Retro Corner: Mortal Kombat (Arcade) Review · 3:05am Feb 4th, 2019
A new edition of Retro Corner is up, and we check out the first Mortal Kombat for the Arcade. It's that time again as a new Mortal Kombat will be coming out this April marking the series' 11th installment. I sometimes can't believe it's been almost 30 years since MK debuted in 1992 for the Arcades. I use to remember how much parents were in a ridiculous uproar about the game. In fact that's why law makers in the US made the ESRB rating system due to the violent content. It's undoubtedly that the industry at the time did need a rating system as movies and TV already maintained one. MK would set a new standard along with Doom that jumped started the mature games popularity. It's funny how the characters didn't have good designs in these concepts by today's standards. Just take a look at the live action customs the actors wore during the recordings, they are literally laughable. Fortunately for the series, these designs got better over time judging by their outfits in MKX.
For MK1, it hasn't aged all that well in almost 30 years due to how bad digitizing 3D graphics looks today. Even the gameplay has this aging factor to it as everything feels stiff and limited. As I explained many times, digitizing real settings and live actors along with 3D places and character models was a middle technology. During the late 80s to early 90s, 3D graphics for any platform were really expensive. That was the reason companies like Midway, Acclaim, Rare and even Id used these special techniques. It's among the many ways developers got around 3D graphics and in turn helped them produce great visuals. The gameplay has similar mechanics to others in its genre which isn't all surprising. However, MK uses a slower style gameplay which helped tell people the difference when compared to Street Fighter.
