Next to play: Mortal Kombat

Game: Mortal Kombat
Release Date: 1994 (1992 original arcade)
Platform: PC (MS-DOS)

Konditions: Beat the game with every single character on medium difficulty with 4 credits available. No character switching during the game. Beat Reptile at the bottom of the pit.




I actually already started playing this game a few months ago, really casually, one match every couple of days. When I chose this game I figured that I'd beat it with all the characters in about a week. I was very wrong. This game is kicking my ass! I still haven't beaten it with a single character and I only faced Shang Tsung once so far.

I've seen this screen at least a hundred times already

I chose Johnny Cage as my first character. I have mastered all of his moves but sometimes I have a problem that I accidentally do a leg sweep instead of shadow kick in a critical moment which ends up costing me the game. It happens because keyboard controls are not very precise and far from ideal for fighting game controls. I tried plugging in a controller and it surprisingly worked but for some reason the character would always crouch as if the down button was pressed all the time. I tested the controller with some other games and it worked just fine. My keyboard binds are probably not ideal (WASD for movement, J and K for punches, N and M for kicks) but I got used to this layout already so I'm not going to change it.

Let's dance

Placebo difficulty levels
This game is pretty hard. I know about back and forth jumping while kicking abuse method but it doesn't help every time. It happens often that I get flawless victory in the first round but in the second AI suddenly becomes godlike and perfectly blocks or counters my every move. There are 5 difficulty levels, ranging from "very easy" to "very hard". In frustration I tried to lower the difficulty to very easy once and I had some trouble in early stages. Then I put it back on medium and won with double flawless victory against the same opponents. It just feels so random. I think Johnny is one of the weaker fighters and I'm looking forward to playing other characters with much better special moves. The only character that I'm not looking forward to use is Sonya. She has some good throws but it's useless against AI which always throws faster than you.

He is not that hard actually, getting to him is the hard part

Right now I can consistently get to endurance stage 2. Since I started this blog, I will try to play more often and with a more focused mindset. I don't think this game will be a problem to beat after all and I hope my skill will transfer to sequels.