Next to play: Mortal Kombat II

Game: Mortal Kombat II
Release Date: 1994 (1993 original arcade)
Platform: PC (MS-DOS)

Konditions:  Finish the game with every character on medium difficulty with 4 credits available




What do I expect?

I've heard that Mortal Kombat II is widely regarded as the best installment in the series. I expect improvements in every field. Give me higher resolution, better animations, faster gameplay, better UI, more characters, more fatalities (and more stage fatalities) and deeper story. Unfortunately I've also heard the game is incredibly hard and AI is very unfair with it's inhumanly fast throws. I managed to get through Mortal Kombat 1, hopefully I can beat this one too...

It has begun!

Mortal Kombat Finished

Finally beat the game, HALLELUJAH!

Game: Mortal Kombat
Release Date: 1994 (1992 original arcade)
Platform: PC (MS-DOS)
Date Started: April 23, 2014
Date Finished: October 18, 2014

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 ✓

When I started this blog I thought things are gonna move fast and my initial plan was to beat one game per week. In the end it took me 6 months (!) to finish Mortal Kombat and that makes it one of the hardest games I ever played. There were times when I thought about quiting and moving on to something else but I didn't give up and managed to beat the game with every single character. In the first post I wrote that I was sure the difficulty options are just placebo. The truth is I was so bad at it that I couldn't tell the difference. The game kicked my ass on both easy and hard.  Now after getting a bit better, I can beat the game on medium but can't get past the pit stage on very hard,

As I first started playing Mortal Kombat, I thought I've seen everything the game has to offer within the first 2 hours (little did I know that I'll be playing it for the next 6 months). Only after some time of learning the game I discovered that there is a surprising amount of depth to it. The amount of moves and combos is larger than it seems at first sight. Graphically the game has aged better than the early 3D fighters but worse than some older 2D fighters with cartoony graphics, say Street Fighter 2. The gameplay still holds up very well. Uppercutting someone into the air or shadow kicking them across the screen feels very satisfying. Fatalities are the icing on the cake. The music and sounds are alright but nothing special. The announcer voice on the other hand is freaking epic. He's definitely up there with Quake 3 and UT announcers. All the characters in the first game are iconic, distinctive and have an unique fighting style (only Scorpion and Sub-Zero share the basic fighting style while having different specials) but they are not perfectly balanced for competitive play. The story is very basic (there is a single text screen) but every character has an introduction and an ending screen that tells his story. The best part of the game has to be the multiplayer which I unfortunately couldn't really experience. Tried to play against a friend but it wasn't fun since he barely remembered the moves while I was playing it actively so he was no match for me. Single player is frustratingly hard at times and most often you will have to fight through stages by abusing game's AI.

+ Interesting characters + Fatalities + Combos

- very hard - bad AI - Reptile isn't playable

5.5/10

Scorpion Wins

Come to me baby

Despite being one of the fan favorites, Scorpion is ranked by mksecrets.net as the worst Mortal Kombat 1 character because of his long recovery time. I didn't have any problems beating the game with him tho, I think I did it on the second or third try. And with Scorpion's victory, I finally finished Mortal Kombat 1!

We meet at last...

A wild Reptile appears!

What happens when you mix yellow with blue? You get green. You get Reptile. The green ninja is a secret character who can use special moves of both Scorpion and Sub-Zero. He has also faster walk speed, which makes him really annoying. I was disappointed to find out he is not a playable character. I sort of expected him to appear in the character selection screen instead of the dragon logo after you beat him but that's not the case. The green ninja will sometimes randomly appear during the game before the match starts and leave some cryptic messages. These are hints on how to find him.

• You must Find me to beat me
• Alone is how to find me 
• TIP EHT FO MOTTOB (bottom of the pit backwards)
• Look to la Luna 
• Blocking will get you Nowhere
• Perfection is the key
• Fatality is the key
• You Cannot Match my Speed
• 10,000,000 Points if you destroy me

Sometimes during the fight on the pit stage you can see siluethes flying in the sky 

("Look to La Luna"). If the siluethes are present, you could get a chance to fight Reptile. The siluethes appear every 6 games or so on a PC but on the actual arcade it's much more rare. To fight Reptile, you have to win both rounds with flawless victory, without using the block button and then perform a fatality.

Note that the health bar says Scorpion for some reason

The secret character Reptile is just a meshup of Sub-Zero and Scorpion in the first game but he will become a playable character in the sequel with his own original set of moves.

Liu Kang Wins

His HERIOCS will always be remembered. Typo on the ending screen, good job.

It wasn't as easy to beat the game with him as I imagined. Fighting against him and remembering him from MK4, I somehow got an impression he's gonna be way OP.

 

Raiden Wins

I already beat the game with Raiden a while ago but I couldn't be bothered to post it. I started this blog at a time when I was between jobs and doing some work from home. Soon after that I got a new job and now I work there for 13 hours a day so it's really hard to find time for gaming. I started playing MK in the end of April and I'm progressing through it at a snail's pace. I already kinda regret choosing such a hard game to be the first one to beat. Honestly, I expected it will take me about a week to get through it. Oh how wrong I was. And even when I finally beat MK1, it's time for Mortal Kombat 2, a game infamous for it's unfair AI that features even more characters. YAY! So it looks like I'll only be playing Mortal Kombat this year. But make no mistake, I am not giving up and I'll do my best to continue on this gaming journey.

I thought Raiden cared for Earthrealm and humanity. What an asshole! Raiden winning the tournament is actually the worst case scenario for us. 

Raiden was pretty fun to use, mostly for his teleport and torpedo. He is not as overpowered as I thought he will be and it was hard to beat the game with him.  Next up is Liu Kang!

Mortal Kombat Honest Trailer