Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 447: Mortal Kombat

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Wanna feel mortal? Midway's infamous blood-soaked fighting game turns 30 this year, so Diamond Feit, Stuart Gipp, and author David L. Craddock crank the techno and tell tales of Mortal Kombat. Edits this week by Greg Leahy; cover art by Nick Wanserski. 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

You're listening to Retronauts a part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find us and more great shows like us at podcast.hyperx.com. This week in Retronauts, portal Wombat! Oh, wait. I messed it up. We'll fix it in post. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Retronauts. We are here today to talk about the most important fighting game made in America in 1992. And that is Mortal Kombat. that. Joining me on today's very violent, almost disgusting, but also kind of silly journey, we have a regular

guest from the UK. Oh yeah, that's me. Hello. I'm Stuart Jep, and I once pulled someone's skull out of their head with the spine still attached, and as a result I did time. I'm sorry, Stu. Is that a big offense to the UK? In America,

it's a misdemeanor at this point. It's frowned upon. I didn't mean to do it. It was an accident. They snuck up me and tap me on the shoulder in a sort of friendly manner and I went into reflex and the rest of his history. Stu, as an American, I can say, just stand your ground. Okay, you had a right to defend yourself

and you had a right to pull that skull out of its head. Bring the skull to court off. And our special guest, special because they never been here before and because they've written about this game, please introduce yourself. Yes, I am David L. Craddock, and I was excited to be here. Now I'm scared.

This conversation, I'd realize it would be so violent. If this is rated M, my mom is going to have to listen to it for me first. Maybe we can make it so that you have to unlock the unrated one by pressing down up, left, left, a right down or something. Okay. That's why I can work with that. Of course, Stu, you knew the code by heart. Of course you did. It's good code. But yes, David, David Greta, thank you for joining us here. I think the first question we have to ask, Rev the bat, is do your friends call you DLC? That was a later nickname. Definitely. Downloadable content. The first was mortal because of

Mortal Kombat. All I did in school was talk about Mortal Kombat. My teacher, a teacher actually started that. He said, Morto Pass Your Homework up. And I was like, wow, I think I talk about this maybe a little too much. Oh, my goodness. All right. Then you are definitely in the right place on the right show for this discussion. Because, yes, in

this year, don't want to date ourselves, but right now when we're recording this, it is the year 2022. And that means 30 years ago, Mortal Kombat happened. It happened. We could not have stopped it. It happened. It's past tense already.

So we're going to talk about this game, this very important video game. And I think let's just start with the basics from everybody here. So what happened with you? What happened? Can you remember back to when you first saw the combat? What happened for you? When was it? Where was it?

How much details can you give us? We'll start with you a mortal, sir. Yes, mortal sir. That's it. That's what I like. I was in an arcade. My parents had divorced when I was young, which was actually great because they were probably going to kill each other anyway,

and I got some cool extended family out of the deal and two arcades to visit, depending on where I was. And I remember I was with my dad at our local arcade near his place, and there was a mob of people around a machine. So many people I couldn't see what it was, but it was such a big deal that, and this is the only time I recall ever seeing this, although reading up on it, it was semi-common if a game was big enough,

there was a second monitor mounted above it. So I almost felt, like, looking back, it was like I was at a wrestling show or something where you couldn't see the in-ring action, so you just watched the bigger screen. And I saw what looked like a movie in motion. I'd never seen, you know, such realistic graphics before. And then one of them ripped the other's heart out, and Dad kind of whisked me out of the arcade. He's like, nope, nope, we're leaving now. I've made a terrible mistake.

Yeah, exactly. So that was, so you went all the way in. You saw this game the first time, and then you saw its most infamous feature. and a parent escorted you away at top speed. That's right. That's right. It took a while. Actually, my mom was much more up for letting me play that game than my dad was.

He took a couple of years, like, through the home release of Mortal Kombat 2, by which time I was like, look, Dad, I know the blood code for the first game. This game doesn't have a blood code. I'm 11 now. I'm basically a man. Let me just play Mortal Kombat. Well, I understand that. I mean, when I was 11, I believe 10 or 11, I saw Robocop for the first time in theaters. and I feel like that's at least three times as violent as any Mortal Kombat.

So I hear you. I hear you on an ascension to adulthood through the ingestion of blood and guts. Yeah, this happened to poor data a couple of times because he grew up watching. So Batman's my favorite character, and I got that from him. But he grew up watching the 1960s Batman. So he took us, I think I was seven, to see the Tim Burton Batman. He was like, oh, yeah, this is going to be hilarious. It's going to be a good time.

And then, like, 20 minutes in, he's like, do not. not tell your mom that I took you to see this movie, because this is not what I expected at all. I thought Jack Nelson would be fun in this movie. Yeah, exactly. It's fun in a different way. Stuart, not Batman, Mortal Kombat, Stuart. What happened?

Oh, well, my first exposure to the model combat was just the kind of moral panic around it, because that sort of came into the UK at a time when there was a general moral panic about video games. I want to say it was around orbiting the same. sort of time as night trap and Mortal Kombat got sort of roped into that as well but uh it was never like pulled from sale as far as I know or anything like that because the UK loves to have moral panics about things that are ultimately harmless um like Charles Play 3 for example um but my first time actually playing Mortal Kombat was at a friend's house on the on the SNES version and it was terrible because uh I think as as is well known there was no blood at the SNS version

it was all replaced with what looks like sort of sweat. And instead of the fatalities, I mean, they were still down as fatalities, but it was just like Sub-Zero would just kick you in the chest and you'd fall over and die. And it wasn't really as good as, you know, freezing someone and then, like, pulling them in half or whatever it was he does in the first game. There's no real competition.

And in all honesty, well, I did play the other Mortal Kombat, so I didn't become a fan of it until much later until like the sort of relatively maligned PS2 era, which is just me all over, to be honest. But no, I have a lot of love for Mortal Kombat, sort of with hindsight. I read the comics, the Malibu Comics as well back in the day. Those were really bad, but I loved them, and I still kind of love them. My favourite thing about them is the fact that I think it's some kind of mandate

that every character has to have their name on the page, if they're on the page or something. so everyone speaks in, like, the third person. Like, oh, you shouldn't have tangled with Cano, and Cano's in, like, big letters, like, big letters. It's really cool. Anyway, don't read them. They're really bad.

It's like TV pilot writing. Every character has to address another character and use names, like full names. Like, oh, hello, Lieutenant James Gordon. I didn't see you there. All right. So was Moral Combat considered a video nasty? I know Britain had a problem with video nasties, right? Yeah, I imagine it was.

I'm sure that exact wording was probably used as well But, I mean, in the defense of the panicking right-wing Like newspapers, it was pretty extreme Compared to pretty much almost any other game Unless you look at really obscure, I don't know, like PC stuff Or stuff like chiller and stuff like that This was probably the first mainstream like Blood and Guts game that I can think of

I'm sure there's someone missing There's plenty of Amiga stuff that's really violent but not so much, not since the days of Barbarian on the spectrum. Had we seen such gore? Thank you, Stu, for mentioning Chiller. That was the example thinking in the back of my head of a game that's really gross. It's a horrible game. It's really unpleasant, even today, I think.

Mortal Kombat's lovely and pleasant. It's a great game. In comparison, certainly. Oh, yeah. As for me personally, I'm pretty sure I saw it not in an arcade, but in a local card shop. There was a small shop in my suburban town, and even though this place really only could fit about, like, 10 adults packed in, like, shoulder to shoulder, they had about, they had two to three video game cabinets in there at all times, and as kids, we would pile in there, and we would all play these games, and, you know, we played Street Fighter when it was out, and then, sure enough, late, again, probably in the fall of October 92, this new game comes in, and we're all just, we're dumbstruck. We can't believe what we're looking at. We can't believe what it sounds like.

We can't believe what it looks like. And obviously, we don't know, you know, we don't know any of the secrets. So I'm pretty sure it wasn't until maybe either myself or someone else was playing. We're all sort of watching in awe. And then all of a sudden the computer, you know, we lost a match and the computer just kills you. And you're like, wait, I died. Do I get to play again? So I think, like a lot of things, the game sort of, game.

sort of gave us a peek at what was underneath the hood before we ever learned about those things ourselves and how to do them. So just so the game sort of every once a while I would show you, oh, this can happen, you know, if you lose. You can die. The interesting thing about that era was, I remember

going to school and telling a friend about it, and they were like, oh, get out of here. That doesn't happen in video games. Video games are Mario and Nintendo. And that was the thing. You couldn't just go Google, like, Mortal Kombat, guy with metal plate, tears out heart. and find video clips, right?

Like, you had to kind of see this stuff to believe it. If you didn't, if you don't know that that's coming, that has to genuinely be terrifying the first time you see it. With the sound effects and just the sudden viscerate, I must be really upsetting. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, as a 10-year-old kid,

and the first Mortal Kombat was less over the top than the ones that followed. So you had these, like, really kind of primal screen. and, you know, the sky going dark, and it was just like, wow, what did I just see? So maybe in retrospect, Dad was right to kind of escort me out of the arcade because I just thought about that all night, like, what just happened, you know? Yeah, there's a little bit of understatedness to the early ones, and in the later games, it's more like, I don't know, someone explodes into, like, 300 thigh bones or something. It's not quite the same. Mortal Kombat 3, a cartoon. Yeah.

All right. Let's step back for a second. Let's look at the bigger picture here. We're talking about Mortal Kombat. So it was, it was a big hit, and it was innovative in a lot of ways. But almost a lot of its aspects sort of have came before it, you know, indeed, almost 10 years earlier at Ballet. Actually, you know, before we get into this, David, you've written an entire book on the subject. I wonder if you can possibly explain the Bally Midway Williams Tangle, because I've read about it several times. I never understand where, what, is it one company? It became one company? Do you know how it works? Even now, I will have to give you the abridged version, because unless I read my own damn notes, So I will probably get something wrong.

All right. Better than nothing. So there's Ballywood Way, Midway, and then there's Williams, and they were competitors, and then eventually one absorbed the other. And the Midway name was just given to Williams' arcade group. So to make this even more confusing, all the guys I would talk to who worked on Mortal Kombat, who worked on any quote-unquote Midway game kept calling it Williams. And in my head, I was like, so wait, I'm going to have to look this up.

Because is it Williams? Is it Midway? Nope. Turns out it's both, depending on the... the year and the day and the time. And Midway was just kind of given to, you know, that's the logo you saw on the side of the cabinets. That's the logo you would see kind of in the copyright screen of the home versions,

which acclaimed distributed but did not make. They gave those to yet other studios. It's a whole ball of yarn. Well, almost nine years before Mortal Kombat in 1983, there was a video game based on the popular band journey. This game was made by Ballet Midway. and one of the quirks of this game is the fact that they actually took photos of the band and put their heads on little bodies and then all the mini games you play in that Journey game

are you actually see the members of the band Journey sort of like, you know, running and jumping with a big head on a little body, but it's them. You can see it, it's them. It's like the real people are in it. Yeah, it was really interesting because if you look at Journey and then about five years later, Williams did NARC. Yes. And that was kind of, the tech side was pioneered by Warren Davis, who kind of took an interest in digitized graphics. And even, like, if you look at Journey or NARC now, it's really hard to pick those out

as digitized characters in the same way that Mortal Kombat's characters would digitize because those first two games really look cartoonish. The technology was still kind of a work in progress. And I think it's because, you know, in Journey, again, you just had the photos for their heads. Everything else was very cartoonish. And Mortal Kombat, it was like top to bottom digitization. It looks like you're controlling movie actors.

Right. And the characters in Narca are very small. Considering, like, the overall screen real estate, the characters are relatively small. You know, I just interject that I can't believe Nock is as early as 88, considering how it looks. Like, I would have put that in the bin 90s visually. Yeah. That's insane.

It is. And it's only kind of relative to Mortal Kombat that you're like, Hmm, maybe, maybe this isn't quite the same thing. But yeah, like, it was very impressive for the day. And then, you know, Warren Davis left Williams, aka Midway, the game division and went to do his own things. And he came back around the time that Ed Boone and John Tobias were working on Mortal Kombat. And he, and one of the first things he noticed was the large character sprites. And he actually said, like, yes, finally, this is kind of what I wanted to see someone use my technology for.

because, you know, instead of small characters, let's make them larger than life because the graphics just look all the more impressive, the bigger they go. Absolutely. Let's also drop a note for Smash TV, the 1990 game, also by Williams. Smash TV does not have real people in it.

It's all cartoon characters, but it's also very openly gross. You know, like, there's a lot of blood, there's a lot of gore. I think when your character explodes, you can, like, see their body parts fly away. And, of course, the infamous mutant man battle, like you basically, you're taking off his limbs, then you're taking off his head, and eventually

he's just, he's just like a big bloody stump on like two tire treads. Like, it's, it's kind of nasty. But it's, it's fun. It's ridiculous. It was. It was such, it was like the quintessential arcade game for that time, because it's just very eye-catching for how, for how gross it was. And that same year, not Williams, although I think Williams slash Midway slash whoever now

owns it because it's been put on compilations, uh, Pit Fighter. Pit Fighter was actually made by Atari, and that is a fighting game, and it has live-action people in it, but it is no Mortal Kombat. It's really, I mean, okay, for the time, it was definitely like, oh, what is this? What the hell is this? Oh, look, it's a game with real people in it, but it has a lot of faults. The animation is not handled very well. It is absolutely not gory. It's all just kind of like, I mean, they're almost like dolls.

They're sort of like, they punch kick at each other, and, you know, you might hit somebody, but everyone just sort of like bounces around. It's very choppy. I mean, certainly for me as a kid, I played it. Of course I did. But if you go back and revisit it now, you kind of look at it. You're like, oh, this looks like it's more like the mid-80s. It does not look like a 1990 game. Yeah, I think the one thing that immediately stands out is that, you know, there's a pretty colorful cast of characters there, but you don't play as most of them.

The three characters you can play are just muscular guys with sweaty chests and pants. And there's nothing as memorable as Mortal Kombat there. The funny thing is I couldn't do this in time to include it in the book, but I spoke with Rob Rowe, who was in charge of the digitization in that game, who's now the head of franchises at Pixar, and he said it was, you know, they were really impressed with their game, and then a couple of years after it came out, they saw Mortal Kombat, and they were like, oh, so this is how you do that. Can I perhaps erroneously shout out Guardians of the Hood, which I think came out about three months before Mortal Kombat did? And it was sort of like a follow-up to pit fighter. And now I'm starting to think it may have never been released. And I've just made a fall of myself. That's a real video game.

I've heard of that. I've heard of that name before, but I do not know its release date off top of my head. Yeah, I think it was like mid-92, and it was sort of a follow-up to pit fighter. But by Guardians of the Hood, it's about as worth playing as it sounds, I suppose. That was Atari. Wikipedia says June 92. So yes, it was out before Mortal Kombat proper. But I guess the Mortal Kombat era had already been tested at that point.

So certainly they were already deep into the work on Mortal Kombat, but it wasn't out yet. Sliding Doors scenario, if things had gone differently, we could have been talking about Guardians of the Hood right now and mentioning Mortal Kombat as just a quick aside in the legacy summary. You know, we could have just been watching the Guardians of the Hood 2021 movie. But sadly, it wasn't to be. Well, that's good. But thank you, Stu. Thank you for bringing that up an example.

Because, yes, it's very important to recognize that moral, combat, for all its strengths, very little of what Mortal Kombat did was a first. You know, it was very much, the cast and crew were building on ideas, things they had seen in their childhood, things they had seen in their arcades, things they had done in their past, and they kind of put it all together, and that's where Moral Kombat came from. It was an amalgam of people's lives and ideas and memories and fantasies. Everything is in there, you know, in the soup. And you mentioned David Ari, their name. So, yeah, the two, I would say, central figures of Moral Combat are Ed Boone and John Tobias. And I just want to stress this.

So both were career guys, but they were relatively early in their careers. Ed Boone was only 27 in 91 when he started working on Mortal Kombat. He had been in the pinball division before that. John Tobias was only 22. He had worked on Smash TV. He did artwork for Smash TV. He drew a lot of things for Smash TV. And those two guys are sort of the central hub. I guess, David, maybe you can speak more to the Tobias Boone relationship there. Because you actually met these people, right? They are real people. They are real people. So I've communicated John first to do interviews over email. Ed is pretty hard to get a hold of because Warner Brothers is kind of gatekeepers to talking to literally anyone there. But they had both kind of left their mark in other industries, even as young as they

were. I mean, John Tobias came from comics. He'd worked on some Ghostbusters issues, and Ed was programming pinball games. And I heard a funny story recently, not from him, but from someone who remembers him saying, like, oh, I actually know it was from him, because just recently he received an Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Award. And he remember being kind of surprised that there was any programming required for pinball games. He was just kind of programming the score and special effects on LED screens, but he wanted to do video games. And so I believe Ed was working on on high-impact football. John was working on Smash TV.

And they just got to talking. They said, you know, eventually we should do a game together. It should be this martial arts game. And it was just kind of there wasn't even moonlighting because it was just the subject of conversations until they were both finished with their current project. And Midway's manager said, oh, we have a slot to fill until NBA jam comes out. Who can whip something up in like six months? And that's how Mortal Kombat started.

But, yeah, there was an anecdote in your book, David. I just want to ask about, so Tobias and some of his friends who would eventually be the Mortal Kombat cast, they had already known each other for years and they were trying to make a movie in high school. This was an amazing story from your book. Yeah. So I think the ringleader was Dan Piscina, who was 10 years older than everybody. So that kind of made him the de facto ringleader. And, you know, he knew the others such as Rich DeVizio, obviously Carlos was his younger brother, Hosong Puck. They had studied martial arts together. And John, Tobias, was friends with Carlos and a couple other guys. They would hang out and read comics, draw. And John wanted to make movies. So in high school, he was given permission since he was such a hard. worker made good stuff to borrow a lot of the equipment. So he and his friends who became the Mortal Kombat crew, they helped John pack all this stuff into his car. And they were in a car accident, not their fault. A lot of the equipment was smashed. And everyone was okay but shaken up. And that was kind of an early bonding experience that they all shared before sometime later when John would kind of call on them to play these characters for the martial

arts game that he and Ed were finally being given a chance to make. That's an incredible history, just the fact that they already, you know, it's like they already had so many ideas. They already wanted to work together. It was only just a matter of happenstance that came together years later. It's like, oh, no, this is going to be the project. Yeah, it was sort of happenstance after happenstance because, you know, from my understanding is John and Ed didn't have these guys in mind. It was just like, well, neither of us knows martial arts. We'd look kind of goofy trying to do kicks and punches and flips in front of a camera.

Who do we know? And John was like, oh, I know some people and just gave them a call. and see if they wanted to pitch in. And these people, yes, you already mentioned several of their names, but yeah, Daniel Pesina, he was, you know, the older one, you know, he was already 32, my goodness. His younger brother, Carlos, only 24, Richard DeVizio, 23. This is amazing to me, again, from your book, Hosung Pack, 24 years old. He was already in the Black Belt Hall of Fame before any of this happened.

Yeah, he was like the number one ranked competitor in the United States at that time, not just in winning martial arts matches, but in forms where you just watch them go through all these wild ornate moves with weapons. I mean, he was so accomplished. And, you know, some of them had even played stunt doubles in the Teenage Mutin Ninja Turtle two movies, which I didn't realize at the time, if you go back to certain frames, like there's a part early in the movie where Shredder kind of comes back from the dead. And all the foot soldiers and Tats are like, oh, Shredder, you survived being blatantly murdered by Casey Jones. And if you pause right there, you can actually see one of the guys with a shocked expression on his face is Dan Piscina.

He and Rich played foot soldiers. So since they were masked, they said they'd get, you know, beat up in one frame and go out for a second and then kind of circle back in to play another foot soldier. And Hosung, probably because of his accolades by that point, was actually a stunt double for Raphael. So he actually got to be one of the main characters. So he was a turtle. He's a legit turtle. Yep. That's right.

Got to sweat in those in those costumes. which are still awesome. I still love the costumes from those first two movies, but it just gave me a whole new appreciation, watching them back and knowing that at any moment, you know, Raphael could have done a cartwheel kick and uppercutted any of those foot soldiers 30 feet into the air. And, of course, the turtles met, at least, I think, Scorpion in injustice too.

There I've connected it to Mortal Kombat. That's right. That's right. All these cross-in other way. Yeah. It's either other than the main way you were discussing. It's becoming as tangled as the world. William's Midway connection.

Yes. But yes, so the concept, the Mortal Kombat concept, at least the quote we have here from your book, a martial artist turned movie star who gets wrapped. wrapped up in a brutal martial arts tournament. And let's be honest, that's kind of enter the dragon. Like, it's kind of almost exactly under the dragon, except, I don't know. Bruce Lee in that movie is not necessarily a movie star, but I think people watching it, he sort of looks like, you know what I mean?

Yeah. There's a very thin veil of, oh, this is, you know, original idea, do not steal, you know, our secret martial arts tournament on an island that you get to by boat. And there's a guy who sits in a throne and watches you. and yes, you saw this movie. Yeah, and also very intentional because, you know, Dan Piscina, Carlos Piscina, Anthony Marquez, who was actually on deck to play Scorpion and Sub Zero on Mortal Kombat 1, but he heard himself in the gym and couldn't get cast until Mortal Kombat 2 as Kung Lao.

They all kind of worshipped at the altar of Bruce Lee. He was the guy. Everybody wanted to be Bruce Lee and Hosung Pack especially, you know, jumping forward a bit. If you look at him, his Liu Kang model in Mortal Kombat, the Black, pants, the white shoes. He's basically, they gave him a Bruce Lee type outfit. Oh, yeah. He's making noises, too.

He's doing all the noises. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, although, so the voices in all the games up until, geez, five, I think, was Ed Boone, all of them. Even Lou Kang's, well, I guess Sonia was probably Liz Maliki, who we'll talk about later. But all the voices get over here, Lou Kang's battle cries, that was all Ed. Jeez, so if you ever interview Ed, you have to ask him what, what Raiden actually says. Yeah, I doubt he'd even tell because he is like the master of keeping secrets.

There are later chapters where I write about like John Tobias would find out, but, oh, I did not even know this character was in the game. I need to go talk to Ed because he clearly put this in there just to pull one over on me. So that was their idea. Very much Enter the Dragon. But, you know, this is 1991. Unfortunately, Bruce Lee had been dead for almost 20 years. So their idea was, well, what if, you know, I think that they pitched the studio, you know,

what if we get one of the contemporary action stars? And I'd heard Van Dam for years, but you said Steven Seagal was also in the running? Yes, this is something I believe it was either John Tobias or Roger Sharp told me. Midway was very big on licenses at the time. And so when Ed and John pitched their martial arts game, the first thought was, okay, well, it can't just be a martial arts game. Who would play that? And so Roger Sharp, who was kind of the head of their might,

marketing and licensing said, okay, well, we have the opportunity to maybe work with Van Dam, maybe work with Segal, pick one of those. And I think Van Dam probably would have been the better choice. I was always in the Van Dam camp in that era. I don't know what Stephen Seagal would have brought to that. But it's kind of funny when you think about it. I mean, Van Dam obviously didn't work out, which ended up being the best thing possible for Mortal Kombat. But if Stephen Seagull had, yeah, we would have totally been talking about Guardians of the Hood right now is no one. Stephen Sengal got the last laugh by appearing in the Mega Drive game.

Steven Zagal is the final option, which was canceled and no one has played it. Yes, that was his final laugh, for sure. For sure. Yeah, he sat back in his slugs the gar thrown and, like, tended his fingers, satisfied that his work was complete. Something tells me if Steven Sagal had said yes, he would show up and either wouldn't agree to filming or would only film moves that he would win, and he would not allow anyone to fatality him. You know, that's what I feel like would happen. You're probably right. He can't take my head off. What are you talking about?

But then you can have a mirror match because it would never end. Oh, that's true. He would refuse to put himself over. And he'd be like, well, can the final boss be maybe a transforming forearm, Stephen Segal, who transforms into other Stevens Seagulls? All his limbs are also Stephen. Yes. Stephen Segal Combat But this, as you said, they probably lucked out

and that no celebrity got involved so they were able to make the completely original character Johnny Cage and to me the funniest thing once you realize this once you look at Johnny Cage in the game you look at him

and you really look at him and you're like, oh, he's literally dressed like John Claude was in Bloodsport like he's wearing the outfit. Yeah, even does the split punch, which of course was one

Van Dam's things. And it was all kind of a riff, not to even poke fun at Van Dam, because at the time he probably didn't even notice, but it was just like, hey, here's a, Mortal Kombat kind of became famous for that. Like, on the surface, it's all the blood and the gore, but all those winks and nods from

developers to people who know became as much of a trademark, if not a bigger trademark, than the violence. Yes. And before they arrived at their infamous name, they had a lot of working titles, including in Kumite, which, of course, is a bloodsport thing.

They talked about death blow, final fist. I'm sorry, that would not have worked. Fatality, I kind of like fatality, but then you worry about, you know, would that eat sports, would the e-sports guy have to change his name? Dragon Attack, I think that's clever, but that sounds like, that sounds like the dragon shooter that, what company me? I forget the one, but the, remember that the vertical scrolling shooter where you have a dragon, you're actually, yeah.

Dragon Spirit, I think. Yes, but yeah. So if you named a game Dragon Attack, I would assume I would either be playing. laying as a dragon or fighting a dragon. So I would be upset. Mortal Kombat 2, they could have called it Dragon Attack. Yeah, that's true. Could have been a subtitle, yes.

Yeah, it would have been weirdly specific. They could have called it. Dragon Attack, you know that one move with Lou Kang. But yes, apparently they were from their many ideas on a whiteboard somewhere. Someone misspelled the word combat. And I guess the dispute is who wrote what, but ultimately they say Steve Ritchie said Moral Combat and everyone is locked onto it? That's right.

Steve Ritchie was, I believe, still in the pinball division at that time. He was a friend of Ed Boones, and Steve and Ed were talking in his office, and Richie just kind of saw that and said, oh, you should just call it Mortal Kombat with a K. That'd be funny. And Ed was like, yeah, that would. And then Ken Fidesna was one of the managers at Midway, and I got to talk to him. That was really cool because he kind of opened his notes to, like, sales units and stuff that only he and Neil Nicastro, who ran the place at the time had access to.

And he had gone to Japan and bought this gold-plated dragon home with him. And John Vogel, who became the third member of the four-man Mortal Kombat team, was like, can I borrow that for a second? And then they digitized it and put it in the game. It kind of became the logo. So maybe dragon attack. We keep coming back to dragons. Maybe dragon attack would have worked.

well it's i must say mortal combat as far as logos go the mortal combat dragon is one of the great all-time logos it's so good yes it uh still i still think on a marquee if you put dragon attack on there i'd be i'd walk up to it like where's the dragon when did they get to the dragon attack yeah it is i i have an affinity for for video game logos that can be just the logos with no move or no words and then just tell you anything tell you everything you need to know and i feel like the Mortal Kombat is one of, like, maybe, I don't know, half a dozen that are that prolific that can do that. Well, yeah, I mean, I think just by the time the second game arrives, right, the Mortal

Combat logo itself is just like the victory marker. Like, every time you get a win, you get like a little logo on the screen, right? So in one game, it's become sort of universally understood that, oh, yes, this is our, this is our dragon. You know the dragon. It's our dragon. Yeah, exactly. And everything, even, you know, Luke Kang's dragon fatality that Stewart mentioned, they even,

and they made sure to animate it so that it looked like the classic Chinese dragon that was the influence for the logo. So that dragon is just everywhere. It's just that iconic. And even like the first thing you see in the movie as well, that burning air. That's right. It's awesome. Oh, gosh.

Yeah, that opening, yeah, it spins around and the music comes. Oh, geez. Oh, boy. Also, in later in the PS2 games, all the many currencies are all of the dragon logo coins. I was thinking about that, too, all the different colors. That's something they still use today in the modern games. Yeah, except now you have to pay for them with real money. Yeah, yeah.

There are advertisements all over the main menu. It's just not the same. Just not the same. Do they have a clever name these days? Is it like the mortal, the mortal coins with a K? Yeah, coins with a K or currency with a K. Combat coins. Yeah, combat coins.

Combat premium currency. But thank you, David, for mentioning the gold statue. Because I really feel like that story, you know, and other anecdotes really emphasize how this was all, this was such a handmade passion project. You know, it was a bunch of guys getting together with their friends. Everyone just sort of came together. They went, apparently, you said,

they went to shoot all the actors in the same space that had been used for NARC. But in the years since NARC was made, it was just full of like a bunch of storage, right? So they had to all go in there and like all the actors stuff had to move all the stuff out of the way so they could actually film the video game. Yeah, it was like the arcade offices equivalent of the kitchen. in junk drawer. Like there were car parts in there and they all had to haul this stuff out and then get set up, you know, John set up lighting in a certain way because he already had a kind of a,

he and Ed had a mood and a look in mind that they wanted to go for. And that's part, a lot of people ask me like, oh, what did you learn? And it still just kind of leaves me kind of gobsmacked that Midway's managers had no expectations for this. They were just like, we have a slot on the schedule. We need something. you two want to make a game, just go do it. Oh, and by the way, how about John Glad Van Damme?

How about that guy? And all of this went into it. But, you know, obviously, Ed and John, even though their higher-ups had no expectations, really didn't even care, they were like, well, we're not saying this is going to be, like, the greatest game of all time, but it could be pretty cool. And they just poured all their energy into this. And I feel like that's, like this always happens to video game creators. You probably start out, at least if you're going into the AAA industry,

you start out working on whatever you're assigned to, but you, you all. always you harbor these dreams of doing your own thing and kind of working night and day to make it happen. Absolutely. And in the case from World Combat, you know, they all came together and a lot of the costumes, according to your research, a lot of the costumes were just either, they were either their private clothes or they would just go to a costume shop and just buy whatever they could find. Is that right?

That's right. Yeah. So a lot of these guys, because they were professional martial artists, they had all sorts of, you know, like karate geese. weapon paraphernalia, just kind of lying around and otherwise for a lot of games like NARC, there was a costume shop called Chicago costume near the office within walking distance that John and Ed or Warren Davis or Eugene Jarvis or any of these guys would just go to just kind of root around, find what looks cool, throw stuff on, and get in front of a camera.

And yeah, just the ad hoc nature of these games compared to something. I mean, I still really enjoy the modern Mortal Kombat games, but they're obviously, they have this really professional sheen to them that just kind of makes me whimsical for the era when they were like, oh, yeah, you have a, can we buy a phantom of the opera mask and spray paint it gray for Cano's metal plate? That would look kind of cool. Just kind of throwing things together,

and it turned out to just look so awesome. I feel like they kept that kind of ethos all the way through the PS2 era as well, because as much as those games were, as acclaimed. They still have that feeling of kind of like, what if we had like a version of puzzle fighter? We just throw that in. What about a racing cart game just as well?

Just put it in there as well. Why don't we have a video of like cooking with Scorpion and put that in the game? And it just feels very like passion project again, which I really like. And as you say, the new ones are a lot more sort of slick. So it's kind of lost that a bit. Yeah, that almost seems to happen to so many things.

I mean, I guess it's just anything that becomes really big and has a lot of money behind it that'll happen but as a wrestling fan you know modern wrestling has its problems but it's just so overproduced today where if you go back and watch those shows like the pyrode go off and there'd just be this haze of smoke hanging over the arena so that nobody could see anything for like the first 45 minutes i'm like that's mortal combat one there's just smoke hanging everywhere and we're kind of all doing the best they can but i i you're right uh not to go too far off track but i we loved the my friends and i loved the name of that cart racer motor combat that's really really clever and that game was

super fun. And that's actually a lot of fans in the research. They're like, I wish they'd do stuff like that again. It felt like when you bought those games, you were buying like an anthology of games. Like, Mortal Kombat was the main attraction, but you could very easily get sidetracked and all this other stuff that someone was just like, what if we throw this in? And that kind of, I mean, even in Mortal Kombat 3, you could play Gallagher. You know, just all these little secret mini games hidden within the main game. I like the wrestling comparison. I mean, that works considering that there was that WWF,

I want to say WrestleMania that was very Mortal Kombat-like. And I know they originally had fatalities in that, but let's save that for the wrestling games episode.

And the Shockmaster, that's kind of Mortal Kombat-ish, I would say. Oh, very much. Glacier? That's Sub-Zero. I mean, come on. Yeah, there is sub-zero, yeah.

So let's, let's dive into the characters a little bit, because I think one of the strong points of moral combat is, you know, are the characters they came up with, I guess most, most of the lore, quote-unquote, is from Tobias, right? Most of it? I would say that's accurate. Yeah, although he and Ed Boone were just talking all the time. So there was this very free-flowing exchange of ideas, but, you know, they were both martial arts movie fans, and so they had this stuff that they kind of wanted to recreate or put their own spin on. And I think the reason you can say most of it comes from John is he was the one who was ultimately in charge of writing things down, because in these days, Boone was the only programmer.

He was the only programmer through, I think, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. And so he had his hands full with the code, but that also gave him the opportunity to kind of tweak things to his liking and insert a lot of secret characters that they would retroactively develop lore for. So we have, you know, we have the main guy, quote unquote, Johnny Cage, apparently one of his working names was Michael Grimm, which, no, sorry, no, that's just not. That's not going to work. That's awesome.

It's such a comic book character name that, like, Michael Grimm is Mortal Kombat or, you know, it just, it has like a really corny ring to it. But then Johnny Cage probably had that same. It has a movie star quality to it. I really like that name. That's a cool name, yeah. It is. And as we said, he's dressed exactly like Jean-Claude's outfit in Bloodsport. He does the split.

Daniel Pesina plays Johnny Cage. He said he did do the split like 30 times during filming, so it was really painful. And they spent, because he was the first one, because he was like the test subject of the, you know, the coal mine canary, if you will, they said they spent about a month just working on him to sort of like figure out what they were doing, right? So, yeah, what happened is, you know, a lot of the guys came in for that initial test. And then Dan Pesina was the first one to film alone, just to do Johnny Cage. And then Ed and John kind of decided, you know, like, let's basically make, I don't know if this turn. term was an extent at the time, but it's what developers now would call a vertical slice. You know, let's make a complete character. Let's get a background, some sound effects.

Let's just see if this is working. And that's kind of where, you know, John Tobias knew fellow John, John Vogel, who, you know, John Tobias would draw a lot of these things, like the stages by hand, and then John Vogel would kind of implement them. Dan Forden was their audio guy, who's just brilliant. I love the soundtrack for those early games, all the sound effects. And they basically got it to where you could do a mirror match with Johnny Cage. And that's when it was working well enough that they knew, yeah, let's keep going because there's definitely something here. Absolutely.

And he's got, besides the splits, he's got the kick and he can throw a little fireballs. And I think, does he have an uppercut in the first, the magic uppercut in the first game or the second game, I think. He has a sort of launching. Oh, yeah. Like I always, we always called it the dragon elbow because it looked like a dragon punch ripoff sort of thing. Yeah, that's Mortal Kombat, too. And that was kind of fun because, you know, Ed and John were like, well, let's give everyone a projectile.

But then just as another example of the extemporaneous nature of what they were building, Ed kind of looked at the kick and was like, you know, I bet I could just make him, like, slide forward and have shadows trailing behind him. And John goes, oh, yeah, that'd be cool. And so that's kind of how the shadow kick started. And it is such a really cool effect. It's one of the ones that really stood out to me as a kid. This guy was shadows trailing behind him. And really, that sort of shadow effect, that predates what would become the norm in a lot of fighting games, but especially Street Fighter, you know, when you had like super moves.

You'd have the super shadows behind you, but this is way before any of those games got in the supermoved thing. So, you know, that's foreshadowing. Hey. Yeah, Mortal Kombat with its lore. I think the interesting thing was the timeline of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat became pretty neck and neck almost near the end of Street Fighter 2's run. But, you know, Street Fighter 2 had a year in advance on them. But I remember in Mortal Kombat, they actually used the term mirror match, fighting same character versus same character. And that was like, in Street Fighter 2, you could not do that.

The closest you could get was someone picks Ryu and another person picks Ken. They're a pallet swap. But if someone got to Gile or Chen Lee first and that was your pick, then you were kind of out of luck. So it was pretty novel in Mortal Kombat that even though the cast was seven, one less than Street Fighter 2, two people could be the same character, which was very, very novel. Right, which Street Fighter did not correct until they made the championship petition, in which case it was a big deal. It's like, oh, now you can play the same character, you know, holy smokes. Yeah, I remember seeing that on the marquee along with and play the bosses. It was, I spoke to people from Capcom USA very recently, again, after the book, and I'll be publishing that interview separately, but they admitted like, yeah, we kind of looked with a little bit of disdain on Mortal Kombat, we were also scrambling to catch up and stay ahead of them in a lot of ways for what they were doing.

I mean, as soon as Street Fighter 2 was the hit that it was, I mean, you know, everyone had a fighting game. You know, we should really stress this. Like, there was a floodgates opened and every company who could make a fighting game made one. Just like when Mortal Kombat became a hit, suddenly anyone who could make a fighting game was like, oh, what if we also put lots of blood in it? Or what if we try to put people in it? Or, you know, some games try to do both. And I think very few games did anything as good as it, you know? A club I used to get when I was a kid

that I used to sort of hang out at sometimes They had this incredibly obscure game At an arcade cabinet called Blood Warrior And I couldn't tell you anything about that game Other than it was the biggest rip-off of Mortal Kombat It's just like, why even buy this, why make this In the first place? It was astonishing

And that's like the tip of the iceberg For all the games that I wouldn't say rip-off Mortal Kombat But heavily inspired by it like stuff like tattoo assassins and Way of the Warrior, there's just an endless list of these digitized, gory fighting games that spun out from this one. I think that's the interesting thing. Like, if you trace fighting games back, I think ultimately they traced a streetfighter

to even Mortal Kombat. But when you add Mortal Kombat, every fighting game that came after was derived from one of those. You either had the Street Fighter clone or the Mortal Kombat clone. And I feel like that's true even today. You know, back then, resources being as limited as they were, it was a lot easy. to make a clone of one of those two. But today, even if you have, like, you know, King of Fighter,

I don't remember if it was King of Fighters or Art of Fighting, which actually was made started by the guy who made Street Fighter 1 and then left Capcom. But they look very different today, but they're still, I feel like today it's still Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat are still kind of the longest reigning fighting game standing and ultimately other games draw comparisons to one of those two.

I guess the only remoted exception would be something like Tekken and Soul Calibur, but they're still in debt to Street Fighter, I would say. For sure, for sure. And even then, like, those are so rare today because we kind of realized, like, oh, 3D graphics are not maybe all we thought they were, but, you know, 3D graphics on a 2D plane. And then we kind of, you know, Street Fighter 4 kind of ushered that back in in the same way Street Fighter 2 popularized it way back when. New this April from HyperX, it's the HyperX clutch controller. Get better control of your mobile gaming with its comfortable grip, directional pad, analog sticks, and shoulder buttons. it'll controller can fit a variety of phone widths.

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Right. So today that's like... 28 cents. No more Woppers. Take that to the bank and smoke it. On the HyperX Podcast Network and no more Woppers.com. New this April from HyperX.

It's the HyperX clutch controller. Get better control of your mobile gaming with its comfortable grip, directional pad, analog sticks, and shoulder buttons. This versatile controller can fit a variety of phone widths and can also connect wirelessly

for use on tablets and PCs. Learn more and pick one up online at HyperXNHP. com, Amazon, Microsenter, Target, Best Buy, and other fine retailers. Hello, my name's Jonathan Dunn, host of the O3C podcast every week. I'm joined by my two best gaming buddies, Chris and Minty, and we talk about the games we're playing, the games we love, and how they rank alongside our sacrosanct top 100 favorite video games of all-time lists.

Deep dives into gaming mechanics, history and law, about. all topped off with latching of irreverent wry, British wit, witterings and wisdom. For details on the show and more, head to 03C.games and tune in every Monday on the HyperX Podcast Network. All right, so we were talking about the cast. So we had Johnny Cage, Lou Kang, played by Hov SongPack, and Lou Kang apparently named for Gordon Liu. So that's cool. Cano, so I was, so what is, what is Kenos deal? Did it ever establish what the face thing was or just like, oh, this looks cool?

I want to wear a mask. It was very much an, oh, this looks cool. And a lot of things that John and Ed did was to kind of get people. people talking, because even back then, they realized that, like, if you watch Street Fighter 2's attract mode for the lore, there was not much there. Like, if you were really curious about Ken's blood type, then that would spill the beans. But they wanted to design characters that were very eye-catching. And they even said, like John even said, like, we didn't explicitly want them to watch

the attract mode because we had to earn money on this thing. But if you did, you would kind of look at the characters and gain insight into, oh, so Cano is a mercenary. something happened to his eye and oh sonya's after him that's why she's here and scorpion is you don't realize he's undead until he pulls off his mask and you see a skull breathing fire and that that tells you something's going on with this guy and so that kind of you know tracing it back to cano it was like how can we make these these characters look really mysterious and get people talking not just about you know what the game plays like but who are these characters and how are they connected how can we everything was about spectacle and mystery for that first game especially. Well, speaking of spectacle, I think Raiden is definitely a character that I think that was the first character that caught my attention.

I must admit, a failing of my youth, at that time, I had not seen Big Trouble Little China yet, so I didn't make the connection. But when I did see Big Trouble Little China a few years later, I was like, oh, okay, because his entire outfit is exactly what the bad guys wear in Big Trouble Little China. you know with the hat and everything but to me that was yeah that was the hook for me like that was

my first go-to mortal combat character because like yeah you know the attract mode says he's like a god who's walking on the earth and uh if he actually beat the game as raiden uh the ending sort of makes him like the bad guy because if he wins it talks about how he and his friends all come to earth and they basically destroy it you know like either partying or fighting among themselves or something but it's like it's kind of like the bad end if you if you beat it with raiden so it's kind of a, you know, the later games make him into some sort of hero, some sort of guardian, you know, protector of Earth, like he's Doctor Who

or whatever, but no, in the first game, he's just, he's, he's a bastard, he doesn't care about us. He's here to, you know, he's here to win the tournament, I guess, for his own reasons. I would argue the later games make him into an idiot. So that's a discussion for another time. Yeah, right in

flip-flops between good and bad, more than a big show in WWE, I guess. He makes bad decisions. He makes terrible decisions. It's based on emotion, which you would think for a god was maybe something that wouldn't happen that often. But then again, I don't know. That kind of seems like a lot of what religion is predicated on. But, yeah, I did not, Diamond, I didn't make that connection either.

I hadn't seen Big Trouble in Little China. And I actually had to be reminded one of the early readers. They were like, oh, you know, Radin was actually kind of a bad guy until, you know, a later game. And I was like, oh, that's right. Like, I went back and read his bio and everything. And it just goes to show, like, how we think of Raiden now and how we thought of him for so long. He was a bad guy for a much, much shorter period of time than he was ever the good guy, the protector of Earth's champions like Lou Kang and Johnny Cage.

Right. And, of course, when the first movie comes out, you know, Christopher Lambert plays him like Loki or something. He's just there. Like, he's, you know, he's laughing it up. He can't. Everything's funny to him. Yeah. There's even that really, the moment that always stands on.

to me, like, the fate of the world is in your hands. Sorry. I was like, what is this movie? But it was, like, it was great. They weren't really playing it straight. Like, that's something that Ed Boone and John Tobias did not like what the first movie. Like, Raiden is kind of acting like sort of a clown, but it was a lot better than what came in annihilation. So when you compare those two movies.

Oh, boy. Yeah, Raiden and the first movie was A-OK after that. And so we should get to the ninjas, you know, the, the other two characters are basically one character. It's one guy with the pallet swab. You know, I mean, but hey, Street Fighter did it. Everyone did it. You know, no, no fault, no fault.

But both score... Yes. I would argue that by the time they got to like Mortal Kombat trilogy and you had Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Reptile, Rain, and Ermac, that they might have been pushing it slightly. And human smoke and... Oh, human smoke. I forgot.

I forgot that smoke and Nube's side, but I forgot they had these many ninjas, God. Yeah. It was pretty absurd, but it was, it was an easy way to save. That would have been a good name for the game, too many ninjas. Yeah, I had, I almost, I think I called the chapter in the book, Ninja Fest, because that's how one of the people I talked to describe it, like, yeah, all the ninjas. And it's, I mean, it's really interesting. You can go check out now, just recently, as at the time of recording this,

Ed Boone has been releasing behind-the-scenes footage of things like how they came up with Scorpion's spear and the kid over here, cry. and Scorpion was done first. And that was just kind of practical because Ed, as the programmer, was like, well, we can fit one more character in there if we just do a palette swap and it should be the ninja. That way you don't see any faces and we can give them their own backgrounds and everything. But to their credit, they actually do have, they have some unique animations. You know, like, I, for me, I always think of, I always think of Scorpion, you know, at least as you can't see me. But Scorpion, sort of like he's, he always got, like, his fist raised.

Like, he's almost like he's, like he's palming the spear. Like, he's ready to throw it. Whereas sub-zero is more, he's more cool, you know. His hands are just sort of like, hmm, you know. He's more cool. We see what you did there. Hey, cool guy. If you'd like to learn more about the history of Sub-Zero and Scorpion,

why not go and play Mortal Kombat Mythologies Sub-Zero on the PlayStation 1 console? I could tell you why not. I did that. I'm not going to do it again. No. I did that too. The funny thing is, like, I, I, I, I, liked that game, I acknowledge that it had a lot of problems, but like, Mortal Kombat 4,

again, unlike Street Fighter fans, if you were into the lore, Mortal Kombat Mythologies was must play, and it was pretty good from that perspective, but I remember one thing that I was a stickler for accuracy in the home versions, and on the Sega Genesis version, Scorpion and Sub-Zero both had Scorpion stance, and I was like, no, no, this is not, this is why I was mortal, you know, because I would point out things like this. And, uh, yeah, that, you know, Even their, everything from their stances to their special moves, that's when they kind of had their own animations, and it's part of what made them distinct.

And actually, to go back to Raiden real quick, one of the effects that my friends and I thought was cool, as how he had lightning crackling around him as he played. And it was like, they didn't bring that back for Mortal Kombat too. And that was always kind of disappointing because it was one of the coolest little special effects in the first game. I also always enjoyed his teleport animation, where he just sort of like descends into the ground and comes back up. And I know that for whatever reason, the AI, it was always Raiden.

If you swept Raiden repeatedly, he would usually fall for it. So I had a lot of matches where I would just sweep until the match ended. But if I played as Johnny Cage or anyone who did like a really fast fatality, I could sweep, sweep, sweep, sweep, and then quickly do the fatality before he sort of materialized. And it would make this weird graphical effect where the body would be discolored. But the head would be normal. and the head would fly off and it would just be this brightly-colored body falling down. And I just thought it was the funniest little, you know, it's obviously a bug, but I just thought it was hilarious. Yeah, there was one other one like that where if you, if the final hit when you're playing Sub-Zero knocks them down and you quickly freeze them, I think if it says finish him or her and then you do the freeze, that counts as your hit and the match ends.

But if the freeze connects before the sound bite can finish, they'll be blue. and then if you rip their head off, their body will still be frozen as it slumps to the ground. And I actually just, so I think everyone as a kid, like no matter who, which character you thought looked the coolest, Sub Zero and Scorpion seemed to be the favorites. But one thing I learned in the course of writing this book was that they were actually the bottom of the barrel

in terms of the tier list. So I not only talked to developers to write this, but I talked to a lot of fans, including pro players. And I learned that Sonia was actually number one. because not only was she the most mobile, but her leg grab, to what you were saying, Diamond, if you timed the leg grab right

so that you caught them as they were getting up, human or AI, they could not block in time. The game was like, no, they're still in the standing up phase and they're defenseless. You could infinite leg grab them to death. And Johnny Cage was number two.

And this was just really surprising to me because you would think, oh, well, the ninjas are cool because they have the stun moves that leave you open for a free hit. But it was actually a lot of the characters who not only looked cool, but were the most versatile that are actually considered top tier by people who actually still play these older games professionally. Well, one of the most interesting things about Mortal Kombat to me, and it certainly made it stand out at the time, and I think still does, is the fact that all the characters basically have the same moves. Like, in Street Fighter 2, you know, every character has three attacks, three punch attacks, and three kick attacks.

and they're all, you know, sometimes exquisitely, uniquely animated. You know, Gile's crouching a heavy kick is this sort of this weird sort of double kick where he swings his entire leg out and then swings his entire leg out again. Like if you block one, you have to block the second one or you'll still get knocked down. Whereas everyone in World Combat is basically the same. You push the button. They have the, you know, the high punches, the low punches. They've got the roundhouse.

They've got, of course, the uppercut. But like, the moves, you know, posing aside, they're basically the same. character. And that was a big surprise to me. And I think it's, it's, I think in the book you mentioned, David, that it was intentional because they just wanted to make it easier to sort of play around, right? Like to have people sort of just test new characters or. Yeah. So for the longest time, I would say until Mortal Kombat 9 in 2011, Mortal Kombat was kind of considered the poor man's fighting game because that same, that same accessibility, which was intentional on John and Ed's part, was looked upon with derision by Street Fighter fans.

You know, like, they say, oh, well, if I'm a Honda and I do a standing fierce, that's an overhead shop. I can swat you right out of the air. But in Mortal Kombat, all these clowns have the same normal moves. It's just about spamming the specials. But that's something that, you know, again, you could pick up Mortal Kombat with any character, and you were kind of on even footing. It was about learning their specials and how to do the juggle combos, which were super advanced at the time and very damaging. That's what sets you apart playing Mortal Kombat. Yeah, the juggling thing was also a big surprise for me because, you know, in Street Fighter 2, you know, once you take a hit, generally speaking, if you're, if you're being knocked down, if you get a hit and you're falling to the ground, you have this sort of window of invulnerability.

And when you get up, you have a few seconds of, not even second, like a split second of invulnerability. So you can get up and, you know, you do the wake up dragon punch or whatever. But in Mortal Kombat, you're basically, you always have a hitbox. So if the character, you can be attacked at any time. And if you're really good at the game, you know, as these pros are, you know, you can do a hit and then you can throw a punch and you hit people before they hit the ground and you'll just, you'll hit them again. And if you do enough punches, you can bounce up into the air and maybe punch, punch and then jump kick them out of the, like it's amazing. You know, some of these combos are really amazing. Yeah.

And I was told that by John that, you know, he and Ed figured that out. It was unintentional, but they left it in because they said, well, maybe someone will figure this out. And because of that, until later games, there was no damage mitigation. Every blow you landed did as much damage as it did all on its own. And so depending on who you were using, like with Radin, if you could high punch someone out of the air, jump kick them and hit a torpedo, that was like 45% of their life bar gone in three moves. And if you did that to someone in an arcade who was playing real money, depending on their

temperament, like you might be in a lot of trouble there. I heard all sorts of stories from people who, not because of Mortal Kombat, but just because, you know, there was money on the line. Like a lot of arcades, the unwritten rule was you do not throw because that's like 25% of health. And we're all paying money to play this. So let's keep it, let's keep it cool. Let's keep it legit here. And that was actually where the illusion of everyone in Mortal Kombat having the same moves was somewhat dispelled. because there are things like,

so with the ninjas, if you do a jumping punch with them, they kind of punch straight ahead of them. Johnny Cage punches down. So that's where his hitbox is. And so because of that, if you launch them into the air in a corner and then you jump straight up and punch,

their fists is low enough that when you pop them back up, you will hit the ground before they even start to descend. And in early versions of Mortal Kombat, you could just infinite jump punch them in the air with Johnny Cage until they were dead. And that did not go over well in certain arcade environments.

I think Iron Man can just do that in Marvel versus Capcom, too, though. So, you know, it's... So there you go. And that's, you know, to go back to what we were talking to, how Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter are kind of the two archetypes. I think ground-based combos where you have really intricate strings of moves, even though Mortal Combat did that later, it wasn't as free form. You know, Mortal Kombat 3 added dial combos where it was like a phone number. You have to dial this specific number or it doesn't work.

Right. That's still really streetfighter's calling card to me, whereas juggles, which are still a huge thing in other realms games, the former Midway Chicago, that to me is that's a Mortal Kombat style combo, not just a juggle combo. Actually, before we move on, I just want a really quick touch on, we almost, we almost dropped her out because, honestly, the developers almost didn't have her in the game. Let's talk about Sonia Blade, because when the game launched in April 92 as a test, they only had the six men in it. So Sonia was added later. Can you talk about that story? because that's literally, no one thought about adding a lady until after they touched the game in public. Yeah, so nothing against John and Ed there, but it just kind of shows what the mentality was, not only among players, but among developers at the time, which it's doubly weird when you think

about it, because they, we'll get more into this, but they didn't set out to make the antithesis of Street Fighter, but, like, Street Fighter had Chun Lee, right? So you'd think that you need at least one woman to counter that. But, yeah, it was just the six male characters. And then Ken Fidesna in meetings with Neil Nacastro, it was like, we need a, we need at least one woman in here. And so Daniel Pascina, again, the oldest of this group of friends, knew a younger woman around 17 years old, named Elizabeth Malecki. That blows my mind. Literally a teenager.

So young. And she was into dance and physical fitness. No martial arts experience whatsoever. But they brought her in, cast her, and either Dan or another one of the martial arts. artist was on set at all times to say, okay, now we need you to do a high punch, try something like this. And you can see Liz Malecki's footage. And obviously she doesn't know as much as these other guys about martial arts, but she caught onto it very quickly because she's limber. She, you know, she was in great shape. And she could do this handstand, which John and I were like,

we could do something with that. And it was really interesting just casting her because I love the irony there that the actor with the least amount of martial arts experience. experience became the most dominant character in that version of the game. So did she also kiss people and turn them on, light them on fire? That was the thing that she just did in her personal life, I guess. That was, yeah, that was definitely a personal life. She was really shy about it, didn't talk about it much. There were some outstanding warrants, as I understand.

But no, in a lot of stories, you'll hear that Liz Maleky was the one. She wasn't really vehement about it, but she was like, ah, fatalities, I don't know if I'm comfortable with that. I don't want to do something too gross. And so it's funny because in the context of Mortal Kombat, like, getting burned alive to be reduced to a charged skeleton is tame relative to the other fatalities in the game. But that was kind of her thing. And she was comfortable with it more because, like, it was kind of funny, this kiss of death. And she carried that.

Sonia still has that in the modern games. You know, we were cracking on annihilation before, but I kind of like how they worked in the kiss into annihilation, how she, it didn't make any sense. but it also, but the kiss doesn't make sense anyway. So, like, it didn't make sense in the right way to me. It's like, oh, she picked up some powder and it's flammable powder, you know? Maybe it's magnesium. The whole movie doesn't make sense. No, it's kind of funny because this is still something.

So I've been pretty entrenched in the fan community, which are actually like the most positive group of fandom out there. And this is, they love to debate these little lore things. They're not overly serious about it, but they're like, hey, what do we think this is? And there has been a long-ranging debate about whether Sonia's things like her kiss of death or the pink rings that she fires is that magic or is that energy from some device. Because one of the themes that John and Ed wanted to go for was this clash of tradition via magic and progression via technology and how they kind of meet head-to-head. And even in some of the other arcade games, such as MK3, you know, Sub-Zero's story is he defects from the Lin-Quei because they are involuntarily. turning all of their ninjas into cyborgs and, you know, progression, it can't be stopped.

You got to run away and keep your freezing powers to fight these robots. Yes, that's why that game had cyber ninjas. Yes, and 3,000 rib cages when you would explode because of, you know, cyber ninjas. With dreadlocks. The dreadlocks are the one that really get me. I love the dreadlocks, yeah. I don't want to, I don't, would it be fair to say at this point, I'm not sure if it's something to get into, but talking about the, um, how they originally didn't have a female

character in the game. Do you think that there's a degree to which there is that kind of taboo of violence against women? Because when we talk about Street Fighter, that's one thing. But here we're talking about ripping heads off and putting holes in people's chest and pulling their hearts out and stuff. And I do wonder if that was a factor

at all. John never mentioned that. It seemed to be them to just something they kind of overlooked. Because you know, they even, like Goro and Shang sung were kind of late additions, as as well, but it very well could have played a part there. And I mean, you're right, it was different. Like, Street Fighter 2,

I feel like another hallmark of those games has always been just gorgeous animation and aesthetics. And it was different. It was kind of like watching a bloodless anime fight. Whereas, yeah, like, you're right. Like, ripping Sonia's head off is definitely different than, you know,

sending Chun Lee through the crate that was oddly placed in Giles Air Force stage. Yeah. Empty crate. The empty crate, yeah. Well, it's funny. I guess it's just, maybe just coincidence, but I always thought that Sonia looked to me like Cynthia Rothrock.

You know, I don't know what her discipline was, but she was in a lot of early martial arts films. I don't know if it was karate or kung fu or what her deal was. But she did a lot of martial arts movies at that, you know, in the 80s and her 90s. And I felt like Sonia had a look that was very similar to hers, but maybe it was just that's just how Elizabethan looked. I don't know. Yeah, it was just kind of.

how she looked at the time. It was also like her outfit was really interesting. Like Sonia to me always looked like kind of what Liz Maliki was, like into aerobics and stuff rather than a, you know, a lieutenant who's chasing down one of the world's most deadliest mercenaries. And they kind of straightened that out with Katana and Molina and Mortal Kombat too, who still showed some skin, but not nearly as much. And I guess it kind of became like however it started, the female characters in Mortal Kombat are ended up being some of the best. Princess Catana is my favorite character in the entire mythology just because of how that combination of beauty and grace and that all started with Sonia, even though she

literally was forgotten about until they realized, oh, yeah, we kind of do need a woman in here. Well, you mentioned favorites. So, yeah, I've already sort of tipped my hand. I said that Raiden was my early favorite. That was the one I played the most. When you started playing Mortal Kombat, who was your guy or girl? It was Sub-Zero or Scorpion. I mean, Scorpion kind of had the edge because not only did he,

he have a move that could leave you stunned, but his spear actually did a little bit of damage. And sometimes that was like the last hit you might need to win around, even if they blocked. But it was definitely one of the ninjas. And I think that it's always kind of funny to me how Lou Kang was positioned as the hero of those early games. But really, like, the ninjas were the most iconic. That's who everybody talked about. Well, I mean, they're, their eye-catching, you know? It's definitely like, it's the characters that grab your attention, the, the attract screen, they have the most story.

of them. They established that they hate each other. And, you know, Lou Kang is, Luke is kind of just a guy. He's a really, he's really good at what he does, but he's also just kind of like a guy. Yeah. Although, like, the more I, the more I played the games, the more respect I had for Lou Kang, because they did some really interesting storytelling in Mortal Combat. One of the questions I asked John Tobias was, you know, for every, the other six characters, when they do a fatality, the sky turns dark and that ominous music plays. But Lou Kang's stays light, and the music doesn't play. Why is that?

He said, well, it's because he's fighting there for honor. He's trying to save Earth and represent his temple. Then in Mortal Kombat, too, his people have been slaughtered. He starts to go darker a little bit. And I thought that was kind of cool. Like, I'm a big fan of storytelling in games that is either environmental or just kind of told through a character's actions. And I thought that was, again, one of the many, many ways that Mortal Kombat kind of

distinguished itself from streetfighter. The fatalities kind of tell the story. Again, Scorpion, you didn't realize he was undead until he exposes his true face in his fatality. I think that, like, even outside of the more subtle stuff, Nether Realm, as they're called now, they've always been pretty good at storytelling in their multiplayer fighting games or catering to have a reason why someone might want to play them in single player. Like, I've always thought the story of Mortal Kombat was interesting.

down to stuff like already mentioned MK Mythologies, which is not a great game, but the fact that it even exists is just kind of cool. It has those nice sort of FMVs that flesh out the story of, for example, Mortal Kombat 4, which is heavily based on it, I think, if memory serves, like characters like Chinok and Kuanci appearing in MK4 and stuff. And all the way through that, like all the way down the line, they maintained the same basic plot until Armageddon. Then even after Armageddon, the reboot was,

about time travel, so Armageddon still happened. It's crazy. It's been a while since I've played that, so I might be misremembering that, but even today with the really extensive story modes where you're essentially watching a movie and then occasionally doing the fights,

they're really, really entertaining, and they really do put a lot of love into their characters and their characterization, which I appreciate. Yeah, like the little anime movies they've been putting out have been really quite enjoyable as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're really kind of firing on all cylinders there. And I think you're right.

I'm not bashing Street Fighter here because I enjoy both. But, you know, you couldn't make a Mythologies-type game with any of the characters from Street Fighter because there just wasn't a lot of depth there. That and their timeline, their chronology is so weird because a lot of these later-numbered games are actually, like, they take place between one and two. And so I always felt like when Street Fighter 5 added a story mode, I was like, ah, it's kind of too late. I don't really care at this point, honestly. But the one thing that people loved about this first mortal combat, you didn't realize this until two, was that the endings, not all of them are canon. It wasn't until two when you figured out which characters were returning and how the endings actually shook out that you realized, oh, okay, so Raiden's not actually a bad guy, now he's this.

And so there was a lot of speculation as to what things meant in the game, what fatalities were kind of signifying or telegraphing, what the endings were. meant if they would carry over to the next game. And it's always been fun for the community to kind of compare those to the modern storytelling. As entertaining as I find, other realms, you know, more cinematic games.

Something was kind of lost there because everything is explicitly laid out. You're told and shown exactly who lives, who dies, what their connections are. In the arcade days, it was almost kind of like, it was demons and Dark Souls before those games, but there's just a lot of

speculation around how things are connected and what they really mean. And I feel like that's something that is lost today, again, through the more explicit theatrical style story modes. Can we put you on record as saying Mortal Kombat is the Dark Souls of the Fighting Game? Absolutely. Do it. I'm sure people would love that.

I'm sure to go over it. And even as much as I love those games, I know that the, oh, this is the Dark Souls of, you kind of roll your eyes. But the comparison is there, right? Like, nothing is explicitly laid out. even if, I feel like if Mortal Kombat, the originals would have had cutscenes, they would have been just as vague and kind of weird as the Souls games. I mean, playing, not about getting bucked down in new games, obviously,

but play Mortal Kombat 11 and running around in the crypt, you come across a lot of things that are just oblique references to the old games that you don't get if you'd almost read obscure tire novels and things like that. And I love that they are willing to do that still. Yes. They're still there. That soul is still there in those games. And you have to kind of dig a bit further for it now, unfortunately.

Yeah. And it's also, I think just one more note about the cinematic modes. It's always funny to me that despite the urgency, like the life or death stakes, fate of the world is in your hands. All the characters intercenes by just like walking in. Yes. They're just walking up like, hey, guys, what's going on? We decided the fate of the world yet. And there's just kind of more urgency, I think, in the early games.

in the arcade games. In fact, their endings. It's just really, again, it's really kind of fun to compare and contrast where these games started and where they are now. You know, if we're going to talk about Mortal Kombat lore, I just want to give a quick shout out to the Mortal podcast, which is a fascinating podcast that goes, each episode dedicates itself to one character and goes to their entire story, you know, from the beginning to the end.

And it's really, you know, as someone who's kind of dropped off Mortal Kombat in the later years. It's been really fascinating to tune to that show and find out which character from the early games becomes a different character later in games and which character was died, but then came back, but then also went to hell on like a side mission and then, you know, found a part-time job. And it's like all these weird

things. Like, it's a really good show. And I think eventually, I think there's an episode where he does talk to John Tobias. So it was I really recommend looking up that show, Mortal Podcast. I just, I do find it Lordable that they aren't afraid to make these changes. Like, there's a whole series of games where

Lou Kang is essentially a zombie. Yes. There's, I mean, nowadays, you're playing as the main cast's children, while the main cast are just old and still knocking about, basically. Which, I don't know if their children or nephews are what I forget, but Carries

like Cassie Cage and Jack's's daughter is in there as well, I believe. Yeah, it's a little bit of both because, like, I know in Mortal Kombat X, like, I don't remember his name, but one of the characters is like Kung Lao's nephew or Blind Kenshi's nephew, but then like

Cassie Cage is the daughter of Sonia and Johnny Cage, which who would have thought that would have ever happened? Sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, I just think it's cool that they're not afraid to change these games instead of just repeating the same beats over and over again. I mean, they did do a more or less full reboot

where they had a good excuse to repeat some at the same beats, but they're not afraid to evolve it, which I do think is loadable. Yeah, I agree with you. And that's something that goes back to the arcade days for me. I think one of the reasons I gravitated to Mortal Kombat was while Capcom kept hammering on Street Fighter 2 until just nobody really cared anymore, Midway was putting out sequels with new aesthetics. And that was a big thing. When Mortal Kombat 2 came out, you realize that some characters are missing. And you're like, well, wait, where are they? Because you kind of, you know, if you're playing Street Fighter 2,

you used to the cast always being there, but now there are more of them sort of thing. And it just kind of, there was a continuity to Mortal Kombat. And just the fact that its lore could change, the characters could die or, you know, another little Easter egg. You could see Sonia and Cano imprisoned on Shao

in Shaoan's arena. It was, it just became another distinguishing factor. Like, wow, Mortal Kombat actually has a story and it's moving forward instead of expansion after expansion after expansion. You know, I recently wrote about this. but it still stuns me, you know, in the time between Street Fighter 2 and Street Fighter 3,

Mortal Kombat started, blew up, and then abandoned 2D. Like, all that is in that gap, you know, 92 to 97. Because I think, I think 97 is when Mortal Kombat 4 comes out, right, or is it 98? No, that's not, yeah, you're thinking of, 97 was the arcade, 98 was home version. Right. Yeah, it was just really interesting there. And even Mortal Kombat 4, which was, you know, the most poorly received of the arcade games, it was still that it was in a weird place because it was a 3D game but that most of the fighting still took place on a 2D plane but it was still moving this story forward whereas you know street fighter 3 was great but something else I write about in this book it was so complex fighting games againstly were getting to the point where they were scaring away the casual players which mortal combat was still doing well it's just that by that point there was kind of an oversaturation of mortal combat and street fighter I would say I agree wholeheartedly

Um, so, Stu, I'm sorry, I didn't get, what was your, what was your favorite character, Stu? Or did you not have one until PlayStation 2? Oh, God. I'd have to say Scorpion again, but mostly because I knew how to do the spear. Right. I think it was, I think, and memory serves, I think. it was back back and one of the punches. No punch. Um, very easy to pull off. And

when you don't know how to play games, that's very appealing, you know. You could get the thing, you could pull off the spear, lower them in and do the uppercut for quite a lot of damage. And then I would just, so I would just do that over and over. If you want to ask me, which is my favorite character in the later games, we'll save that for a later podcast,

I suppose. But, uh, no, this one definitely, I'd have to say Scorpion. Although I'm quite keen on Goro, but you don't really get to play as him. No, but I'm glad you mentioned Goro, because Goro is not an actor. They could not find a four-armed man in Chicago, so they went ahead and made a puppet. And I think at the time, I mean, I was, you know, I was old enough to recognize that it was a puppet. You know, I looked out like, that's a puppet.

But to me, I was like, this is a good puppet. It works. It's a really good puppet. Yeah. I'm sure I read somewhere. It might have, in fact, been in your book. They made it with, like, strings like a real puppet and then some, and they were just, Like, why didn't we just give this thing, like, articulation?

So we didn't have to do this, which I love. Yeah. No, Goro was so cool, and he tied into the lore really well, too. And the match before him, it always took place in his lair. And if you hadn't fought Goro, you didn't know this was him, but there was something really big and heavy kind of stomping around above you. And then when you win that fight, Goro just drops down, and the fight against him begins. And I just thought that was the coolest thing that no other Mortal Kombat has really topped. Just once you know it's Goro, you know he's, I mean, he's arcade-level cheesy.

You know, he was designed to take your money. But as far as the cinematic quality of his introduction, I can't think of another boss battle, in a fighting game anyway, that had a really cooler introduction in that era. I mean, honestly, you'd say that it's unfair that he's like reading your inputs or whatever. and I just say he's got four arms Of course he's going to be better at fighting than anyone else He has twice the number of arms I mean come on how many punches can you throw

He's yeah barely one I guess that's a good point He can hold you with two of the arms While just repeatedly punching you with two of the others And that's just I mean how he's supposed to be that You shouldn't be able to beat him It should be unbeatable Yeah that's true

And he is a half dragon So there's that dragon attack connection again It's not half dragon attack though No, that's true. Do dragons have four arms? The dragon that Liu Kang transforms into has arms, tiny, vestigial-looking ones. Yes. Yeah.

Just like the, just like Breath of Wild dragons have arms. Yeah. A little T-Rex arms. Mystery solved. Yep. And last boss, Shang-sung, and I got to say, in case our listeners were not there, in the 90s, everyone was crazy about morphin. You have to understand.

Morphing was just a thing that was like, oh, my God, you can morph? Can you morph in this game? Does this movie have morphing in it? You know, I mean, T2 was 91, and that was, you know, of course, the T-1,000 could change shapes. And Michael Jackson's black or white was 191 that also had the morphing season to the end. I just wouldn't watch stuff if there was no morphing. I just reject it in principle. And then one day along came the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers, and I was like, hello.

Yep, that has morphine in the title. Every episode, at least one more. Yeah, you know, there was an old British claymation character called Morph, who I think stands at the apex of this trend. Yeah, and the X-Men cartoon had that guy named Morf who was just there for the first episodes, so he'd get killed. Yeah, that's why I never watched it again, because obviously the loss of Morph, I had no reason to tune back in. Then later I find out they actually brought him back, and I feel like I've been hoodwinked, you know? Well, just watch the episodes with him in it. That's the only lore you need, the morph lore.

But, yeah, Shang-sung, the whole gimmick is, Shang-sung can be all the other characters, and he's got the magic effects. I also like how Shang-sung doesn't actually walk or stand. He just kind of floats. I like that. Yeah, it was really kind of a mystical boss. And, you know, the cool thing was, like, you didn't want him to morph because he really didn't have any moves of his own

other than firing what would seem like an endless stream of those flaming skulls. But if you could keep him from morphing, you could just jump kick him over and over and over because if memory serves, he could not block. And so he was actually, he was. a lot easier to beat than Goro, unless he moved to Goro, in which case you were in for a bad time. I want to make two small observations

about Shang-sung, if that's okay. I'm sorry my observations are taking up far around with the runtime here. But first of all, he reminds me a bit of that Simpsons bit where there's one small sort of Yakuza guy outside, not doing anything. And Homer's like,

but look at him. You know, he's going to do something. You know, it's going to be good. And that's how I feel about Shang-sung, because after Goro, he's quite unimposing, you know, he's just like an old dude, but no, he in fact can transform into everyone. And second of all, I want to shout out the PlayStation ports that had Shang-sung and his morphability, because they had to pause to load every time he used it, which is hilarious. Yeah, he was, uh, I remember that's one reason I preferred the N-64 version of Mortal Kombat trilogy of the PlayStation version. In fact, a lot of people did,

but also in Mortal Kombat 4, they didn't bring Shang-sung in. because they couldn't do the morphing to change polygons into other characters. So they gave that boss Shanak. I don't remember what it called mimics or impersonations, but the funny thing was the AI never did them, not ever. And so you were just fighting this guy who had no special moves and who could kind of morph but never did. And he was really just the pushover.

What makes me kind of mad about that is that, again, in game mythology, Chinok, in fact, could transform into a giant monster and did. So why not just do that? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Goro, they added Goro to the home versions. And I feel like he was kind of necessary because you get to Shang-sung, and that's basically the, or Chinok, and that's basically the end of the game. So they had to throw Goro back in there just to be a terror again.

You mentioned Stu that Shang-sung was not intimidating, but again, in hindsight, Shang-sung, he's just low-pan from Big Trouble Little China. He's not quite as tall as low-pan, but it's basically low-pan. I have to admit I haven't seen that movie It is on my list But for me it's just a matter of like You got this huge guy with four huge tree trunk arms And then you've just got this sort of

A sort of slightly dodgy looking Like Mr Miyagi type sort of fella Yeah And I just kind of get like I don't know Not so good But then now he destroys you So

Well yeah And he's The really funny thing about Shang And I actually could not remember this I thought people were Pulling my leg But if you go And read his ending

for Mortal Kombat 2. Shang's always kind of had a comedic air to him that I think was maybe unintentional, because after Goro in Mortal Kombat 1, he really is pretty easy, as long as he doesn't morph into Goro. But in Mortal Kombat 2, the ending is basically, and I'm very loosely paraphrasing here, Shang-sung won and the Earth was destroyed, and everything was destroyed, have a nice day. Like it says, have a nice day. And you're just like, wow, Shang-sung, just destroying all the things.

And it was just really fun. So, wait, so Shang-sung was in Mortal Kombat 2 as well? Yes, but he was, so the story was, he told Shao Khan, like, of course I was going to lose, I was super old, make me young again, and I'll never lose. And then, of course, if you played as him, you were, you're, you know, defecting from the emperor. But yeah, you played Shang-sung, and you could turn into everybody. That's why he was so awesome. I forgot that he was into. I thought he was in three.

That's really cool. Okay. Yeah, young Shang-sung is in two. Okay, this is good. I'm learning. Yeah, he's an old man in one. then in two, he's a younger man, but he's still kind of like, I don't know, I feel like he still looks like someone's dad.

And then in Moral Kombat 3, he is full goth, long-haired ponytail, kind of ripped. It's definitely like each game he changes his look significantly. That's awesome. And yeah, they have a nice dayline. That's actually in Raiden's ending in the first game. So they use the same joke. That's right. So I guess that shows, even back then, like, you know, Ed Boone and John Tobias clearly had a sense.

of humor about this whole thing. Oh, very much so, yeah. So, yeah. So, so. So, so. So, speaking of humor, what about that? character who is added to later revisions. Yes. Mr. Reptile. There was another ninja. Why not have three ninjas? Why not?

You know, pallet swap. Memory is free. Why not have the three ninjas from the movie to three ninjas? That's right. Stu, those are children. We cannot kill children. No, you can't kill children. Killing Sonia's ban. That was a man. Mr. Miyagi in it as well, didn't it?

Man. Everything's coming full circle. I always thought he should add Johnny from Cobra Kai into the next Mortal Kombat, but I don't think they'd let you pull his head off or anything, so. Yeah, but you know Johnny would pull some heads off, though. Oh, yeah, you know he would, yeah. And yet he'd somehow still find a way to make him likable.

Yeah, uh, yeah, well, because he'd start every round just waking up from a hangover or something. Yeah, and he can only sweep. He only has sweeps. He can sweep the leg. That's it. Yeah, yeah. This is now a Cobra Kai podcast. I'm here for it. No, reptile, reptile was pretty cool. They wanted, you know, and John wanted to do something secret. And I always wanted to play him as a kid because he had sub-zeroes and scorpions moves, and he was twice as fast. But the cool thing about him was he was another one of those things like the fatalities where in early versions of the game, they did not have him drop down randomly before some rounds to offer hints, how to find him.

So even after Mortal Kombat was out for several months, you would have people claiming to have fought a green ninja and everyone else just thinking they were full of it. because the horse is not a green ninja. We know everyone that's here, and we believe in fatalities now, but this green ninja, that's a bridge too far. And then, you know, the circumstances to fight him, I mean, back in the arcade days, I don't know how anyone would figure this out without it being revealed in a magazine,

which I found out that, you know, the game developers, they would, at certain intervals, they would give secrets to the press, because otherwise, how could you, like, you had to, there had to be certain silhouette flying over the moon and the pit, and you had to get a double flawless and a fatality without blocking. So certain characters really couldn't fight reptile because you had to hold block through

their fatality. Yeah. It was just the most obscure arcane set of circumstances. Yeah, and it's funny, you know, in Mortal Kombat 2, you know, there were ways to fight hidden characters in that game, too. And whenever I heard the rules, I was like, that can't be real. And then it was always real. Yeah, one of them was like only used low kicks or something, isn't it?

Yeah. It's a win-around, only low kicks. Yeah, ridiculous. Which is harder than you would think. I just love stuff like that. That's so cool. It is. And I feel like that's something where modern mortal combat games,

I think Nether Realm is still struggling to figure out, like, how can we do something so secret that the internet hasn't, like, cracked the code in 24 hours? Yeah, in this era mining games, like, days after they come out as well, it's almost impossible. Like, that's something that they were really good at Foster. on Mortal Kombat 1, 2 and 3 is that kind of community of like, is this in the game, is this not, even like NBA Jam had that from the same

sort of house. But I think my favorite example is the Mortal Kombat 2 rumors that you could get the trees in the living forest to eat the opponents or something. And then they actually put that in Shaolin Monks in the PS2 game. Yes. Which was a really, really cool knob, I thought. I know it's not MK1, but I wanted to mention it just in case. Well, that's something. They actually put that in Mortal Kombat 9, which was, you know, a reboot of one, two, and three. So that's kind of cool, too. But, yeah, this is something I found out that starting with Mortal Kombat 1, there were

certain players, especially these older kids who just had to prove their superiority. They would do a fatality, but you would ask them how to do it, and they wouldn't tell you. Or they would cover their hands while they moved the joystick and press the buttons. And so, like, they had to be the coolest kid in the arcade because they had the fatalities. In fact, that was my first writing job. I was the first kid in my school to have a mortal combat strategy guide. So people were asking me for the codes.

And I was like, no, I have the code. I'm mortal. What are you doing? And eventually I went to the computer lab. I wrote out all the special moves, all the fatalities. This was for Mortal Kombat 1. And I would sell the list to kids for 25 cents each. That was my first paid writing gig.

Nice. So, yeah, pretty unscrupulous. But it was a living. David, I know what you talk about. And I always resented those kids because, once I found out things, I would always tell anyone who asked. And it almost put me in the ass one at one point because I actually, you know, a few months after it was released in the spring of 93, I was on a trip to France. So you're in your neck of the woods, Stu.

And I was in France and I had to, I was playing, of course I went to arcades in France. Why wouldn't I do that? And I was playing Moral Combat in France. And I knew all the moves. So I was doing all the moves. And then kids in France would be like, hey, how did you do that? that. But they would ask me in French. And I had to try to explain the moves in French, you know, like, even though I don't know any of the proper verbs to explain that. It's like,

you see, you see a, put, like, you know, it's been 30 years. So I don't remember the French, the French that I forgot back then. But if it is live fatality. It was that easy. And then, of course, there was, it's almost like math. There was kind of a universal language. Or if you just, if you happen to have pencil and paper. on you. You could just draw the arrows, like, back to forward to, you know, whatever the punches and kicks. Yeah, but in French, those were all reversed, I think, so it's a big deal. You've got to put the U in there. It's a U. You, put extra consonants in every letter, yeah. Anyway, so, arcades, reptile, maybe we should take a moment and talk about, yeah, so

Mortal Kombat, you can kill people, people can die, it's called a fatality, and it was pretty shocking, but it's also, I don't know, I would say it's kind of hard, you know, it's so many years of hindsight, it's really hard to make a judgment call on this. I know the first time I saw it, I was definitely shocked and taken it back, but really, it is kind of goofy, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Kind of goofy. Mm-hmm.

Like, it's two photographs of people. It's basically two animated gifts. Two animated gifts touch each other, and one falls down, and maybe one of them falls into two gifts. You know, like, what's really the harm there? I mean, I agree that there's no harm, but sort of expanding on what was said earlier, the, if I had not been aware that fatalities existed, had been playing that game not seeing fatalities, and then suddenly someone busted it went out, and you got that whole, do, do, do, do. thing, you know. I would have probably

crap my pants, so no, I mean, compared to the later ones when they get really silly and over the top and you start getting things like friendships and bababilities and animalities and mercies and brutalities and all that sort of stuff, I think that the ones in Mortal Kombat

do retain some impact, simply because they're quite scarce, but yeah, there's nothing on the level of the later ones at all. like when you're skidding people, eating people, or anything like that? No, it was really shocking. I mean, again, I saw this when I was 10. So I could joke now about my dad not letting me play it.

But it was, like, that stuck with me. I was like, I just saw a guy rip out someone's heart. And it was, you know, for the time, there's graphics for photorealistic. And I think it was interesting because it's obviously something you knew couldn't be done in real life, even if you couldn't articulate that. But it was definitely something that really stood out and kind of led to video game ratings. I mean, there were other games involved, like Nighttrap, Stewart, I believe you mentioned that earlier. But even Nighttrap, because of the FMV quality, like a lot of the violence and, you know, the rape scene and that was more implied, which can be even worse in its own way than explicitly shown.

I mean, the other thing I would say with that really is not to get into sort of detail, obviously, but take a look at something like. like night trap, which had a huge moral panic. And then if you look over at the PC and something like Phantasmagoria, which had no monopanic at all, and is violent and hideous, I do think that

there's a bit, maybe something of a double standard going on there, but I don't know. I mean, Mortal Kombat is just like, the fact that they took the blood out of the home port and then had it being able to put back in with a code almost feels kind of. I don't know if it's so uptitious.

I don't know if they announced that or how that went down in general. But it feels like a little bit of a sub subterfusion. Like, look, look, it's okay. There's no blood. We took the blood out. See? Wink. Unless you can access this particular flag screen and turn it back on again, which is dumb

using this code, but don't do it. So that's the funny thing. I wrote about this in the book because there was a lot of this that I didn't know. What I found out was that, so Sega at this time was, losing to Nintendo. They were gaining a lot of ground with the Genesis and Mega Drive, but Nintendo was still in the lead, especially because, you know, in 1992, uh, Capcom gave Nintendo the exclusive rights to the, the first home version of Street Fighter 2. That was a big deal. Yeah. So Tom Kalinsky of Sega of America was like, well, you know what? By default,

we don't want blood in this, but I think let's do a cheat code because we know that's something Nintendo will not do. They will definitely not allow blood in their version through any means. and that was something that a claim said, okay, let's do that. And they actually made it part of the marketing where they, quote, unquote, leaked it to the press in a certain issue because they didn't want people talking about the blood code right away.

They wanted the talk to be about the censorship in the Nintendo version. And, you know, was it real? Was there really going to be blood? Were there going to be new fatalities that were watered down? And there were actually two blood codes. Stewart earlier, you mentioned the down-up, left-left-a-right-down,

which is really funny because, Most people I talk to, they think of the ABAC, ABACABB, the ABA, the Abacab code. Fewer people know about Dullard, even though Dullard was the one where not only, you open up this whole menu where you could turn on blood, but you could also do other things like pick, you know, first stage. The flags of, yeah, that's the one that I know, just because that was the one that was in the, in the UK Sega magazines that I had when I was a kid, basically. It sticks out because you remember it, because it's the word, you know, Dullard. So, yeah, it sticks with you. Yeah. And in fact, actually, so that was the first code.

that Paul Cruthers ported the Sega Genesis version. I talked to him for another book a few years ago. And then he was told by, I think it was someone at a claim, because he was a contractor for Probe. So he turned his work into Probe, probe gave it to a claim, and then it was this whole game of telephone. And Acclaim said, well, that's a little hard to do.

We need another cheat code, but because you made this one seven inputs, the other code should be easier, but also seven inputs. And so Paul was like, okay. Oh, Genesis, Phil Collins. I love that band. A, B, A, C-A-B, which was their album, A-A-C-A-C-A-B, then he added one more B

so that it was seven in-laws. What's that extra B for? That's a type of... Blood. Yeah, exactly. The other extra B is for blood. Yeah. But, you know, what happened there was, you know, the Sega Genesis version of Mortal

Combat outsold Nintendo's 5 to 1, and Nintendo actually, you know, was pretty upset about that, mostly because they were losing. that, you know, in December 93, a few months after the home versions came out, there was the, you know, there was the court hearings, the Senate hearings. And it really kind of devolved into a slug fest between Sega's reps and Nintendo of America's reps. And the whole thing was, Nintendo was basically pissed because they were, they were starting to lose. This was when Sega was really overtaking them. And more publishers were defecting, you know, they were getting out of their exclusivity contracts with Nintendo and going to Sega. And for the Mortal Kombat 2, They said, all right, fine, leave blood in from the beginning. But the Sega Genesis version of MK2 still outsold the SNS version because it had the reputation from the first game of the Blood Code, even though the Super Nintendo version was a lot better, more true to the arcade. It was a whole thing there. And I actually think that was important. I've been talking a long time.

I apologize, but it was... It's okay. It led to the ESRB. And everyone who was a part of it, even a claim was like, well, we're really glad about the controversy because it's selling more games. So this is awesome. But we can agree that, like, ratings need to be a thing. We see no problem with that. It's good for parents to have some sort of guide.

And, in fact, the only reason, you know, I said earlier that my mom was fine with me playing. She was, but she even told me, like, look, if you throw one punch at school, I'm taking all this stuff away, you'll never see it again. And that was incentive enough besides being the nerdy kid with thick Coke bottle glasses to never throw a punch at school. I think it's a good thing because, you know, Mortal Kombat 2. came out just before the ESRB went into effect, but they still had the M rating on. And it's this whole other conversation of like that kind of made M for mature mean like, oh, mature games equals like blood and guts and sex where mature had a different,

should have a different meaning. But it really, this was the point at which I think thanks to Moral Combat, the industry at large in the general public kind of started to acknowledge for the first time, oh, video games can be more than just toys as Nintendo, who controlled the narrative up until then kind of wanted us to perceive them.

And so that's really culturally significant, I would say. Yeah, I agree. I mean, it must have given developers some kind of more sort of boldness to actually make games that were more sort of violent and of gross, I suppose, now that they have an actual legal recourse to do so. Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to think of what examples,

but I can't really think of that many other than stuff like Doom Troopers. It still didn't seem like, I guess maybe because, because even still they wouldn't necessarily sell the huge numbers. Well, so the two interesting points to that. First of all, in my research, I actually, this is sort of like a mandala effect, but I remember Doom being as wrapped up in this as Nighttrap and Mortal Kombat, but Doom actually did not get its come up in the mainstream media for another six years until Columbine, because Doom is a PC game, like it's hugely significant,

but back then PCs were so expensive that most people didn't really. play Doom until a lot of the console ports came out in the mid-90s. And they were so kind of watered down technically anyway that by that time we'd all been playing Mobile Combat for years. It wasn't as big of a deal. But the second thing is Nintendo would occasionally try to assert its family-friendly image. I remember Resident Evil 2 coming to the N-64 was a big deal. And you could make the blood blue or green.

But what was hilarious was because this game used static backgrounds, the blood, in bodies that was already drawn was always red. So even if you chose for the zombies you were killing to bleed blue, you still have these, like, gory, mutilated corpses in every screen. So it didn't really change much. There are some strange anomalies. I think in

of Nivens, again, like, they censored the version of of Duke Newman 3D that was on the 64. They took out, like, the more should we say, risque imagery. Yes, yes. But they made the game exponentially more violent, but there was a lot more blood and guts, a lot more jibs.

I love that version which is it's an incredible version and stay tuned for a newcomb episode later this year um sorry

going back to model I want to say about the I'm going back a bit sorry about the SNS version I think it's a shame that it ended up that way, because honestly, taking aside the lack of blood and the lack of fatalities, it's a pretty good version. I really love the music in that version, and it really

does feel smooth to play. And I always think it's weird. Now, if this has actually happened, please write in that no one's done a sort of restoration rom-hack or something. I mean, yeah, restoring the fatalities might well be a total order. I assume someone's put the blood back in, because that doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to do. Here's why that's never happened, actually, because I looked into this. I actually, I'm writing a companion book to this long-lived mortal combat book where I talked to a team of ROM hackers based in Brazil who did a more arcade perfect version of the Sega Genesis version. And I said, you know, why isn't it? I mean, I know that obviously the Genesis version was more popular in first place because of the blood code being a thing.

But why hasn't anyone gone back to the SNS version? And he said, well, the main reason is in the Genesis version, we had. stuff to work with. Sprites like the, you know, the decapitated heads with the spinal cords attached. They were in the code in the first place in the Genesis version. They were just locked behind sheets. That's not in the Super Nintendo version. In fact, another thing they did, not only did they change, I write about this in the book as well, but not only did they change the blood to gray sweat. I've never seen sweat fly off that way, but it is what it is. They also, Nintendo said, oh, you can't have it splatter on the ground. So if you remember from the SNS version, the sweat

flies into the air and then disappears. It does not splatter on the ground. And so to do a ROM hack of the SNS version, a lot of ROM hackers, they will learn assembly, which is a huge achievement as someone with a programming background. But to go in and add things that were not there is above and beyond what most ROM hackers are capable of. I suppose, in a way, though,

I suppose I am still surprised simply because it seems like such an obvious big deal, if that makes sense. Like, look, we finally made the SNES version of MOTC. combat that you always wanted. But no, it is obviously, when you haven't got the raw materials to work with and you essentially haven't to create contact from scratch, yeah, that does obviously make it a much bigger sort of wall. Yeah. Yeah, it does surprise me a little bit that it hasn't really happened still after all this time. It does surprise me as well. And I actually want to step further. There are, there's a ROM hack, again, for the Genesis version of Ultimate

MK3 called Ultimate Mortal Kombat Trilogy. And this person, um, I don't even know, if this, the ROM is so big that I don't know if it could have been committed to a Genesis cartridge, but it adds in all the characters from Mortal Kombat 1 and 2, whereas only a few were in the official trilogy. But again, I said, well, why for the Genesis version? Why not the SNSNES version? Well, it's because in certain countries, international countries, Nintendo hardware arrived after the Genesis version. So the Genesis version of these games, In fact, like Brazil and a lot of South American countries, Ultimate MK3, 4 Mega Drive, slash Genesis, is still played widely today. Wow.

But the Super Nintendo version was just so late to the game that people just ignored it. It was also very expensive. That's why you had to pirate a lot of this stuff. The hardware, especially, was so expensive. So you'd get these knockoff consoles, and then you would go to vendors on the street selling cartridges with burned ROM. And it was just Genesis, Mortal Kombat was pervasive in a way that no SNES version ever really was. Well, David, you also, in your book, you talk about Mortal Kombat Nitro, which seems appropriate to this conversation.

Can you, that was something I never heard of until I read your book. Yeah, it was on Turner and it had the NWO in it. Sorry, that's rubbish. Carry on. Mortal Kombat Monday Nitro. Yeah. Yeah, so this is, there was a guy I talked to from the claim who was kind of a lead product analyst named James Fink, and he was one of the self-professed arcade rats who would go

to arcades, and he loved to hustle. loved to compete. He would play with one hand. In fact, he even sent me a photograph someone took of him of him playing. I think it was Mortal Kombat 2 with one hand. That'll be in the book. But at a claim, so there actually, there was another big problem with the SNS version. And I wrote about this a few years ago. Originally, it's sculptured software, one programmer, I'll leave him nameless, but he said, oh, I can do this whole thing. Months passed, he said, I can't do any of this. And he went on to another project. And so three other programmers had to jump in. This ended up where not only was, the game censored, which was all Nintendo's call. But if you go back and play that version, even on emulators, the input is terrible. There was a sync where if you just tap a button, it does not register. You have to press them very, very hard. And even then, the controls are still very unresponsive. So James Fink, at a claim, was like, you know, I know that Mortal Kombat 2 is an arcades.

It's obviously going to be our next project. But what if we pull like a Street Fighter 2 to Street Fighter 2 turbo for SNES, where we release this game, let's call it, Mortal Kombat 2? Combat Nitro, where it has all the blood, because Nintendo at this point had been kind of just shillacked at retail, we'll add all the blood, we'll have the original fatalities, but we'll also add more fatalities. We'll do like an allegiance sort of system where you can get light or dark versions of characters with unique fatalities.

He sent me his design document, and it's something that a claim and sculptured considered. And they even took a lot of the fatalities that were neutered in the SNES version and added to them. For example, Johnny Cage, instead of uppercutting someone's head off, he just kicks them to the chest and they scream and then fall down. Well, in this version, and he actually, he streamed it for me because he has a prototype. They're only two.

James has one, and Ed Boone has the other one. In this one, Johnny Cage does that same kick, but a whole bunch of blood and guts fly out of their back as if he kicked them so hard that everything just flew out and scatter on the screen and then they fall down. I'm like, well, that's

awesome. I love that fatality. Um, but the claim said, you know what? Mortal Kombat 2 is in arcades. It's doing really well. That's, you know, we have a contract. We get first rights of refusal on Midway's games. We're definitely doing MK2. We don't really want to give people a reason to rebuy moral combat one.

And so it never got anywhere. But it was in, uh, prototype, you know, James showed it to me. And in fact, in fact, he said it was, it was unfinished and it was so buggy that by the third fight fight, the characters just kind of float off the screen and you have to set. But I totally would have snatched that up as a kid because I was a Nintendo kid. I was very envious of a friend of mine who had the Sega Genesis version of Mortal Combat because even though my graphics and music were better, he had the blood code and I totally bought this Mortal Kombat Nitro thing with my paper off that paid $40 a month.

But it would have happened. So we've been chatting for a while now, and I think we should probably move towards the end. And I think it's important to ask the question, so how does someone today play the original Mortal Kombat that. And I don't think there's a really good answer, right? Aside from piracy? I mean... Yeah, I mean, there have been a lot of re-releases, but I can't think of a contemporary one. Yeah, I look things up. There was a 2011 Mortal Kombat arcade collection, with a K, of course,

that was out on PS3, 360 and Steam. But it seems to have been delisted. I couldn't find it on Steam. Yeah, and it really, really sucked. It was not good. It was not good. In my opinion, it was not good, no. If memory serves, I might be mistaking this for another port, but if you paused the game and unpaused, there was actually lag, so you would just get destroyed. Like, not that you should be doing that anyway, but it would be like, once you unpause,

you'd have about a second before you could move again, but the computer did not have that. Yeah, it was not good. It was a very odd port. In fact, the Steam version, if you have it in your library, you can still install it. Yeah, I think I do still have it, yeah. So the problem there is I went to do that a year or so ago,

But it was one of the games that was tied to games for Windows Live, but never untethered. So you can't even play it now. Oh, man. Yeah, that sucks. Yeah. Well, I know GOG.com has a software called Mortal Kombat 1 plus 2 plus 3, and the reviews for that are up and down. I think some of the versions are good, but some of them are not good. I think one is pretty good, but 2 is bad.

Visually, they're very impressively close to the arcade of memory serves, but... I think setting them up with a jipad or a stick is going to be pretty difficult and you do not want to play a fighting game on the keyboard unless it's called one must fall. So, no, I wouldn't recommend those ports either. I mean, they used to include these games

with the contemporary ones, but they were seeing to have stopped doing it. Now, they were going to do a fully remade one, weren't they, with new digitized footage, like, I need proper HD, but then that got canned. I'm sure I remember that was in, progress.

That was, in fact, that's... It was going to be the first three games, wasn't it? It was going to be a remake of one, two, and three with full, like, re-shot, redigitized, full-h-Dh, and new actors. Because by that point, like, a dampestine and a few of the others had fallen out with Midway, so they were kind of persona on Grata. In fact, I have a full chapter in Long Live Mortal Kombat on that game. Other Ocean was going to do that, now Digital Eclipse, and it was, they couldn't get

Ed Boone to side off on it. He didn't like a lot of the changes. they actually agreed with them. They said the problem with what they were doing was, because these were supposed to be remasters, they would have their new actors, not just doing the moves, but doing the moves while watching footage of the old actors and trying to recreate them exactly. But there were, like, weird height differences that would mean certain moves would or would not match up.

And it was just, it was kind of a whole thing. It was, it was harder than you'd think. I wish that Digital Eclipse would just do a Mortal Kombat collection, though, because they do such good work. I do too, especially did that excellent Street Fighter one from a few years ago. I'm hoping that because this is the 30th anniversary, I feel like Nether Realm has to have a re-release somewhere. I mean, everyone's kind of expecting them to announce Mortal Kombat 12, but, you know, not every game franchise makes it to 30. So I feel like this is a situation where they should say, like, hey, we've got something new coming out. But also, here's a modern collection, because I feel like those, like the original arcade games seem like they would be tailor-made for Switch.

like arcade perfect handheld versions of those games on the Switch. I'd love that, yeah. Yeah. And the last one, the last one was the, um, the DS port of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, which was staggeringly good, considering it was so good. Yeah. Um, and I just want them to do, and I think they included puzzle combat with that as well, but I just want them to do these games justice, even if it's just,

loose oclips or someone, just porting the original arcade versions. And you know what? Throw in the home versions as well, because that's what they do. And just do one, all I want is one, two, three, at Ultima. I don't need anything other than that. I mean, anything other than that would be lovely, but I don't need it. Yeah. It would just be gravy, basically.

Well, that's, I mean, just going back to what Diamond said, right? Like, there are, on no contemporary system, can you play those games? And that seems like it's kind of criminally overlooked, the fact that these games are of such significance, but you cannot play them anywhere. Whereas you can play Street Fighter and a bazillion other arcade games on almost any platform you can throw a stone at. It's a really weird, sad thing. It's weird to think that soon I'm going to be able to play turtles in time and turtles tournament fighters on the PS5, but not Mortal Kombat, but not Mortal Kombat.

Yeah, and actually that's, so that arcade collection, or the Turtles collection, go back to what you said, Stuart, where they have not only the arcade versions, but every home version of every Turtles game. I would love to see the same thing. If we only get arcade ports of Mortal Kombat games, fine. But if you also throw in all the home versions, even this like the terrible

Game Boy version of the which was actually like my first version because the Game Boy is the only thing I had when Mortal Monday happened get the old master system and GameGue versions on there too yeah yeah like just throw them all on there like it would be really really cool artifacts if anyone if anyone from digital eclipse is listening to this

and statistically you probably are yes you might want to get on with that okay like come on that's free that's free money let's go Moral Combat 1, 2, 3, Ultimate, and if you feel like it, put Mythologists and Trilogy on there. I would like him. I'm also one of those weirdos I love Moral Kombat 4,

and that game has not been acknowledged for decades. I think, like, I feel like if you're going to do, like they released that arcade collection. I just remember thinking like, this isn't really, like it is a collection, but it's not the collection, unless you're leaving off, because you're leaving off one of the arcade games. There's always kind of a weird thing for me.

Yeah, that is a good point. They should throw it, they should put that into it. Yeah. Although you can buy MK4 on Gog, couldn't you, as well? You can. The PC version, which is excellent, because I had that one back in the day.

The graphics are great. You have the enhanced endings with the same voice acting, which makes them very, very fun. This is not a brutality. This is a fatality. Fatality. And they had much better game pet support. I think back in the 90s, I played those with a Microsoft Sidewinder,

which was like the great game. pad before Xbox compatibility happened. And then you use one now and you look at that D-pad and just immediately leave on it off, unfortunately. Yeah. But back then it was great. Yes, it was. It was really your best option.

Yeah, it really was. We could go on about the PC versions for some time. But I would love to see just these games re-released on a contemporary platform. I think they should be, honestly. I would just like to say that I do have two pre-teen children. One of them is going to be teenager pretty soon, let's be honest. But they're pre-teen for now. And I feel like I would be okay with them playing old Mortal Kombat.

I feel like that would not strike them as too gross or too weird. I think they would look at it as they would laugh and enjoy it. But I would not want them to play like normal, like modern model combat because that to me just, I don't know. My theory, here's my theory. My theory is that if you play the old games, you have pictures of people and then they hit each other and then they turn into obvious not people anymore. Whereas if you play the modern games, everything is. rendered so realistic, it looks like you're actually chopping someone in half. And to me, that's just too gross. That's my theory. And the other problem there is, I mean, I kind of feel

the same way. Like, I didn't, I thought Mortal Kombat 3's fatalities went a little too far in the cartoonist direction. But a lot of the modern fatalities are actually upsetting to the point where you had that story about another Rome developer saying, I kind of have PTSD because I've worked so long on these fatalities and I'm just very disturbed by the whole thing. Like, there's just something there that is kind of disgusting about that. Yeah, they were looking, they were having them look at real, like, footage of, like, graphic violence and stuff, weren't they, to get the, yeah, it's not really on.

Shame on, you know they're on. That's see, that puts apart the question I wanted to ask at the end of this, because there was something I really wanted to make sure they got covered, but now I feel like it might come across us a bit too ghoulish. But what is that? I was going to ask what you guys' favorite fatality is across the entire franchise. Honestly, I can see. still, it's still sub-zero's originally, original head rip from the first game, just because

it was, it was not the first fatality I saw, but it's the first one. I feel like, the funny thing is, like, that's the one you would see unlike newscast. This new video game, so violent, Mortal Kombat, and they show Sub-Zero ripping a head off, and I'm like, that's kind of the, like, the fatality. Some may be disturbed by the following scenes. That's right. Yeah, that's my favorite across the whole series. Well, Stu, I can tell you that I wrote a short story when I was 14.

and it involved me playing Mortal Kombat, and I discussed the fatality, and that was the fatality I picked. But as far as for me as a player, my favorite was always the Kentaro transformation in Mortal Kombat 2. Oh, yes. Because...

You have to hold high punch for like 20 seconds to do that. 30. 30 seconds, blame you. It was difficult to pull off, so it was kind of like a handicap, but whenever I did it, there was always someone watching me in the arcade who had never seen it before.

It was always a surprise. and when they saw it, it was just the reaction, it was like a rap video. Everyone was like, oh, you know, it was an electric, electric atmosphere. So that was my favorite. It is a real flex to beat someone without using a high punch, I guess, because you basically would have to hold it

for almost the entire match, wouldn't you? Yes. My way of doing it is I would basically, if you hold it before the match starts, then it's active. Oh, wow. So that's how I did it. Same with Radin's, Raden has a different fatality.

We have to hold, I think, high punch for like 10 seconds exactly, but if you're holding it before the fatality time starts, it's counting. So when I got, when the late in the match, I would start holding it down. But even that was very, the timing of that one was tricky, where the Cantaro one, I don't know. I got it every time. No question. That's also. I don't think I've even seen that one.

I just know it exists. I guess I got a giveaway. I mean, it's really hard for me to pick between two, so I'm just going to say both of them, sorry. And I know it's from one of the later games, but there's an incredibly revolting Johnny Cage fatality where he literally pulls someone. entire torso apart so we can lean through it and go, here's Johnny. Yeah. And it's so utterly disgusting that

I have to give it some props. But honestly, my all-time favorite is Mortal Kombat 3, Sindell, when she just screams at you so loud all your skin comes off. Like, that's just immortal to me. Like, that's hilarious. That's like some, I don't know, it's like Tex-Avery style,

like, cartoon violence to me. And it's, but it is disgusting because you're just this dripping mass of, like, muscles. Yeah, I love that one too. I love that one too. Yeah, it's very, very funny, yeah. I could give a shout out to all kinds of fatalities, but that's probably my favourite,

just stream at you so loud or your skin flies off, of course. All right, so I think we're entering the end game here. So, David, you keep mentioning long-lived mortal combat, which sounds like a book. Can people buy this book in store shelves now? People will be able to buy it on store shelves this fall. But right now, it is a Kickstarter, and you can go back it. There are a couple editions.

One is actually appropriately called Ultimate Long-Live Mortal Kombat, which is a deluxe-sized coffee table-style book with a lot of full-color photos. I got hundreds of photos from fans, and that's kind of the emphasis. So this is the first book in a trilogy, focuses on the arcade era, the home games, but also the fan culture, where I learned that, you know, despite all the outcry around Mortal Kombat back then, and now, although, you know, to a lesser degree, I talked to so many people, and all of them across the board,

have been positively influenced by this terrible, corruptible game. And it was pretty cool to share those stories to learn things about how Mortal Kombat was played in other countries and also to talk to the developers to kind of go behind the doors of Midway, Williams, whoever they are, and, you know, get into the nitty-gritty of code and stuff there. Great. So, yeah, when this episode goes live, the Kickstarter should already be live. So by all means, please check that out.

I'm sure we'll have a link to it in the show. notes. And David, as long as we're promoting stuff, is there anything else you'd like to share with us? Maybe another book or do you use Twitter or TikTok? What's your handles there? I do use clocks, but on Twitter, my handle is at David L. Craddock. And I'm also directing my first film. I'm with a company that is producing FPS, first person shooter. We've interviewed John Romero, John Carmack, Cliff Blasinski. I mean, you name it, and they're in this. Um, second round of funding will take place in May, and it'll be out in February 20, 23.

Cool. Great. Thank you. Is it based on the season seven X-Files episode, also named first person shooter? It is, but, you know, let's not get too deep into spoilers, you know? Okay, sorry, sorry. Stu, that's gives them to look forward to. I am, I am watching X-Files.

I think I've mentioned that in previous recording, but that's... Oh, it's awful. It's such a bad episode, I remember. It's the worst episode of the entire series. series. All right. I'm still excited. Stu, so when you're not talking about X-Files, what sort of things do you do on the internet?

I'm always talking about X-Files, baby. You can find me at Stupacabra on Twitter. I am another host of retronauts. I tend to lean into doing more sort of British-y things for some reason. I can't even fathom what it is. I also write for Nintendo Life. Push Square, occasionally RetroGerman magazine. I have something coming up in Sega Powered magazine and a lock-on journal from Lost in Colt,

and I've written a book that's probably out this year at some point, and I'll give more details when that becomes a thing. I do loads of things, all sorts of things. Just look me up on Twitter, and you'll find my link tree there with all the links to all my amazingly great things that I do. Wonderful. Well, to everyone else listening, thank you very much. this is Retronauts. Thank you for listening. We are a fan-supported show. You can go to patreon.com

slash Retronauts to support this program. $3. That's $1 to $3. That gets you episodes one week early and slightly higher audio quality. However, for $5, just $2, more than $3, you get... You get... Yes, that's such... It's a small amount. It's a small money. Yes. For that money, you get two bonus episodes every month, and you get... You get a weekly column slash mini podcast written by me, recorded by me, narrated by me. We also have Discord access, $5. I think it's really, it's a wonderful deal, and I think you should all consider doing it.

Also, you can, I'm on the internet too. I'm not just hosting retronauts here. I have my own, my own bag, you know. You can look me up on Twitter and Twitch as Fight Club, F-E-I-T, my last name, C-L-U-B, the English word. So, before we wrap up, everybody, real quick, if you are a Chinese ninja, what color is your outfit? David.

Orange. Orange. Stu? Chinese Ninja with a hot so cold. I don't wear one. I just go unnatural. So the element of surprise. You're going the opposite way.

The most conspicuous ninja possible. Yeah, yeah. And also it's very cold, so nobody make any comments. Plus, I have ice powers, which exacerbates the problem. Ha. I'm going to go with, what's the Earth? Vermillion, Vermillion. Nice.

Vermilion Chinese Ninja. Anyway, that's it. I'm sure we'll go out with the appropriate music, so everyone just get your technical going on. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, good night. Needle soccer! Needle soccer! Thank you.