{"id":2349,"date":"2013-02-15T18:55:08","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T18:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=2349"},"modified":"2013-02-15T19:28:43","modified_gmt":"2013-02-15T19:28:43","slug":"my-top-100-18-mortal-kombat-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=2349","title":{"rendered":"My Top 100: #18 – Mortal Kombat II"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"1993<\/a>

1993 – Midway (Arcade, Super NES, Genesis, 32X, Game Boy, Game Gear, PlayStation, Saturn, Amiga, PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, XBLA, PlayStation Network, PlayStation Portable)<\/p><\/div>\n

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I never had time to “mentally prepare” myself for Mortal Kombat<\/em> before it came out.\u00a0 There were plenty of other fighting games with\u00a0realistic\u00a0digitized graphics, and none of them looked particularly great to me.\u00a0\u00a0There was no use getting excited about it coming out, because it would just be\u00a0like all the others.<\/p>\n

Of course, when I ended up playing it, I didn’t think that at all.\u00a0 The characters were fascinating, and even in the censored Super NES version, the finishing moves were enough to spook the hell out of\u00a0me.\u00a0 Not to the point\u00a0where I didn’t want to play it, of course!\u00a0 The violence and brutality in the game didn’t change my temperament, either, but I was so curious to see just how far the game would go.<\/p>\n

So, when rumors started flying about what would be included in\u00a0Mortal Kombat II<\/em>, I couldn’t help but be enthralled.\u00a0 Would you really\u00a0be able to play as Shang Tsung, or maybe even Goro?\u00a0 Would there be more Fatalities?\u00a0 Would it push the envelope even more?<\/p>\n

The answer to all those questions was an emphatic “yes”…\u00a0 except the Goro part.<\/p>\n

MKII<\/em> wasn’t released\u00a0all that\u00a0long after the first game, so when I saw it pop up in arcades, I was\u00a0a bit surprised to see it\u00a0so soon.\u00a0 I could barely see over the shoulders of the older kids playing it at the arcade that day, but what I saw blew my friggin’ mind.<\/p>\n

Shang Tsung was now much younger, and though he looked completely different, you could\u00a0indeed play as him in this game.\u00a0 The bad guy was some dude in a skull-helmet of some kind, definitely hopped up on steroids,\u00a0or something.\u00a0\u00a0The coolest part, though,\u00a0was that guy in the razor blade hat…\u00a0 who the hell was he, anyway??\u00a0 You could barely\u00a0see his face, but even then,\u00a0I\u00a0thought\u00a0he’d be giving Scorpion a run for his money in the “most played character” department.<\/p>\n

I don’t know where we were going that night, but I remember being in the car with Josh and his mom on the way into town.\u00a0 I was telling Josh everything I had seen earlier that day, but I\u00a0couldn’t quite piece it all together to explain what I thought was going on.\u00a0 When I mentioned the guy in the hat, and that his name started with a “K”, he suggested that it might have been Kano.\u00a0 Maybe, but why did I see Kano and Sonya chained to posts in the background in one of the levels?<\/p>\n

It all just seemed so odd.<\/p>\n

In any case, I got to play Mortal Kombat II<\/em> quite a few times not long after that, and\u00a0also got\u00a0to learn much more about\u00a0the characters and moves\u00a0in various\u00a0magazines.\u00a0 The wait for a home console release was going to feel like forever, especially after hearing that Nintendo wouldn’t be censoring it this time around.\u00a0 All the Fatalities, Friendships and Babalities would be available from the comfort of your living room!<\/p>\n

It was only the second game in the series, but you’d hear rumors about being able to do the whackiest stuff in the game.\u00a0 Because we were all so gullible, and had no idea\u00a0how far\u00a0Boon and Tobias would go, it was up to us to figure out if these rumors were true or not.\u00a0 I mean, yeah, the game was great because of how\u00a0easily the combat flowed, and how you could do any one of four finishing moves at the end of the match.<\/p>\n

But really, all I ever wanted to do was find secrets.\u00a0 Noob Saibot, Smoke, and Jade were cool and all, but it was the Fergality from the Genesis version that had me intrigued.\u00a0 There was rumblings that you could actually pull off another, much less kid-friendly finishing move, which most definitely piqued my interest at the time.\u00a0\u00a0There was also\u00a0the “Error Macro” screen from the first game that made everyone think there was an unlockable character named Ermac, or that you could play as another Shaolin Monk named\u00a0Hornbuckle.<\/p>\n

That dude on fire in the background of the Pit II level?\u00a0 Hornbuckle was supposedly the guy standing next to him;\u00a0 a palette-swapped and more-powerful Liu Kang with green pants…\u00a0 now, as bland as that may seem now, the idea was enough for me to rent the game for the twentieth time, just to see if I could somehow figure out how to play as him!<\/p>\n

The game itself was great, but it was the word-of-mouth thing that really had me hooked to Mortal Kombat II<\/em>.\u00a0 Ed Boon is still turning rampant fan rumors into actual gameplay elements, and\u00a0because of\u00a0that (and many other reasons), I’ll always have a soft spot for Mortal Kombat\u00a0<\/em>games…\u00a0 even the bad ones.<\/p>\n

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