31 Facts About Mortal Kombat

1.

Mortal Kombat is an American media franchise centered on a series of video games originally developed by Midway Games in 1992.

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2.

The original Mortal Kombat was the first fighting game to introduce a secret fighter, reached if the player fulfilled a set of requirements.

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3.

Mortal Kombat has become the best-selling fighting game franchise worldwide and one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.

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4.

Whereas in Mortal Kombat the fighting and playing is just a pathway to get to the result – it's the Fatality you want to see and you almost want to skip the fighting bit and get to the Fatality because that is the result.

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5.

One of the most notable features of the Mortal Kombat series is its brutal and gruesome finishing moves, known as "Fatalities".

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6.

Mortal Kombat X sees Shinnok and Quan Chi enacting their plan, leading an army of undead revenants of those that were killed in Shao Kahn's invasion of Earthrealm.

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7.

Mortal Kombat started development in 1991 with only four people: Ed Boon, John Tobias (art and story), John Vogel (graphics), and Dan Forden (sound design).

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8.

Title Mortal Kombat was the idea of pinball designer Steve Ritchie, following difficulties trademarking the original title of Mortal Combat.

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9.

Mortal Kombat games were known for their extensive use of palette swapping, which was used for the ninja characters.

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10.

Mortal Kombat included secret characters, secret games, and other Easter eggs.

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11.

The character Mokap, introduced in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, is a tribute to Carlos Pesina, who played Raiden in MK and MKII and has served as a motion capture actor for subsequent titles in the series.

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12.

Original Mortal Kombat game was released by Midway in arcades during October 1992, and has since been ported to several console and home computer systems, with early ports released by Acclaim Entertainment.

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13.

Mortal Kombat 3 followed in 1995 in both arcade and home versions.

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14.

MK3 received two updates which expanded the number of characters and other features from the game: Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, released that same year in arcades, and Mortal Kombat Trilogy, released for home consoles the following year.

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15.

The following game, Mortal Kombat 4, was released in 1997, and marked the jump of the series to 3D rendered graphics instead of the digitized 2D graphics used in previous games.

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16.

Mortal Kombat 4 was ported to the PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and Microsoft Windows.

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17.

At this point that the series started being targeted at consoles only, with Mortal Kombat 4 being the last game in the series to be released for the arcades.

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18.

Mortal Kombat: Armageddon was published in 2006 for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and in 2007 for the Wii.

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19.

Ninth game in the series, a reboot titled simply Mortal Kombat, was developed by the former Midway Games, now known as NetherRealm Studios.

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20.

An animated prequel to 1995's Mortal Kombat film, titled Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins, was released direct-to-video in the same year as the live-action film.

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21.

Novelizations of both Mortal Kombat movies were written by Martin Delrio and Jerome Preisler.

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22.

The 2011 video game saw the release of Mortal Kombat: Songs Inspired by the Warriors, a new soundtrack album featuring electronic music by various artists.

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23.

Mortal Kombat has been one of the most successful fighting game franchises in video game history, previously only trailing Bandai Namco's Tekken and Capcom's Street Fighter and Nintendo Super Smash Bros.

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24.

Mortal Kombat games have sold more than 6 million units by 1994 and 26 million by 2007, and the figure has exceeded 30 million by 2012.

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25.

Mortal Kombat had ushered in an era of exploitation games, both on consoles and in arcades, all engaging in a battle to see who can cram the most blood and guts onto a low-res screen.

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26.

The name "Mortal Kombat" was even given to a dangerous illegal recreational drug that was introduced and caused multiple fatalities in early 2014.

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27.

In 2012, Tobias said: "If you look at any other pop culture phenomenon—like if you look at the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for instance—it became popular at the time right around when Mortal Kombat became popular, and it had its highs and lows, and here they are talking about a major motion picture.

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28.

Mortal Kombat has its place in some of the world's biggest fighting game tournaments including Evo and Combo Breaker, as well as many local and online tournaments around the world.

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29.

Since the 2011 Mortal Kombat game was released, the game has been one of the most popular games at these events.

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30.

In Germany, every Mortal Kombat game was banned for ten years from its release until 2015.

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31.

Mortal Kombat is banned in South Korea, and was banned in Australia until February 2013.

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