Not quite as smooth as the quarter turns / 360 turns etc from most traditional fighters, but perfectly fine.

Then we get to the special moves, which are done by putting in directional inputs followed by a button press / button presses. If you’re in close to your opponent your moveset changes to rapid punches and throws, so there is a nice mixture. So… not very intuitive, especially High Punch! You can move forward and backwards, jump in those directions, and crouch, and with combinations of those buttons you can flying kick and do the now infamous uppercut. The issue here is the three button Mega Drive controller! So they went with A: Low Punch, B: Low Kick, C: High Kick, Backwards+A: High Punch, Pause Button: Block. The arcade controls were five buttons, high kick, low kick, high punch, low punch and block. The four-armed Goro acts as an unplayable sub-boss, while old wizard-looking Shang Tsung acts as the equally unplayable final boss. The original roster of digitized actors is Liu Kang, Sub Zero, Scorpion, Raiden, Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade and Kano. It received ports to the SNES, Mega Drive, Game Gear, Gameboy (yes, Gameboy!) and bizarrely the Master System, in PAL territories anyway, all on September 1993 in the US, or thereabouts for Europe. Mortal Kombat was released in US arcades on October 8 th 1992. I wonder if these motion capture artists had any idea how iconic some of their stuff would become? Simpler times, but how does it hold out today, where it’s relatively tame? (much like a certain film adaptation…) let’s find out! Ignoring the impact it had, I remember not really enjoying it too much as an actual fighter, preferring the visuals of a Street Fighter II, but still… there’s a scene where someone removes their opponent’s heart! SO COOL. Also known as “The game with the Blood Cheat”, at least in my school playground, Mortal Kombat was quite the noteworthy release, being the first console game that I’m aware of that was so blatantly violent and gory, even if that gore was hidden behind a (very easy to find and spread to friends) cheat code.

Mortal kombat arcade with 6 buttons