The Early Days of Mortal Kombat

In the early days of home console gaming all eyes were on Nintendo.  They seemed to have the winning formula for success in the early days, so developers didn't seem to challenge their rules.  While there were many great games out for the Nintendo and Super Nintendo, their strict policies on how violence was portrayed in games kept developers from pushing the envelope.  This policy made many developers to gear their games for children, and made the idea of games with adult themes very taboo.

How did Nintendo not find this good, wholesome fun for the family

The Mortal Kombat series was one that certainly didn't seek Nintendo's approval.  Debuting in 1992 with the original Mortal Kombat arcade game, the 2-dimensional fighting game made waves with it's realistic character models, and extremely violent content.  From the outset this made the series extremely popular.  And by 1995 there were two sequels to the hit out for arcades.

What made the game most shocking to most was the fact that instead of cartoonish characters, MK used real actors to create the models of each character.  Successful strikes against your opponents caused sprays of blood to shoot from their wounds.  At the end of each battle the loser stands dazed and the game proclaims "Finish Him."  From there each character has his or her own unique finishing move called a Fatality.  Mortal Kombat fatalities are gruesome animations of character dismemberment, or maiming.  Each of the three original arcade games had home console counterparts.

Mortal Kombat 3 arcade machine

  

The first two games were available on the SNES and Sega Genesis.  Most gamers remember the Genesis ports the best.  Although the game was toned down from the arcade version, a cheat code could be entered to unlock the blood and gore that the arcade version had.  The Super Nintendo was a different story all together.  Much of the game was altered, the blood was removed, many of the fatalities were altered to limit the violence, and even if you had the cheat codes the blood would be green.  This caused many gamers who didn't have access to a Genesis to cry foul. 

The third game was also ported to the Sony PlayStation.  The PS1 was a great system for the series to grow, and didn't have the same objections to the violent content that the earlier systems did.  The issue that fans had with the third installment was that many of the principal characters were replaced.  Raiden, Scorpion, Mileena, Kitana, and other series regulars were all replaced with new characters.  While still a great Mortal Kombat the omission of many of the series' regulars were too much for fans to take.

Mortal Kombat Trilogy for the Playstation boasted tons of playable characters

In order to solve these issues for the home console market, in 1996 Mortal Kombat Trilogy was developed for the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64.  On the surface they were very solid home console versions of the game, but the PlayStation version boasted 37 playable characters from each of the first three titles.  There were several improvements made to gameplay including the Brutality finishing maneuver, and the Aggressor bar which gave temporary boost in performance.  

The high number of playable characters really set the game apart from any game like it.  Having such a vast number of playable characters gave the game a high replay value.  Another feature that the game had was a cheat code for performing one button Fatalities.  This eliminated the need to perform the complicated inputs previously needed to perform these abilities.  

Tons of characters made for Mortal Kombat heaven

While the PlayStation version was a moderate hit, the Nintendo 64 was a different story.  Limitations in the system caused the developers once again to have to scale back the game.  The N64 version only had 30 characters included, among other limitations.

Mortal Kombat Trilogy also marked the end of 2D gaming for the series (until 2011's Mortal Kombat for PS3 and XBox 360).  Mortal Kombat 4 evolved the series into a 3D fighter.  Beyond that there were several other different style games set in the Mortal Kombat universe that further went away from the originals.