Mortal Kombat (PC Port)

I wasn't really a gamer, growing up. At least, not in the sense that a lot of boys in the nineties were. I didn't have Sega or Nintendo (or later on, the Playstation or Xbox). Even now, I have little inclination to get a console system. But I have always loved PC gaming.

Granted, it had its pitfalls -- high among them being that a lot of the games I wanted to play, as a kid, wouldn't run on whatever computer we had at the time. But I had my share of fun and adventure, and that's what it's all about in the end.

Anyway, one of the first fighting games I was exposed to, in any depth, was the infamous Mortal Kombat. I had more-or-less missed its arcade run, which caused such a controversy with its then unprecedented level of blood and gore that it is one of the games credited with the creation of the ESRB ratings system. But, in the summer of 1993, I was given a free magazine at the Canadian National Exhibition, about new Sega Genesis/Game Gear releases -- and the cover story was none other than MK. 

Suffice it to say, this wasn't in the article.

 Some time later (I think it was around 1995), my dad let me have the IBM port, and I was hooked on it. Of course, when we eventually replaced our computer with a machine that DIDN'T have a floppy drive, I was pretty much stuck... until I got my own laptop, and put DOSBox on it.

AND SO IT (FINALLY) BEGINS.

For those who don't know, the story is basically this: a very old sorcerer, named Shang Tsung, has invited seven elite fighters to his private island. They are to compete in a vicious martial-arts tournament, against each other, and against a few of Tsung's own fighters (as well as Tsung himself). If they win, they live. If they don't, there are plenty of dungeon skeletons and dismembered pit corpses that will keep them company.

Unlike the Windows 8 version of WordPad, that I am typing this review on, the controls in this port and rather slick... for Player One. For some reason, the Player Two controls, at least for the keyboard, have this tendency to totally misread your commands. For instance, if you want to walk to the left, the game will have your character SOMERSAULT to the left instead. Beyond that glitch, though, the controls are reliable. More lovingly, they preserve the layout of the original arcade cabinet; aside from the direction controls, all of the attack/defense buttons are laid out BY DEFAULT in an X-like pattern, as per the original display. This is such an effortless and fluid scheme that Probe Software (the PC developers) duplicated it for their port of MK II, and any non-Probe Mortal Kombat game I've played since, I've always remapped the controls of to match this design.

However, there is a problem with the PC controls that seem to exist on every device you can try it on: some of the special moves just won't work. The Mortal Kombat games are rather infamous for their ridiculously convoluted commands for special attacks, combos, and finishing moves. While that's not entirely true of the first game, there are still some moves that you to hold down four buttons at once, which most OS's treat as mashing the keys, and therefore will ignore what you do. Even if you play with a gamepad (or "four button joystick", as the game refers to it), the button layouts just down ergonomically lend themselves to those inputs. Don't even think about playing this with a two-button joystick.

One last word of warning: if you're going to play this game regularly, start saving up for at least one new keyboard. Believe me, you'll be going through them like Rice-a-Roni. It's worth considering buying the aforementioned gamepad (the game's manual recommends the Gravis one that looks like the SNES controller), but depending on what it's compatible with today, you may be stuck with some actions not being doable with one button push.

The graphics mostly consist of digitized actors, superimposed on illustrated backgrounds (with the exception of the sub-boss Goro, who was portrayed by a stop-motion puppet). While the image quality is extremely grainy by any standards past 1997, I still love the photo-realistic touch of a "real" person on the screen. Needless to say the buckets of blood per hit, and routine blows that send opponents flying, are not at all realistic, but it's very satisfying.

The sound effects, at least on the PC version, are a rather different story. Even if your sound card is up to snuff, the effects will alternate between high-quality immersive sounds, and something that sounds like a tambourine being hit by a sledgehammer. On occasion, the only sound altogether will be a booming chop sound, played at high speed until you can't take it anymore. Between this and the aforementioned glitches with the Player Two controls, this might have been my first experience with truly sloppy programming and bug-testing -- how appropriate. Though I will give them props for Kano's headbutt move (with a metallic face implant) being accompanied with an awesome gong sound.

In terms of gameplay, to this day I find this one to be the most balanced in the series. Obviously, when you play against a human, it's fair game (especially when the controls are mostly fluid and responsive). With the computer, however, that isn't always the case. The AI in this series is notorious for being sadistically cheap, but the original game -- at least in this particular home version -- was mostly programmed with some sense of fair play. It will still anticipate and react to your moves far better than a human could, but the challenge learning curve is far less severe than in many subsequent games.

I've heard over the years, that Goro can be a really hard boss, but to be honest that's rarely been the case for me, regardless of the game I've played and on what difficulty level. If you play as someone with a stun move (eg. Sub-Zero, who can freeze people at will), that and CONSTANTLY hammering Goro with jump kicks, will get you through the day. Interestingly, this is also the case in Mortal Kombat 4 and the 2011 reboot game. Shang Tsung is slightly harder, not only because he can morph into ANY other character, but his fireballs are an instant rookie-killer. Just duck them (rather than block), and fight him as you would anyone else.*

(* the version of the game, presently on Abandonia, has a bug that will crash the game as soon you reach the final fight. Check out other sites, to see if there's a different source file available, as this was NOT a glitch in the port I owned as a teenager)

Reptile, the hidden fighter, will quite simply own your ass. It is possible to beat him, but I'm nowhere near good enough a player to be able to do it. He's hard to get to, and you will need to be at the top of your game to stand a chance against him; he is VERY fast, and hurls everything he's got at you. Good luck.

If you can find a version (either on CD-ROM or on an abandonware page) that DOESN'T have the Shang Tsung glitch, I strongly recommend giving this a try. From what I hear, you should absolutely stay away from the buggy and merciless cash grab of the Arcade Kollection version. FINISH IT!