Mortal Kombat

I remember when this game first came out in the 1990's it caused a lot of controversy with its violence. It is a 2D beat-em-up featuring characters digitized from real people. It is quite a simple game and only features 7 playable characters ranging from standard martial artists right through to ninjas and even a god. The main draw of Mortal Kombat is its fatalities. The characters each have a fatality or death move. When you beat your opponent on his second round they'll stand stunned for about 10 seconds and the words finish him will flash up on the screen and from here you can perform a combination of button presses to finish your opponent ...

I was never much good at arcade fighting games, or in fact any game that didn’t involve repeatedly guiding a cute cartoon animal or egg across floating platforms from left to right, but Midway’s ‘Mortal Kombat’ series unusually captivated me when it was obtained for my much-loved Amiga 1200 in the mid-90s. Designed as an arcade competitor to Capcom’s ‘Street Fighter’ in a similar way to the Mario and Sonic rivalry of home video game consoles, Mortal Kombat relied on extreme violence and purported realism to win over simple-minded arcade junkies and young gore-obsessed freaks playing reclusively in their home at 32 Ashley Meadow, Haslington, Cheshire (or, you know, ...