Tweet

Share

Video Games

In 1991, Capcom hit gamers with Street Fighter II: The World Warrior and it firmly solidified their title as King Shit of Fuck Mountain. Other games have come along and taken a run at the belt, most notably Midway’s Mortal Kombat and Tekken by Namco, but they never really came close to dethroning Ken and Ryu as the champs. You could argue King of Fighters/Samurai Shodown by SNK, but they too could not match the quality of Capcom.

Unfortunately for Midway’s clunky fighter, only the first handful of games in the series were memorable. Everything released past Mortal Kombat 4 declined rapidly in quality and were even less fun than going through old photo albums and reminiscing about your ‘skinnier days’ when you didn’t need your wife to move you around with a pallet jack.

Mortal Kombat enjoyed some brief success for a few years in the early 1990s but the games just came off as gimmicky and entertaining in a morbid kind of way but never posed a true threat to Capcom’s franchise. With the nutty finishing moves and over the top violence, it was obvious that it was marketed towards the easily amused ADD kids shrieking for blood like starved harpies, while the smug, more mature Street Fighter fans stood back and shook their heads in quiet amusement.

I don't know how old Cammy is, but a webcam would put her through college.

Gore does not make a game better, gameplay does. Gameplay is where Capcom outshined the competition for years. The skill of a player can make Ryu look like a graceful ballet dancer moving to a symphony of pain and pugilism, or else like Stephen Hawking trying to line dance in high heels. Being able to do the former and dominate your local arcade requires a lot of dedication and, I hate to say it in reference to a video game, talent. I’m not saying old Mortal Kombat games don’t require skill, but the tap-tap-punch style controls always felt more like you were entering cheat codes or playing Dance Dance Revolution with your fingers, as opposed to Street Fighter’s poetic flow which was harder to master.

Mortal Kombat’s strongest showing was in 1995 with Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and I fully admit that I love that game, but like Kevin Smith waddling in front of the sun, it was soon eclipsed by Street Fighter 3: Third Strike which put a stranglehold on the fighting game market for the next decade. Capcom continued to destroy the competition with games like Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 while Midway struggled like a Down syndrome kid trying to wipe his own ass and made a shitty mess of things for the next number of years. Ironically, the best thing to ever happen to the once decent Mortal Kombat franchise was the sad demise of Midway.

Years of awful decisions, and just plain terrible games that didn’t sell drained money from the company and eventually forced them to liquidate their assets in 2009 and sell to a dinky little film company you may have heard of: Warner Bros. Like three black dudes in a porno with a blonde chick ready to make like a circus seal, this is when things began to get interesting.

Capcom had just taken another dump on Midway’s head and delivered a KO punch to the jaw of the short lived Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe with Street Fighter IV and then kicked them while they were down a year later with Super Street Fighter IV. The new Midway, renamed to Netherrealm Studios, finally made a bit of a splash with their newly acquired franchise and dropped a hydrogen bomb on the Japanese with a reboot of the Mortal Kombat series and fuck me is it good. So good in fact that it pushed 3 million units and paid for the Midway acquisition in a few short months.

The new Mortal Kombat game makes nerds touch their controllers in whole new ways.

Mortal Kombat 9 has absolutely blown Street Fighter out of the water to the point that the latest Super Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 seem like a distant memory that’s as bland as a cardboard popsicle. Not only is this newest MK game loaded with the blood and violence it’s famous for, but it plays better than any past Mortal Kombat game could even dream of. It is without a doubt the greatest fighting game our world has ever known, and to top it off, Netherrealm Studios has just added a few new characters to the roster, one of which is Warner Bros. very own Freddy Krueger who goes together with Mortal Kombat like cheese and crackers.

Street Fighter fans around the world, including myself, who have been talking shit all these years have spit coffee all over themselves after trying this great game out and now look like idiots with their dicks caught in their zippers. The big question is how will Capcom respond? Can they even?

Your move, Japan. Best make it a good one.

You may also hate:

• « Previous post
• Next post »

Ignorant Geek Wisdom

• ...Nintendo offered everything that a gamer could possibly need except for a shower, a girlfriend and a single reason not to jump off a bridge.

  -Mike

• Stay Up To Date

  

• Our Sponsors

  

• Twitter Feed

  • 

Your Input