Mortal Kombat Memories

In 1995, the Mortal Kombat video games were riding high on a wave of infamy. Digitized decapitations and removal of spinal columns tend to get a lot of attention from anyone with eyeballs. Parents were up in arms over the ultra-violence on display, but kids couldn’t get enough splattering blood (or sweat if you were playing it on the Super NES). In an attempt to bridge the generation gap (or just line their pockets with more cold hard cash) Midway decided to put on a stage show featuring a very clear good vs evil storyline with only a handful of NO fatalities and I was there. Before we get into the details of my infamous trip to see the Mortal Kombat Live Tour, let me share with you the frenzy we were all caught up in during the MK era.

Prior to the 1993 release of Mortal Kombat on home video game consoles, the closest most of us got to “fighting games” was choosing Mode B on Double Dragon for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The clunky jump kicks and useless punching attacks assigned to Jimmy, Billy, Linda and the rest left a lot to be desired, so most of us stuck to laying the smack down on Abobo’s in the standard side scrolling Mode A. The fact that we couldn’t easily apply a roundhouse kick to our digital opponent’s face meant the popularity of one on one fighting games was slowed tremendously. Then in 1991 Street Fighter II became a fixture in every 7-11, pizza joint and video arcade nationwide, feeding our hunger for the ancient art of butt-kicking and creating the most popular genre of the decade.

I remember attending a birthday party in 1992 held at Camelot Family Fun Center in Anaheim, CA where my buddy Brandon was so ticked off that this kid kept “cheaping” him in a game of Street Fighter II. The offending player did this by cornering Brandon's pixelated pugilist at the end of the screen and attacking poor Blanka with a barrage of E. Honda’s hundred hand slaps from which there was no escape. As this massacre was taking place there were 20 kids lined up to get their shot at the champion of the moment, with Brandon screaming, “Stop cheaping me! You’re cheaping me!” all the while. I personally always had more interest in side-scrolling Fatal Fury/TMNT/The Simpsons/X-Men type games, where you demolished an endless stream of side-scrolling enemies, but I couldn’t deny that this was the hottest thing going.

By 1993, I was at the height of my new comic book collecting hobby. Superman had died the previous year, Batman’s back had just been broken by Bane and every cover seemed to be made from aluminum foil. It was during this time that I first beheld the iconic Mortal Kombat logo on the back covers of my favorite comics and began to wonder what was this event was I was supposed to be preparing myself for. When the TV ads featuring young urban males flooding city streets screaming “Mortal Kombaaaat!” started popping up during every commercial break, I sensed that things would never be the same again.

Suddenly on the playground where I was used to acting out “Hadookans” and “Sonic Booms”, now I’m being told stories about “Fatalities” and some guy named Rayden. “You can punch a guy’s head off!”, “One guy rips off his face and breaths fire!”, I had a hard time believing any of this could be possible. But sure enough, one day after school, there I was watching my friend use Kano to rip the beating heart from Scorpion’s chest.

The excess gore wasn’t really my style, but it was fascinating. Every 12 year old boy has some bloodlust in him after all. Within a few minutes of watching I realized that I had seen the same style of “3-D/Real Person” fighting in a game called Pit Fighter at an arcade in 1990, Mortal Kombat just took it to the next level by adding gushers of blood and entrails. Everything was EXTREEEEME in the 90’s, so it makes sense that our video games would reflect that attitude.

Next thing I know Mortal Kombat is being featured on the news showing parents in an uproar over this violence being sold to kids and suddenly it became the forbidden game you could only play at your “bad news” buddy’s house. You know the guy, the one whose parent’s let him watch Rated R movies and drink Mountain Dew for breakfast. Just like a junkie who knows where to get his fix, I knew my video game violence dealer well. By the time MK3 came out in 1995, I was spending every day after school listening to The Jerky Boys and watching Baraka slice up Reptile at his house.

During those 2 years everyone was jumping on the fighting game bandwagon with offerings like Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Killer Instinct, freakin’ dinosaurs fighting giant apes in Primal Rage, it was madness! Capcom finally got my quarters by creating X-Men: Children of the Atom, wherein I could play as my favorite characters from the X-Universe. All I needed to get on board with fighting games was for the violence to be put in a comic book context, “Of course Wolverine is fighting Silver Samurai, they have a long-standing grudge. BERSERKER BARRAGE!”

Then the movie came out. Mortal Kombat was THE summer movie of 1995 for me. I already had a crush on Bridgette Wilson (who played Sonya Blade) from her role in Billy Madison and now she was a butt-kicking babe in cut-off jean shorts? SOLD! Every character was so over the top and ridiculous, it was a 13 year old male’s definition of entertainment. Sure Frenchman known for playing an immortal Scotsman, Christopher Lambert was an odd choice for Rayden, but he was the perfect level of silly in the role. I was so into the movie I even bought the soundtrack on cassette. The only movie to get that distinction prior to this frenzy was Aladdin and “A Whole New World” had nothing on “Juke-Joint Jezebel” by KMFDM. It was after the movie rocked theaters and MK3 had been flying off store shelves that the live show was announced.

In Orange County where I grew up, the event was going to take place on October 21, 1995 at The Pond of Anaheim, where The Mighty Ducks played hockey against other NHL teams. It actually seems a perfect fit in retrospect, where the biggest draw of hockey is less the sport and more the brawling, so too was Mortal Kombat less about martial arts than 32 bit mayhem. I would say the thing I was most excited about was seeing live versions of newer characters like Baraka, Cabal and Sindel who weren’t part of the first film and didn’t get much respect in the dismal follow-up Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Most likely unaware of what Mortal Kombat was, since I never played it at home, my Mom agreed to let me attend with my friend’s mom as our chaperon.

I was pretty excited to go to one of these shows. I had friends who got to see the Masters of the Universe Power Tour live stage show and the TMNT: Coming Out of Their Shells Tour, which had been a point of extreme jealousy for years, so I psyched about being able to experience one of these shows for myself. There were so many potential scenarios playing out in my head: Would we see an animatronic Goro smashing good guys? Would Sub-Zero freeze somebody in the crowd and break them into tiny pieces? Would Stryker...eat a doughnut?  Little did I know the craziness that was to come. 

When we arrived at The Pond, I remember booth after booth of merchandise lining the circular hallways of the arena. I don’t remember what they were selling, as much as I remember the kids running around acting out the fatal moves of their favorite characters. Of course the audience was made up predominately of hyper-active young boys, most several years younger than us. At 13, we were just on the edge of acceptable to attend, but we were still excited for the show. So we shuffled to our seats up in the nosebleeds and it was then that an interesting proposition came our way.

A woman approached our group with her young son and pointed to a group of seats several levels below us. She said that she had some extra tickets and would be happy for us to join them in watching the show from a better view. Unbelievably my friend’s Mom said OK to the 2 of us following this complete stranger down to the seats while she waited in our official spot with his little brother. When we arrived we were to give her the sign that the seats were ready and they would follow us down. Keep in mind, at 13 we didn’t see the danger in this situation, we were all for this free upgrade, but our adult guardian should have realized she could have been sending us into the kingdom of Outworld under the care of Shang Tsung in the form of a middle aged woman.

When we arrived at the lower-level seating we were thrilled, “This is great!”, we were thinking. We could now clearly see the set where Liu Kang and Johnny Cage would be dispensing their brand of martial arts justice. Then the security guard showed up. He asked the lady for her tickets to prove she had claim to sit in this area and so she starts digging around in her purse. “Oh, I know they’re here somewhere…It’s so dark in here…I just had them.” The security guard was on to her immediately and said, “Ma’am, I’m afraid you are going to have to go back to your original seats.” It was then we realized we had been used. In her crazy brain she must have thought that the more kids you have with you, the less security will want to disappoint them and just let you squat in premium seats. We arrived broken-hearted and a little confused at our distant seats to take in the spectacle.

The show itself was pretty disappointing and I doubt being closer would have made it less so. The fights were more like something from an episode of WMAC Masters than anything seen on a video game screen. In fact, I think Hakeem “The Machine” Alston was playing Jax, so it wasn’t that far removed from the kiddified martial arts seen on that FOX Saturday morning TV show.

Now that I think about it, “Red Dragon” Chris Casamassa from WMAC Masters battled Robin Shou’s Liu Kang on the big screen as Scorpion, Hakeem was the first guy to have his soul stolen by Shang Tsung in the movie and “Superstar” Ho Sung Pak was the original Liu Kang model for MK 1 and 2. With all those connections it’s no wonder Mortal Kombat became less edgy while inspiring action figures, a cartoon show and eventual syndicated TV series. Like Robocop and Rambo before, if there’s money to be made it’s going to get sanitized for mass consumption. Less blood = mo’ money!

The MK legacy is currently being revived thanks to nostalgic gamers worldwide, but I’ll always look back fondly on the original hysteria that resulted in some “dangerous” attitudes and adventures during my youth. So tell me, what was your favorite character, game or fatality in the series?