DeVizio again. That's the made-up face guy on the cabinet. He is like the new Shang-sung and that he, like, he works for the guy who's in charge, but he, in fact, is very evil himself. And indeed, if you beat the game with Kwanchee, he will betray Shinnok. So he's very much into, you know, cheating and winning by any means necessary. That's his whole bag, baby. is my boy. I've made that clear by this point, but

particularly, again, in later games, the idea of like, okay, we have the cool sorcerer with the kind of the green skull magic, we have him look like this, and yet also, he's jacked, and he could beat the shit out of you. He's not like Shang-sung. He's not like a sort of, I mean, obviously he's not feeble. He doesn't have the appearance of an old man. He's like a youthful, powerful sorcerer, and one of my favorite archetypes, he's smug, he's a dick.

You want to beat him up, you know? I love Quanchi. I love what he did with him. Even the name Quanchi is just cool. He's a cool guy. I'd like a little plush Qunchi to cuddle, to be honest. Yeah, undisputably the coolest character in the game, I would say, and always. I do think it's funny how Kwanchi turns up in a lot of different character endings.

No matter who you beat the game as, there's a good chance Kwanchi will show up, and there's a decent chance he will kill you in your own ending, which is funny. Yeah, it kind of, it's a running joke by this point where in Mortal Kombat 2's ending, Reptile's entire race died. He was the only one left. So that's kind of a sad trombone for him. And then in Mortal Kombat 4's ending, I believe Kwanchi does kill him. So Reptile just cannot, you almost don't want Reptile to win. You know, he'd probably end up better off if he didn't win this thing. Last but at least, Sonia Blade. Sonia Blade is back. And I don't think she has anything particularly distinct. about her this time around as much as like, you know, in MK1, she was almost ridiculous super powered, and then she was missing MK2, and she came back at MK3, but she's kind of a back again at MK4, so it's kind of like, oh, you're still here. I don't, no disrespect, but I feel like this, there's an expectation level that's missing this time around. Yeah, another character,

I don't, I'm not a competitive player myself and a lot of the details I got out of competitive players for my book are kind of getting fuzzy, but I believe she's up near the top because she's very quick and powerful, kind of like Sub-Zero. So she's a lot of fun to play. I really like playing this, right? Three extra characters, you mentioned, who are basically secret characters on Play-Lall characters, that's her thing. Newbs I bought is back. He's around. You have to enter a code to play him. I guess that is the other sub-zero, lore-wise. Although this time around, he doesn't even get an ending. He's just, he's a hidden character, but you can't actually get an ending with him, which is sad, because he hadn't ending in

an ultimate MK3. Meat. Meat is there, I think, just as to show off their new technology because if you play his meat, he's not a unique character per se, he's just a clone of whatever character you chose last, but when you play his meat, he's a bloody messy skeleton that just is like making, you know, just leaving trails

around the state, like it's just gross. He's kind of a little bit like chameleon in that respect, I guess, right? Or will he post chameleon or pre-chameleon at this point? I can't remember. Post. A chameleon was only in trilogy, some versions of trilogy, right?

I think it was PlayStation and Saturn I think it was a chameleon with a C and then it was a comedian with a K and the N64 because there was a whole thing when Armageddon came out but they were like, everyone's in and the fans are like, no they're not, you forgot the other chameleon. So they put them in in the Wii version of Armageddon. Random bit of trivia there for you, sorry.

I did not know about the different chameleons. I apologize. Oh, no, nothing to apologize for, nothing. Nobody knows about the different chameleons. It's not relevant or interesting. And Goro. Goro is back for the first time in a while. Goro is essentially the penultimate boss, which is, you know, where you'd expect Goro to be. But it also is weird because after you beat Goro, who is special and you can't play as Goro normally,

then you play as, you fight Shinok, who is indeed very normal and indeed as, a little earlier, not very challenging in the arcade version. I wonder if it might have been more satisfying. I'm serious when I say this. if they'd made Goro sort of the de facto final boss and then when you beat him, beating Shenok is almost like beating Bob

the fish and earthworm Jim you just walk up and wreck his shit and he can't do anything to you. That might be quite satisfying if they made Goro more difficult enough to be. I mean, there's sort of the tradition there. I mean, for me, playing Mortal Kombat 1.

I had often struggled with Goro, but rarely did I have trouble beating Sheng Sung. So it wouldn't be out of line to have really tough giant opponent followed by not as tough secondary opponent. That's not outrageous. I guess that's what they went for here.

Though I think that they did regret having Chinok be the final boss because he wasn't like an imposing, terrifying kind of guy really. Which is exactly why Goro is the penultimate boss only in the home version. They kind of wanted to course correct there. Like if it's not going to be Quan Chi, we need a boss that is kind of satisfying. But yeah, then they follow up with Chinok and you're like, oh, I basically already won this thing. So is Goro not in the arcade original? It's only in the home versions.

He is not. Oh, okay. Well, speaking of being in the game, let's talk about endings, because this is a new feature, actually, honestly. While the game's always had endings in the past, up until this point, they've been purely text-based, and maybe, you know, maybe you see one or two pictures. But now, because of the power of, you know, 3D modeling and acting, you have fully voiced, fully animated cutscenes. and this is brand new. And, well, the results are mixed. A lot of these endings are patently ridiculous.

Some of them make no sense. Some of them are just sort of like head scratchers. Some of them are you like laugh at them because they are just completely absurd. Also, from a resource standpoint, they had a problem in that you couldn't have all this data dedicated to this ending that only plays at the end of the game. So they had to compress a lot of things. I think it's depending on the console version, you either

just have a movie file. It's not even like a, you know, it's not actually the character's doing anything. It's just like an fmv sequence. In the arcade they were an engine, won't they? The ending. Yes. Yes. And on the N64, yes. Yes. So because of that, because they had

compressed a lot of data, several endings are indeed just repeated, but with like a twist, which is where we get the Sonia Jarek, Jack's trilogy, which I'll explain right now. Iconic. If you win as Sonia, you

confront Jarek on top of a cliff, you have a quick back and forth, she says the Black Dragon is dead, Jarrett doesn't want to accept that, and Jarich jumps off the cliff and he dies. And... The end. If you play as Jerich, the same scene plays out,

but this time, Sonia does the old peek over the cliff? Oh, I guess you're dead, right? And Jarek surprises her and pulls her off the cliff. And then she dies. And he gets back up, finds her radio on the ground, and he stomps on it, makes a weird crunch sound, like he's stepping on like a, I don't know,

a piece of plastic, even though it's like a radio. And he's like, ha, ha, ha, ha, I've win. If you be the game is Jax, everything so far I said happens perfectly the same, except this time Jarrett stomps to the radio and Jacks is just there Jackson is right behind him

and they have a quick confrontation Jacks holds him out over the cliff Jerich says he's very sorry for murdering Sonia and then Jacks drops off the cliff and he screams and that's the end of the game. But what does he scream?

That's the mystery here. And Jacks does say as you alluded to at the top of the podcast this is not a brutality. This is a fatality. You got to love it. Did they play the music? I don't know if they play the music or not.

I think they do play the music. Dun, da, whatever is in this game. Yes. It's great. But that's a theme. That's a theme here. A lot of the endings are very manic. Some of them are that the timing is very strange.

I believe, I think it was Dunkie who made a video that points out that some of the audio seems very, like, like they used the wrong take. Like someone coughs or something? Like, it's, they're very strange. They're very strange across the board, and whether you laugh at them or with them, it's up to you. But, yeah, there's a lot. People explode. There's a fair number of exploding people in these endings, just boom. I mean, what's happened, really, is, like, at the time, it's laughable, but, you know, now they're great, because they're hilarious. You can look back at them and just laugh at them in a way that wasn't initially intended at all, most likely. It's like the endings for like Street Fighter E.X.

There's absurd videos with like Zangkiyev, Cossack dancing and stuff. It's got that charm. It's just charming. I think the difference here for me is that with all the Street Fighter endings, they're basically non-sequiters. And a lot of Japanese games would do that. So Mortal Kombat up to this point has taken their endings very, you know, quote unquote, seriously and given you actual story, as David said, speculation.

like, what happens with you in the game? What happens if this? And these characters all have relationships. So, these endings aren't necessarily out of left field and that the characters do, in fact, you know, appellate, like Sub-Zero and Scorpion usually interact. You know, a lot of these endings. Quanchi and Shinok have a thing going on.

But then you have just, you know, you have the, like, Reptile one where Reptile just dies. Or, you know, you have the Raco one, and Raco just sits down. It's just, they're very, they run the gamut. You know, it's, they, I don't know. This was a matter of resources in time. John Tobias did tell me this for the book, you know, like they never intended for them to be laughable, even though I think they probably knew some of them would turn out that way.

This was also an interesting time in video games where the switch to 3D for a lot of companies coincided with the move to hire professional voice actors for games, whereas all the characters were voiced by, by the developers, you know, they kind of, they, they did their best and, and this is what we got. I really love, they're just some iconic, like, Jerich's laugh at the end of his ending is something like, I'll try to do it justice here. And I just really love that laugh. I'll even do it in real life sometimes because I'm a Mortal Kombat nerd and just genuinely love it. And then you hear the, all right, which is, you know, maybe that was a cough, I'm not sure. But I really did, I do laugh with these for the most part. Like I love the trilogy of endings between Sonia, Jackson, Jerich, because it's kind of cool that you have to beat the game three times and in a certain order to kind of get the whole picture.

There were, they did that in gold where with Cyrax and Sector, where if you're Syracs and Catana Molina as well, or if you're Syrac, you get turned back into a human. And if you're Sector, you break into the lab and just kill everyone by firing missiles. And, you know, Katana Melina. Katana becomes, I think she kills Melina and takes a throne. And Molina, she kills Katana. So it's kind of cool that it gives you a reason to see all these endings and some multiple times. It's over, Jerich. Shinok is dead.

The good guys won. You're coming back with me. Never, Solia. I agreed to help defeat Shinok. Not turn myself into the special forces. The Black Dragon live on. The Black Dragon died with Cano. You're the last one, Jerich.

Never! When it was all the game! Come in, Major Briggs. This is Lieutenant Sonia Blade. What? No! Sonia, this is Major Briggs. Come in.

Sonia, this is Jacks. Are you there? Oh, and somewhere, Jerich? Jack, I thought you were going to. Thought I was what? Dead? Like my partner just tossed off the cliff? I'm sorry, Jax.

Please, don't drop me. Wait, I promise. Too late, Jerich. You can't drop me. You have to uphold the law. You have to arrest me. Wait, wait, this is brutality. You can't do it.

Wrong, Jerich. This is not a brutality. This is a fatality. Well, a lot of God. Well, before we get to the home version. Let's talk just a little bit of the arcade release, because there actually is a story to the arcade release unto itself, because, as you might imagine, Mortal Kombat 4 took longer to complete than they expected. You know, it was originally announced for April

1997. Readers, it was not ready in April, 1927, it was not ready. So what they came up with, they came with two ideas, and I would say one of them makes sense to me, and the other one is mind-blowing. The one that I get is the Mortal Kombat Road Tour, where they put the cabinet on a truck, and they drove the truck around the country, and they would show up at different arcades, and they'd make a big hullabaloo, and I think they'd have cosplayers, or maybe they had the actors show up in costumes, and it would build hype. People would show up, it's like, oh, Mortal Kombat 4 is going to be here, I'm going to go there, I'm going to play it, I'm going to see it live, and if you didn't play it, you got to see people play it, and it was,

you know, as always, Mortal Kombat cabinets are audiovisual feasts. They are very loud, so you get a real treat out of hearing them and seeing them if you don't get to play them. The other thing they did was they shipped empty cabinets as a means of building hype. They would ship cabinets to arcades that didn't have any boards in them. They would just say, coming soon, Mortal Kombat 4. And I guess someone, some people took advantage to that and said, yes, please. But to me, I cannot imagine as an arcade owner using dedicated space in my, you know, my floor space. It's like, oh, this is a space reserved for Mortal Kombat 4. Just look at this machine.

It doesn't do anything other than tell you that Mortal Kombat 4 is coming. So there wasn't even like a rolling demo or anything. It was just an empty cabinet with no guts. Yes, that's correct. That's what I understand. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to clarify it because it just seems so crazy. Yeah, they had done a lot of marketing maneuvers for the Mortal Kombat games by this point, especially Mortal Kombat 3. They would kind of publish some of the secret, you know, two play. versus codes and some magazines and advertisements. This was

a marketing stunt that was pretty odd. I don't know. I don't think it did well, as we'll talk about shortly, but it was definitely a choice. It was a strange one. There is footage online from the Mortal Kombat Road Tour, which

I would recommend looking that up. A lot of YouTube channels have it. It's just a fun. It is, of course, produced by Midway, so it's very much, you know, hyping themselves up. I think you'll see an executive, to talk about the arcade game. And I swear, it's one of those executive guys who has no

emotion in his voice, but he everything he says makes it sound like he's, like, this is the most important thing in the world, but he doesn't actually impress that of you. So he's like, this is going to be the most important video game ever made. We're going to change history and

gods will bow to us. And that will just be, that will be the end of, that will be the end of civilization if we know it because Mortal Kombat 4 is here. Like, that's his tone, which I think is kind of funny. I like that's a portentous kind of thing. It's like those ads for MK3 that literally just said, nothing, nothing can prepare you.

Well, it's the human being version of that. Yeah, nothing, nothing can prepare you. MK4 does indeed arrive late 1997. So it's out around the same time as mythologies. Depending where you live, you might see one or the other first. I don't know what happened in your life. but like other Mortal Kombat's, there are multiple revisions, you know, there are updates, things change over time, so the game is being released well until 1998 with new versions, and I would say that's part of the problem this time around, because at this point, arcades aren't as strong as they were in the early 90s or even the mid-90s, so the more revisions you go through, the longer takes for you to like see or play a Mortal Kombat or have a change on you, I feel like that's going to lessen your interest in the game going forward.

It's like, oh, they changed it again. I have to learn new moves again, or, like, new games are already out now. Like, what's going? Like, I feel like they might have gotten away with that MK3, but I feel like it may have really undone some of the hype they built for MK4. No, correct if I'm wrong, David, but the earliest versions of this game were, like, almost like, beta, right? They were missing features.

They were missing all sorts of things that they had, like, to revise into the game. Yes, my arcade actually got 1.0 on which Noob Saibot was on the character's select screen fully playable but there were no endings. I think there were only maybe

six characters and then the rest of the portraits were Mortal Kombat's kind of trademark question mark. So I got to play all three main versions of this and I think I was the exception here. I would eat up anything Mortal Kombat but Diamond is definitely right

in that, like, if you played one of these versions and you beat it, you really weren't that excited about the next one. First of all, because it wasn't really clear that you were playing a new version unless the jump was so dramatic as from 1.0 to 2.0, where it had a full, you know, roster of characters, endings, fatalities, etc. If you beat 2.0, which was probably the most common version for a while, and then 3.0 came out, you really couldn't tell. There was not a lot of reason to jump back into it if you'd already finish.

it and we're just waiting to play it at home. As I recall, they put something into the attract mode, which actually did make a big deal out of version updates, but that's like, you only see that if no one's using the cabinet. So if people are playing it, you can't tell at a glance. You know, you have to wait for it to stop. Yeah, and that was kind of, that was the exception to the rule. Like, they didn't really advertise updates to Mortal Kombat two or three. It was just, you know, if you could read about these online, which wasn't really prolific

yet for most people, you didn't know that you were playing an update. Unless you saw like, oh, revision 2.0. Like, I followed this site called, I don't even know if it's still around, mknightmars.com. So I knew when 2.0 hit. And I was calling my arcade every day, which I'm sure they loved. Like, do you have Mortal Kombat 4, 2.0? And they were just saying, what's that? You know?

So I had to go, I had to go in and check. And I eventually played it, and I played 3.0 and then got it for the home systems. But, yeah, it wasn't like if you beat 2.0 and 3.0 came out, unless you wanted to see each character's second fatality, eh, you know, just wait for the home version. Good news, Nightmares is still up, but its last update was in 2023, so maybe on a bit of IATUS, but it's still there. Excellent.

I'm glad. High school me is very happy about this. Also, in 1998, you get the home versions of Mortal Kombat 4, which comes for pretty much all the current platforms. You've got a PS1 version, 924 version, a Windows 95 version. There is a Game Boy Color version, which is only in 2D. only has nine characters, does not have any weapons, so enjoy that one, I guess. This was like a grandma trap, I guess.

Grandma, I wanted World Combat 4. Thanks. This was the case of my ladder where if I had had only a Game Boy color at the time, I probably would have bought this and played it begrudgingly. But if you had other platforms at this time, there was definitely no reason to play this one. I mean, even for a handheld, before finding out even for like a Game Boy fighting game this one's weak

yes in my opinion like until we got stuff like the surprisingly decent like Alpha 3 conversion on GBA handheld fighting games really won worthwhile someone's going to challenge me on that online I reckon but I can't think of one

I like playing the Game Boy so the game gear versions of these games the impression I get even like even with like Primal rage and stuff is like this exists to boost the franchise It doesn't, it's not, I don't, it is said that no one goes into making a game wanting to make a bad game. I'm sure that's true. But I don't think anyone went into these games with any other, anything, like any instructions other than, we want the name Mortal Kombat on a box on the shelf in EB games or whatever.

That's how it comes across to me. It's very much product. It's not, it shouldn't be. Like, it's, it shouldn't work. It doesn't work. It's like it's playing Street Fighter 2 on the ZX spectrum. There's no reason to play it. But there is one very special home version, which we've sort of mentioned passing up to this point, which is called Mortal Kombat Gold, and it is indeed a U.S. Dreamcast launch title. So it arrives in the fall of 9-999, Mortal Kombat Gold. And Mortal Kombat Gold is special because they added more characters. Um, all exist, no new characters, but all characters from previous World Combat, Kitana, Molina, Syrax, Kunglau, Baraka, and Sector, Sector, Sector is hidden.

All the characters also have endings, so they didn't, you know, not like a hidden character, the characters all come and they all have endings, so it's a big, it's a big deal. Unfortunately, at launch, it is kind of a mess, and they actually have to release a, like, a second edition, like with alternate packaging to tell people, hey, sorry, that first one didn't really work, because some of the bugs include, like, crashing, glitched out graphics, and And, like, you can't save. So these are pretty big glitches if you get the glitch version. I'm sorry.

Pretty bad. Yeah, I had Mortal Kombat. Of course I did. I didn't buy it at launch. I bought it after Sega discontinued the Dreamcast and all the games were really cheap. And I liked it because I call this game Ultimate MK4. That's kind of what it is. It's the same game, but they add more characters, more stages, et cetera.

But it was just kind of a mess. It was fun if you were a fan, but it was good. kind of broke. I mean, Sector is a broken character. He's so powerful. He could be the final boss. It's interesting. A lot of the returning characters, their fatalities were almost, with few exceptions, copy and paste it in from the games they were returning from. They're just, you could kind of tell, and they looked like kind of a mess too, like Baraka's impale fatalities. Sometimes the characters weren't even really on the knives. They were just hanging in midair. This really did feel like a rush job. I think Yuracom did it. And, you know,

know, it was worth playing if you'd never played Mortal Kombat for it, because otherwise the game was the game. But it was definitely messy. And this was part of where I feel like Mortal Kombat was, it was becoming too much of what had been a good thing. And now was more of just the thing. There was a lot of oversaturation happening. I will say that Mortal Kombat gold and the PS1, and I think the Windows version, which I had, but my memory is hazy, all had full FMV endings. So, you know, same voice acting, same scripts, but they looked a lot better. They were worth seeing again. So that was one pretty significant reason to play the home versions if you didn't want the kind of janky in-engine renderings from the arcade in the N64. But if you wanted to play as Belak, unfortunately, you would be disappointed because Belak was not in the final game. No, he was not.

So that's the Mortal Kombat 4 story in a nutshell, really. So what happened? What happened to Mortal Kombat 4? Well, I think we have a quote here from Ken Fidesna that sums it up pretty well. Mortal Kombat 1 sold over 23,000 copies. Mortal Kombat 2 sold 26,000 copies. Mortal Kombat 3 sold around 15,000. Mortal Kombat 4 sold around 4,500 copies.

So, very much a case of diminishing returns. And, you know, you can point a lot of fingers, you can sort of, you know, you can sign a lot of problems that would have had. I mean, I think number one, the problem is arcades in general, are just, they've lost a lot of their luster, you know, late 90s. By the time you got late 90s, you've got PlayStation, you've got Saturn, you've got the Dreamcast coming out. Like, home consoles are looking great. And home console games are doing things arcade games just don't do. So, like, arcades in general are getting harder to find. I think if you're not near a big city,

you're probably not going to go to arcade as often as he used to. Um, certainly I know in my, like, I live, obviously, New York had arcades, but, like, where I lived in the suburbs for a long time, like, in the early 90s, it was so easy. It was so easy for me to find a street fighter cabinet and a Mortal Kombat cabinet, like, around town, in my small town, I could find him. But it's like, by the end of the 90s, if I wanted to play Mortal Kombat 4, I had to go to, like, a shopping mall or a movie theater. Like, I had to go somewhere and find it. It was a journey. And that's a difference. It's not a one-to-one accessibility feature, but if you're not like just hanging around seeing these cabbets anywhere, you're not going to play him as often.

It's just a simple fact. I mean, I think I would argue that as you mentioned in your notes, franchise fatigue is definitely a real factor because Mortal Kombat 3 obviously was reasonably well received as the next Mortal Kombat. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is a relatively, I mean, a massively sort of post-release of the same game. Model Combat Trilogy is another game that's very similar to UMK3 and I know that in the UK press in particular there was this sense of kind of like how many times are they going to re-release this game like what do something new and then of course defenders of the realm the terrible cartoon in 1996

that really didn't do any favours mythologies and and the second movie it's just a big convergence of shit and it taints it and that must have been a factor into MK4 not to mention the fact that it was a you know in magazines it was well known that it was kind of a difficult development

it was well known that it's a little bit janky looking it's a little bit odd it's a little bit off and it's not the re-launch that they would have wanted which is a shame because that does undermine what it does well and what people like about it because it does have this it has this what's the word reputation of just being

crap, garbage. And it's not garbage. You know, it's a shame that it was factored in that way. Yeah, I mean, like I said, this is my favorite arcade version, although some of that is nostalgia talking. I liked the moderate amount of self-expression in the combos, and I was lucky enough that both of the arcades I frequented, had MK4 cabinets. I played it a lot more at home. I had a friend who was a fellow Mortal Kombat nut, and we experimented with combos. We talked about the endings. We followed the development very closely. We would call each other night or day if we saw or did another fatality. And so with the hardcore fans, Mortal Kombat Mania was still pretty strong, but what had been, I think it's fair to say, a pillar of popular culture in the mainstream was

really kind of fading by this point. And it did need a break. In fact, after this, you know, Midway, you know, Ken Fidesna, Neil Nicastro went to Ed Boone and said, hey, we think Mortal combat needs a break, and Ed Boone was like, yeah, me too, and did something else for a little while because, hey, he'd been working on this almost night and day since 1991. That's that seven years of full-time Mortal Kombat work, and she's done a lot since then, but it was time for mortal combat to go on ice for a little bit, for sure. And it would. I mean, not only this was the final arcade game, but there wouldn't be another, like, another mainstream. I was there'd be more ports and things than some spin-offs, but the next, you know, main line,

Mortal Kombat game would be five years later. So they took a long break. And when they come back, they will be designed for consoles, you know, for the living room. And it will, you know, things will change. A lot of things will change for that. Yeah, I'm looking forward to talking about those ones. I very much so.

Something I think we should mention that we didn't mention about Mortal Kombat 4 just briefly is it does have the fatality where Kwanchi rips your leg off and beats the absolute shit out of you with it. And he keeps beating the shit out of you even after the match. over, which is amazing. Yeah, we didn't really talk with fatalities at length, but as we alluded to earlier, like they did sort of

I think as part of an over-correction to three, they took out almost everything except fatalities. So like, and they only really have two. Most characters, you only have two. There's some stage fatalities of course, you know, there's a spike ceiling you can knock people on to. There's a

kind of a fun one. I forget, is it what, the Well of Souls? Where it's like a big fan in the background? You can throw your point. a fan. That's kind of a ridiculous one. I do like the fact that because everything's in 3D, the fatality is now going to have like dramatic camera angles and like, you know, you can have

panning around, you can have different, you know, viewpoints which they certainly take advantage of it in the fan one. Like you actually, you pick up your opponent and you spin them around and for a brief moment, you can like, you are your character and you're looking at your opponent and you're like holding their limbs as you're swinging them around.

Like that's kind of a fun camera angle. Yeah, the Fatalities have always been cinematic, but they did bring it sort of next level with this and then Deadly Alliance, when they were a huge selling point for the game, because they were so horrible in that game, even for fatalities. Like, they had to step it up, the violence, you know. They were a little more grounded in MK4, I would say. I mean, I might correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't get things like Syrax destroying the entire planet.

I'm not sure if that's in there in gold or not. That is in gold, actually. It is, I apologize now, take it back. Yeah. You do, in fact, get that. of all the fatalities to bring back, that was one of them. The best one ever. Yeah, that's, you know, this was definitely a weird time for Mortal Kombat.

I love the fatalities in this game, though. You know, as Diamond said, I love the cinematic style of them. One interesting bit of trivia, all of the home versions would get kind of janky with camera angles. You know, Sub-Zero would have an extreme close-up every now and then of tearing off their head and spine. And then the camera would zoom way out. and then zoom way in really fast and then swing around. And it was kind of like a pendulum. You could get different camera angles all the time.

And that was not supposed to happen. It was messing up. And to this day, there is no arcade perfect port of MK4. In fact, even in the old arcade collections, Mortal Kombat 4 was conspicuously absent. You know, people are saying like Arcade 1up, release MK4, well, they can't. They have to work with ROMs that exist. And there's just, I don't even think maim is at a point. point where it can perfectly emulate mk4 because it's not 10 times as powerful as

Nintendo 64 probably i would have to guess would they be right in saying that the best you can do nowadays is buy it on good old games.com because it's on there the PC version i don't know how good that was it was really good i had that one as well it was i think there was in fact there was maybe a blip of loading time when shenacquid morph which was much more pronounced on playstation and on n64 didn't exist at all because it was on a cartridge but the windows version If you wanted the best resolution, the, you know, the FMV endings, everything, very little loading time. That was the version to get for sure. Yes, well, that's a good point.

I think you bring that up. So, yeah, MK4 is still available. You can go to good old games.com and buy it. I don't know if any consoles have a port at this point. I don't think they do. I don't think so. As David said, I don't think it's even been on any of the many Midway Arcade Treasures compilations or anything like that at all. It never hit Xbox Live Arcade.

It just kind of, it's kind of a black sheep. It gets skipped over. It's a shame. It is. I always felt like if you're going to release a collection, especially if you call it the Mortal Kombat Arcade Collection, release all the arcade games. I feel the same way about, you know,

they skip MK3, you know, vanilla and go right to Ultimate. Like, I don't think anyone's really going to play Vanilla MK3 if they have Ultimate. But if you're going to release the collection, make it a collection. They couldn't even, I mean, the collect, sorry, this is a side note. I probably said it before, so I feel free to kind of. it, but the midway treasures collections, they even didn't have, like, MK1, right? Or two? One of them's missing, and then he put it on Charlene Monks as an unlockable or something.

There were, like, two or three of their arcade collections, and they put, like, Mortal Kombat 2 on one, and then one, and Vanilla MK3 on the other. So you definitely had to buy them all if you wanted to play all the arcade Mortal Kombats. And even, like, the Mortal Kombat arcade collection that came out maybe about 15 years ago now, had so many problems with the input. And it's like there were rumors for such a long time they were going to be remaking those game or at least remastering them

and it never happened. And I don't think you can just, other than trilogy on Gog, I don't think you can buy these old Mortal Kombat games and like anything. Now, I don't think they're on Xbox. I don't think they're on PS5 or anything. They're just not available.

And it's such an important part of gaming history. It really is. There were a couple of studios that tried to remake the Mortal Kombat Arcade games and through no fault of their own, it just did not work out. I don't actually see that ever happening. I could be wrong, and I would love to be wrong.

But I feel like, you know, hardcore fans are saying this would sell a million copies. Respectfully, I don't think it would. I don't think that Warner Brothers would much rather Nether Realm make new Mortal Kombat games, which do sell millions of copies. I feel like if anything, you know, probably what would likely be happening is maybe a Mortal Kombat trilogy, the PlayStation version, gets a re-release someday. but with the expectation that it'll sell a few thousand copies or something. Yeah, as I mentioned, the PC version is available on Gog of Mortal Kombat Trilogy,

and that's a very good version of the game, but it's not it. You know, it's still a port. And I just think it's weird that we live in a world where you can go on your switch right now and you can buy a gimmick and you can buy Panorama Cotton and you can buy Quackwick Aquario, but you can't buy Mortal Kombat. It's ridiculous. You can buy Mortal Kombat 1, but that's not. Not Mortal Kombat.

Yeah, you know. And I wouldn't really recommend doing that on the Switch either, to be honest. No, definitely not. So, that's it. So that's it, I guess. Let's wrap this up. very much for joining us. Thank you for listening. Moral Combat 4, it came, it went, it had its issues, it also had its fans.

I think we all agree it's a major, it's a major stepping stone in the Moral Combat history because Moral Combat is still out there. It's perhaps unfairly forgotten, but I know for me as a player at the time, I very much saw the departure from actors on screen as like That, to me, was, like, that was my draw for Mortal Kombat in general. Now, I recognize that since the series has gone on for many more years, at this point, those original arcade games are the outliers, and now we have these fully 3D, you know, high-resolution characters tearing to their apart. Like, that's what's popular now, so I realize I'm out of touch.

But for me, like, this change was kind of, like, my... This kind of pushed me away from Mortal Kombat for a while. Now, I'm not giving up Mortal Kombat. I'm sure we will meet again and talk about more of all combat in the future. But this was a big deal for me at the time. I was just kind of like, well, if you're not actors on screen, then what are we doing here? Yeah, like, if it's not actors and it's not, you know, really impressive 2D artwork, to me it's just like it's 3D models and I'm not really impressed. I mean, at the time, I'm sorry, I realize, you know, obviously years later it's not great looking.

But for me, at the time, I was not that into how Mortal Kombat 4 looked. By all means, if you love the way it looked, you can tell me I'm wrong. But for me in 97, I looked at it, I'm like, oh, this is not as cool as I want. I don't know. I sort of see it like with hindsight, with the benefit of hindsight, I see Mortal Kombat 4 as the transition to Deadly Alliance. It's like a transitional game. They got there.

And I see, for example, MK versus DC Universe as a transitional game to Mortal Kombat. about nine, you know, and then from then, every game since then has been so different, but it's difficult to see the through line, and that's not really a bad thing, and it does deserve to be examined in its own right rather than just as a stepping stone, and I think that's been a decent, I think we've done an okay job of it, to be honest. Well, well done, everyone. I think we have two, and I will say just one more shot. I would love to see these old games get a re-release. It doesn't have to be a remake, but as someone who, and I think we all here can agree. We all care about video game history. I don't like the idea of games just being lost for

whatever reason. I think that they deserve to be re-released in some way. It'd be cool if a company, Digital Eclipse, or rather, I think it was Other Ocean, did give it a shot. They were one of the companies that was trying to remake these games. It didn't work out. But I think these days, I would love to see Digital Eclipse or a similar company vested in video game history really go back and give these the treatment they deserve because they are an important part of history, you know, that Mortal Kombat is this, it is a popular, it is a pillar of popular culture, not just in video games

and it deserves, it deserves its due. Well, I see it as, you know, think of like, uh, Digital Eclipse's Goldmaster series of Jeff Mentor, an Atari 50 and Taka. Imagine that, but for the Mortal Kombat like one, two, and three, that would be that would be God tier.

To get that level of, you know, insight and macro level breakdown of the design, design documents. And then the games are part of that. you can play the games. That's what I want. I mean, I want them to do everything now, to be honest, but in particular, I think that there's a story there,

there's a huge story there, a story about pop culture and about sort of the individuals as well. And it's a perfect fit for, like, the Goldmaster's series, in my opinion. You could even just do MK1, you know, and it would still be worth doing. Yes. But I want them, Rosalie, to just put deception out again, because it's great.

Okay, Gary, I'm sorry. I do love that game, except for Shinjingo. Oh, yeah, he sucks. Yeah. Boo. Blue Jinkai, like. We mentioned so many times, I do have to say, as a Japanese speaker, are you aware that Shujenko is just the Japanese word for, like, protagonist, main character?

Like, that's all it means. I did not know that. Okay. They named a character like main character. Yeah, they put as much effort into that as they did anything else with Shujinko, I would say. So let's wrap this up. Good night, everybody. Thank you very much for coming to Mortal Kombat.

that, I'm really glad you joined us for this episode. Retronauts is a Patreon-supported podcast. If you listen to this for free, thank you very much. But if you could go to patreon.com slash retronauts, if you give us $3 a month, you get all our episodes

one week early, higher bit rate. If you pay $5 a month, which is just $2 more than the other number I just said. So few dollars, so few more dollars. My goodness, $5, you get a bonus exclusive episode every two weeks. You get a weekly column for me, and I read the column to you,

and I have done many fighting games, including Mortal Kombat. And me too, Noel. You get a monthly community podcast, which usually has me and often Stewart or other returauts talking about what's happening in the world, and we read your comments, we read your feedback, we answer your questions, and Discord. We have a Discord. We have very active Discord where people are hanging out and talking about anything is going on right now. So we do hope you will consider support in the show if you can. In the meantime, David, where can people find you on the internet?

I am still hanging on at David L. Kradok on X slash Twitter slash Twitter. We'll always be Twitter. And yeah, that's the main place to find me. I also have a lot of book excerpts and so far, so on, at

Jurno Portfolio, or D.L.cadoc. Journopportfolio.com, I believe is the address. And later this month, this will date the podcast a bit. apologize, but I will have a very special story bundle coming up at storybundle.com, so keep an eye on for that. Is that going to be live in July? This is probably going up in July. That will be live in July, yes. Okay. Well, then it might still be live while this goes out. So look for story bundle, folks. It might still be there. Even if you don't, buy Long Live Mortal Kombat, because it's a great

book. Yes, that's true. You should definitely buy the book. David, I know generously gave me a copy many years ago when we first did our first Mortal Kombat episode and I often go back to it and look at it for these episodes and it's always fun to hear these stories and you know have him get opinions for people who were there and made the games in case of the World Combat of course

people who are actually in the game literally in the game are there like hello David I am Shang Zung and hello Shang Song Stuart yes oh yes hello we're wrapping the podcast okay yes you can find me on Twitter at

Supercarbara and on Blue Sky, I'm just Stuart Jip on there. I'm also going to... It's probably going to be started by now, but I've got a new thing that I'm doing for the Retron's Patreon, which is the A to Z of British video games.

At the time of... At the time of recording this, I haven't done the first one yet, but I... I'm not sure exactly what shape it's going to take, and you'll already know by now whether or not you love it or you despise it and want me to stop doing it.

I will never stop. Thank you. Never stops, too. All right. As for me, Diamond Fight, you can find me around the internet, including Twitter and Blue Sky and most platforms look for Fight Club, F-E-I-T, that's my last name, not the word fight like combat, like my last name, C-L-U-B, that is a weapon that someone might summon in Mortal Kombat 4. I don't remember everyone's weapon. Also, my website, fightclub.m.e. That's my website, fightclub.

and on that note I guess we'll go out by quoting the very successful and beloved mortal combat annihilation mother you're alive too bad you will die I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. You know, All right.