On the one hand, the game was commercially successful, which absolutely helped to move the game forward, both in terms of plot and gameplay elements.
- Play the best Mortal Kombat games to train for the upcoming movie
- Mortal Kombat 11
- Mortal Kombat (1992)
- Mortal Kombat II (1993)
- Discover your next favorite game
- Mortal Kombat 11 Kombat Pack 2
- Forge a new history.
- Game features
- TWO CINEMATIC STORIES
- ALL 37 FIGHTERS
- ALL MODES
- ALL FEATURES
- Mortal Kombat 3
- Mortal Kombat Trilogy
- Street Fighter V: Championship Edition
- Tekken 7
- Worry On Mombat
- Killing Joke
- Sounding off
- Family affair
Play the best Mortal Kombat games to train for the upcoming movie
Do you love playing Mortal Kombat games? If so, you will be delighted with this news. Finally, there’s a new Mortal Kombat movie on the horizon. It’s been 24 years since Mortal Kombat: Annihilation’s debut in 1997. In April, the rebooted film is slated to hit theaters. But it’s still a long way off.
What can you do in the meantime? This is a great time to delve into the Mortal Kombat franchise, especially if all you remember about the games are classics. Spend the next month jumping into some of the best Mortal Kombat games.
Let us be your guide for the Kombat games you can play right now. It’s simple: get some Fatalities now and it won’t be long waiting for the movie to come out.
Here are some of our top picks.
Mortal Kombat 11
Mortal Kombat 11. Photo: Amazon
You can’t go wrong with the latest version of the popular fighting series. Mortal Kombat 11 is the best version of the classic series you can play right now, and it has graphics and Fatalities for that. Not only do you get an exciting narrative to investigate that follows Kronika, the keeper of time, to rewrite history to keep the Dark Raiden from interfering with the earthly realm of Mortal Kombat. All your favorite fighters come together in one place to fight those in Outworld who want to see history fall. Oh, and the fights are more violent than ever.
Have you heard of the Crypt? This “game in the game” returns in MK11, with dozens of winks to a past buried in Mortal Kombat lore, including fire-breathing spiders.
Mortal Kombat (1992)
The first Mortal Kombat is in many ways an example of how to properly start a video game franchise.
Not only are most of the characters that would define the series already present in the first iteration of the game, the relatively small list allowed for enough variety for players to instantly connect with different fighters.
The original game is perhaps best known as an arcade hit, it was also released simultaneously not only for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis consoles, but also for the Gameboy and Game Gear portable platforms.
The game was also to be released two years later in MS-DOS and Amiga formats, as well as higher fidelity Sega CD.
Mortal Kombat II (1993)
By Midway – Scanned from version 32X, fair use, Link
If Mortal Kombat laid the groundwork for one of the most-loved fighting game franchises of all time, Mortal Kombat II has absolutely codified what the series will move forward.
Like many sequels, this game consisted of more – more fighters, more finishers, more blood, and more options.
With that in mind, the developers also took the time to go back and polish the game itself, adding a lot of moves that are now a standard part of the fighting game landscape, and correcting some of the issues that were present in the original game.
Mortal Kombat II originally had the same publishing design as its predecessor, with the game initially being released in arcades, then on two major video game consoles (SNES and Genesis) and portable devices (Game Gear and Gameboy) before making it to PC.
However, unlike Mortal Kombat, the game also jumped from generation to generation, appearing on both the Sega Saturn and the Sony Playstation.
It followed the same story and featured almost all of the same mechanics, except for the new Aggressor Bar which discouraged opponents from blocking in a blocking position, and the Brutality feature which added a new 11-entry finisher to the fighters.
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Mortal Kombat 11 Kombat Pack 2
Kombat Pack 2 features fan-favorite playable fighter Mileena, Rain, and the iconic guest Rambo, with the likeness and voice of actor Sylvester Stallone.
Forge a new history.
Experience the first major expansion of Mortal Kombat! MK11: Aftermath brings a brand new cinematic story and 3 new playable characters including Sheeva, Fujin and guest RoboCop.
Game features
TWO CINEMATIC STORIES
Experience 2 solid, critically acclaimed story campaigns with MK11 and MK11: Aftermath.
ALL 37 FIGHTERS
Play the complete 37-man roster, including the newly added female fighters Mileena, Rain and Rambo.
ALL MODES
Including Time Towers, Vaults, Tutorial, Online, Classic Towers and more.
ALL FEATURES
END THEM with stage killings, brutality, iconic killings and friendships.
This edition brings back fan favorite characters that were left out of the original release, adds some new stage environments, and has many new modes.
Mortal Kombat 3
Release date: October 6, 1995
Supported platforms: PC
The third edition in the series of arcade battles from Midway Games studio remained faithful to the central theme of the brand. The rules of the game were the same as in the previous two games as well as the cycles.
However, the new edition had an increased number of fighters, new arenas to choose from, and special attacks increased in number and ferocity. With a combination of blows, the warriors could end the fight in an instant.
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Release date: October 10, 1996
Supported platforms: PC
It was the last of the popular series of virtual fights, in which two-dimensional digital models were used, struggling against a computer-generated background.
It was a disturbing time for players. While the changes were highly anticipated, there was a chance that the next version would be a fallout and bloody fights that players were used to.
Mortal Kombat XL is an expansion pack for Mortal Kombat X. It tells the same storyline 25 years after the original game, but tells a new story in which new characters such as Johnny Cage play a significant role.
Street Fighter V: Championship Edition
Street Fighter V did not have a great premiere. The basics existed from the get-go with a great basic combat system, but the scarcity of content and characters made it feel like an incomplete game – one that criticism producer Yoshinori Ono had dealt with. But while it took too long to get there, the 2018 Arcade Edition showed that the game finally reached its full potential.
That said, it’s still Street Fighter, and Street Fighter is still the standard against which all other fighting games are measured. So if you want to understand fireballs, combos and promotions – not to mention soccer matches and frame data – you start with Street Fighter, and V continues the traditions we’ve been building since World Warrior hit arcades years ago.
Street Fighter V for PC also has a cross-play feature with PlayStation 4, which means you can compete against all other online players. This is a big advantage over many of the players on this list, as the vast majority of players compete on consoles.
Dan, Rose, Oro, Akira (from the Rival Schools), and Luke are now playable in the game and are the last characters to appear in Street Fighter V as Capcom prepares for the next game in the series.
Tekken 7
Tekken 7 is heralded as the end of the saga, and the cinematic blooms of its grand – and hilarious – story mode are also permeating actual fights. Slow-motion close-ups highlight the most tense moments of any battle, and the stone-faced warriors are just as determined to throw each other at the volcanoes as ever.
But it’s not just about bombing. Tekken remains the most competitive 3D fighter, with solid tactical battles that reward strong tech play with impressive combos and incredible damage. This beautiful combination of dramatic graphics and deep, complex mechanics makes Tekken one of the most exciting fighting games in the world.
It’s also secretly one of the biggest crossover games, with Akuma from Street Fighter, Geese from Fatal Fury, Noctis from Final Fantasy XV, and bizarrely Negan from The Walking Dead. In addition, Season Four brings players Kunimitsu and a new character: Lydia, so there are tons of things to come back to if you missed them.
The Mortal Kombat series proves that the path to success is never smooth. After kicking out of swinging gates in the mid-90s, the franchise struggled with the mid-2000s and eventually saw the original developer shut down a store.
Worry On Mombat
Anyone who has played any of the previous Mortal Kombat games (aside from the horrible MK myths that made even the Mortal Kombat Trilogy look good) will be able to start playing MK4 right away. In fact, even if you’ve never seen a Mortal Kombat game, you’ll still be able to go straight for it as the gameplay is a model of simplicity. Two punch buttons, two kick buttons, a rarely used block button, and a virtually irrelevant gear button, and you’re gone. You can have a bit of fun by just pressing the buttons as fast as you can to see which fighter falls first in the blood haze, but of course things get more interesting once you learn to perform special attacks – acid spitting, spear throwing, teleportation and so on like.
It is these special moves that show how little the MK series has developed since its early days as they not only look the same but are performed the same way. It could be argued that this allows fans to jump straight to each new game as it comes out. Or, alternatively, you may argue that it saves designers from having to time and costly come up with new ideas. Even though the game is in 3D now, with the addition of a dodge feature (which, like the launch button, is almost never used in the game), most of the moves could have come directly from the first MK game. The only thing that has changed is the amount of blood.
Killing Joke
Admittedly, Mortal Kombat 4 added some minor new features. Each character has a special weapon that can be pulled out of a portable hole (or somewhere) during combat and used to roar the other fighter upside down, and items lying in the arenas can be picked up and thrown with painful effect. But that’s really the point.
Street Fighter titles, longtime rival to Mortal Kombat, have added things like rechargeable power bars, flips, and combo breakers that enrich the original gameplay without overwhelming it, but MK4 designers are happy to just bend someone’s knees the wrong way instead of advancing the game.
Despite its limitations, Mortal Kombat 4 is pretty cool for a while. The brutal death toll, now played solely for laughter, is something that appeals to the 14-year-old boy in all of us, and the whole thing is so absurd that even the most tense type of Mary Whitehouse couldn’t find this moral outrage. It’s very fast, easy to play, and as a two-player game, it can be incredibly fun. However, it’s also shallow as spilled coffee, and if you remove the comedic violence, there really isn’t much left. For now, MK4 is the best beat-’em-up on the N64, but only by default.
Mortal Kombat 4 includes many new additions, but still retains the fighting techniques developed in many of the prequels. This game is great and you can’t beat it for fun and thrills, and it’s all stained with tons of blood. MK4 rules and you’ll love it to death!
Sounding off
Forden and the NetherRealm Studios team record their own “gore” sounds in Mortal Kombat games, usually slicing and smashing fruits and vegetables, breaking nuts and creating their own sludge to make the blood spatter audible. While creating “Mortal Kombat X”, the game developers learned how bad the recording room smelled after the recording session ended.
However, in the video for “Mortal Kombat 11” they mainly smashed citrus to make the room smell better after attacking the food. The game is “almost” vegan, the makers tell me, except for using yogurt for some effects.
Plus, some of the coolest MK11 sounds came from down-to-earth studio subjects. In one session, the Forden lunch cutlery was used to create the sound of the blade in the game.
The sound team at NetherRealm Studios beats and cuts the fruit to get some sounds for “Mortal Kombat 11.” (Photo: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.)
Family affair
Like many high-budget video games, hundreds of people have worked on MK11. But not many studies can say that: three of the four original team members who created Mortal Kombat in 1992 are still working on the franchise.
That’s right, 27 years later NetherRealm hires Forden, Ed Boon, Creative Director and co-creator of Mortal Kombat, and John Vogel, Senior Film Artist.
Moreover, “a few other” game developers on MK11 have been working on the Mortal Kombat franchise since 1995.