Xbox Addict:

Ultimate Kombat

There are games that break molds, define genres, smash sales records, and burn themselves into the minds and hearts of gamers for all time. But no game has had as profound an impact as Mortal Kombat—the game transcended success to the point where it impacted the very evolution of the videogame industry and on the regulation and legislation of video games.

Fight!

Mortal Kombat stormed into arcades in 1993 and, like Bruce Lee in The Chinese Connection, beat down all comers. With Midway's release of ULTIMATE Mortal Kombat 3 for Xbox Live® Arcade, what many gamers feel was the peak of perfection of the Mortal Kombat arcade experience has come home to Xbox 360™ on Xbox Live.

Mortal Kombat , the brainchild of Midway designers Ed Boon and John Tobias, has, over the past thirteen years, gone on to spawn a half-dozen sequels, several spin-off games, two theatrical features, a television series, several animated specials, and enough merchandising to fill a theme park. But this legacy comes from a game, four years in the making, which stunned and shocked gamers (and eventually parents, interest groups, and more than one senator) with its realistic depictions of fighters and their brutal fighting.

Mortal Kombat , was, as the title suggest, a deadly affair, and
players were shocked when even founding characters like
Johnny Cage were killed off, presumably never to return.

The game used digitized sprites of actors, rather than using the stylized, comic-book feel of existing fighting games like Street Fighter II. For the first time, players were controlling the fate of what looked like living, breathing fighters struggling for victory, or even survival in the Mortal Kombat tournament. Adding to the visual realism of the game were the now famous, and infamous, Fatality moves. Adept players could, after beating an opponent into submission, perform a combination of moves to execute a decisive, shocking move to kill the loser.

Gamers thrilled at the sight of a victorious fighter pulling the spinal column out of a defeated opponent, head intact, holding it triumphantly overhead, or plunging a fist into the chest of a stunned enemy, and then tearing out the still-beating heart. Gamers waited anxiously for 'Mortal Monday,' the autumn release of the game on home gaming platforms.

By this point, however, the controversy over the game's violence was already coming to a boil, and several different tactics were used to fend off the feared government intervention, including Nintendo's infamous family-friendly Mortal Kombat cartridge which replaced the sprays of blood with sweat and featured neutered versions of the gory fatality moves. The International Digital Software Association formed the ESRB, or Entertainment Software Review Board, allowing the games industry to regulate itself, rating games for content and saving games from potential censorship.

The full UMK3 lineup.

In addition to the history of the game itself, the story within the game was also appealing. Mortal Kombat featured a storyline rich with images from fantasy, mythology, and history, and staged its battles in environments as diverse as haunted forests, demonic temples, creepy dungeons, and even beautifully-rendered Buddhist temples.

Each of the game's fighters also had a detailed backstory, establishing their motivation for fighting within the Mortal Kombat tournament, and many characters had a nemesis within the cast of fighters with whom they had a lethal grudge. Players eagerly awaited each Mortal Kombat release to find out how the story had progressed and if their favorite character had survived the tournament. Mortal Kombat, was, as the title suggest, a deadly affair, and players were shocked when even founding characters like Johnny Cage were killed off, presumably never to return.

Oh, it's on.

Mortal Kombat was followed by Mortal Kombat II in 1994, while MK fever was reaching a fever-pitch, and with the first feature film hitting screens the summer of 1995, Mortal Kombat 3 hit arcades with some new twists on the classic formula. Featuring the largest cast of fighters yet, (with a further expanded release in UMK3), and multi-level environments, MK3 also added to the complexity of gameplay with a run button and a corresponding stamina bar, as well as a new combo system.  

With an initial cast of fifteen fighters: Shang Tsung, Sindel, Jax, Kano, Liu Kang, Sonya, Stryker, Smoke, Sub-Zero, Cyrax, Night Wolf, Sheeva, Kung Lao, Kabal, and Sektor, MK3 was further expanded by the addition of ULTIMATE's Classic Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Reptile, and other fan-favorites and numerous hidden characters.

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for Xbox Live Arcade features a picture-perfect hi-def translation of this arcade juggernaut to the perfect arena of kombat: Xbox Live. Leaderboards track the skill of competitors, who can also unlock twelve achievements for their gamerscore, including points awarded for successfully finishing a single-player tournament, winning 100 online ranked matches, defeating a hidden ninja within the game, and for executing a flawless victory, among others. Mortal Kombat has continued to grow and evolve with new sequels every year, but Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is the definitive classic MK experience: Still brutal, still gorgeous, and still incredibly addictive. Play this game and see how Mortal Kombat shaped a genre—and an era—of videogame history.

Article by Xbox Addict