Mortal Kombat II one of the all time classic games was a game that came out in the early part of the 1990's originally a Coin-op (or arcade game) it was ported over to the home consoles of the day (the SNES and Mega Drive) and raised a lot of publicity for gaming (mainly bad). For those that have played any of the MK games they may know what to expect, for those that haven't, this is still probably the best in the series (yes, despite it's age).

The original MK game came out in 1992 (this followed the previous year) and introduced us to most of the main characters from the series, with MKII expanding on everything the original game did. With MKI we were given digitised sprites which looked a lot more realistic than the contemporary games of the time (such as Street Fighter) which were actors turned into characters. Although this looked rather stiff at times, as with that generation of gaming, everything look a bit stiff so it was excusable and better looking than the rivals which took a more cartoon style to the graphics. Something MK has done in the 3-D era where they have gone on to use more computer animated characters.

Though it wasn't the graphics that set the game apart however it was the gore and blood, the level of which had never been seen before. With many games of the era there simply wasn't any blood, no sign of damage, no nothing. MKI ripped the rule book up putting in blood gore and the now trademark "Fatalities", moves which saw a defeated opponent embarrassingly ripped to pieces (literally) by the winner. Moves such as Sub Zero's spine pull (in which he would punch into the opponent, grab their spin and yank it from the loser) would become the more significant parts of the game and the reason why it would gain it's gaming bad boy image.

So with MKII's release on Mortal Monday in 1993 we we're again forced to listen to the whole "Games are a bad influence" raves from those with no interest in playing them (funny that isn't, porn causes rapes, games cause violence and music cause shooting, but what causes over the top media confusion? Idiots.) The game continued in the same vein as though original but decided to become more cartoon-ish and try to be (and succeeded) in being funnier, the pace had heated up and the storyline expanded.

Storyline
Some evil forces ruled by huge overload Shao Khan want to take over earth by beating it in the Mortal Kombat tournament, earth understandably don't want to be taken over by some giant overlord so the god of thunder Raiden enlists Earth's best warriors to try and protect it. Though each characters story is different that's the main basis. There are characters from earth there to save it (Lou Kang), those there from Khans forces such as right hand man Shang Tsung and those there with their own personal mission.

In single player mode the players fight in the tournament using a character of their choice, though despite this they manage to go through pretty much the same route no matter who they use. Fighting a host of the other fighters in the first few rounds the player will then play Shang Tsung (a playable character himself), Kintaro and the Shao Kahn in the last 3 rounds of the tournament. After this the characters ending will play over the screen.

In multiplayer mode it's literally a 1v1 fight in which the characters have no genuine attributes, they all have the same speed, jump and reach stats, so it's down to the differing specials to win matches (or just being a better player). Although some of the specials are pretty much the games dominant moves (freezing an opponent as Sub Zero then doing what you want with them for example) the thought of this being the only difference in playability between characters might seem a bit dull. Personally I liked it at the time as you played the game for the specials and the fatalities and boy was their some fatalities.

The games ending moves we're of course the reason to play the game and we're expanded on massively between the two games, no longer was it just a fatality each they had babalities (turning an opponent into a baby) and friendships (giving the opponent a gift instead of killing them) as well as the rather obscure Fergality. Again this was extended again in MK3 with Brutalities coming in.

The roster now had 12 (playable) and 17 total with several fighters returning from the previous game and several new comers (such as the brilliantly Baraka who looked a bit like an ugly Wolverine). The game featured 3 secret characters that we're pretty much all palette swaps (like many of the games ninja's) that could be fought it specific criteria had been met.

Although many feel the game play doesn't match that of SFII for actual control or fun, personally I feel it was a more fun game to play, sure their was the blood and gore that may have swung it but the game was fast it was less complex to pull of awesome looking moves than the SF game and overall it seemed addictive to pull off every fatality. Even the annoyingly difficult ones such as Shang Tsung's nail board soul steal and Liu Kang's dragon fatality (they were the two I hated as I could never do them). The game doesn't appeal as much now but it is a good fun look back at how gaming used to be before it began to take it's self way too seriously. Of course the graphics have dated like you'd expect in 16 years but they still appear sharp and bright rather than dull and saturated as many games seem to now.

Long live the fatality