28. Mortal Kombat II

(Arcade/Various Home, Midway, 1993)
MORRRRTALLLLL KOMBAAAAAAT!!! (Cue awful techno music)
Mortal Kombat was my favourite fighter as a youngster, I really appreciated the darkness of the first game and all the guitar-wailing ninjas. I'd never even heard of the infamous fatalities until one day at the arcade I watched this guy (playing Scorpion) take his mask off to reveal a skull then proceed to incinerate his opponent. I stood agape:
"How did you do that??"
"Secret."

It was on.

So I became an avid MK player. Fast-forward to the arcade release of Mortal Kombat II, I couldn't have been more excited. I'd already bought every U.S magazine I could (Ah, those pre-information superhighway days) to gather all the info on the game and its exciting new characters and features. I studied the move lists and learnt the various background fatalities. The big day finally came and a glossy MKII cabinet was installed at my local arcade. It was time for weeks of revision to pay off, for this, was my moment of glory.

I got fucking annihilated.

MKII is, for me, the peak of the series, with beautifully animated, digitised models that are much cleaner than the first game and sit better against the imaginative and spooky backgrounds. MKII is alarmingly paced and fights can be over within a matter of seconds for the player who knows his game. A nice selection of well balanced characters with awesomely wacky background stories do battle armed with an arsenal of special moves and a variety of ways to end the fight. Each character was given two "Fatalities", the infant producing "Babality" and the amusing comedy relief "Friendship" move (which was a dig at the super-violent Mortal Kombat reputation garnered at the senate hearings)

The game has very little structure in the way of combos, with most fights boiling down to fast sequences of moves as opposed to an unblockable chain of hits (though these do exist in some form) As such, it could be argued that Mortal Kombat is far less technical than its arch nemesis, Street Fighter. This is true, but I believe that they are two different types of fighter, SF has more of a precise science in learning your character, whereas MK (at this point, at least) seemed more like a straight up, hyper-speed fist-flying, high-kicking battle to the gory death.

MKII also saw the dawn of the series obsession with Easter eggs, hidden characters and moments to get players guessing "What does that mean? Is it a character? a new move? etc" This gave MKII a real "urban legend" feel, with people to this day STILL claiming they've seen people morph into Goro, the sub-boss of the original.
There is also has a hidden mode which simply turns the game into Pong for a bit. Sold.

Mortal Kombat's legacy is a bit iffy. The games have changed a lot over the years, from 2D scrappers to martial arts based 3D fighters, from crappy spin-offs and TV shows to surreal experiments (Though I will add I'm a big fan of the MK vs DC game) Mortal Kombat has become a crazy parody of itself and much of its charm has been lost amongst its many re-launches, comics, cartoons and less than stellar installments. MKII represents a shining light for the franchise and is one of the few games in the series that still holds up to repeated play today. Mortal Kombat II is fast, violent, atmospheric and addictive. It is a definitive classic.

Stand two steps away from your opponent, Hold Block and press Up twice.
It isn't "Secret" anymore. Bitch.