Finish Him? Mortal Kombat was Never Dead

With May's NPD out and Mortal Kombat with another strong month in sales (over a million in April and another 250K in May*), we can now salivate in the return of the fighting genre to videos game. But in reality, Mortal Kombat has never been dead since its inception in 1992 (the franchise has stole more than 26M copies to date**). Even the more recent games before the last game has been shipping over 1.5 million units***.

Here is my opinion on what is makes Mortal Kombat such a juggernaut.

An American Playing a in Japanese game

What makes Street fighter, Tekken, Virtual Fighter, King of Fighters, Soul Calibur, SNK and Guilty Gear all have in common? They are all made in Japan. Of course there have been other western developers that have made fighter games (killer instinct) but the majority of them have been made in Japan. While most of the franchise I mention have a very Japanese/anime character design, Mortal Kombat had digitized sprites (more realistic) and blood and gore which appealed greater to a western audiences.

Content, Content and more Content

After the first Mortal Kombat the rest of the games always had people coming back for more. If you were not trying to find out all the fatalities or babilites, you were racing around in a go-kart or playing puzzle mode. Where most fighters, believe the last valuing lived in vs. mode, Mortal Kombat had enough content to keep both the customer who wanted a single or multi-player busy and keeping the customer base happy

Mortal Kombat the Movie

What is a better way to advertise your brand with a kick ass movie. Enough Said

Finish Him

How could I go this whole article without talking about Mortal Kombat most distinct feature, the fatality. The great thing about fatalities is that complicated enough so its very hard to randomly do but once you know how to do it, its easy to pull off since the player you are doing it against is just standing there. They were so unique and cool, it got everyone around the arcade staring at the screen and thinking I want to pull that off.

In an industry where everyone copies the new and cool, Mortal Kombat took Street fighter 2 and innovate on it. And they kept on innovating keeping Mortal Kombat fresh and unique.

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