Monster Circus | wen
Mortal Kombat, an XP twisting machine that trains you to hide a rift female book under your bed.
If you want to vote for which game IP has the biggest gap in status at home and abroad, not many people may vote for Mortal Kombat, because everyone can't remember it for a while, but it is the answer to this question.
People who learn for the first time about Mortal Kombat's place in the global fighting game scene are often shocked. Among the large-scale fighting game IPs, "Mortal Kombat" is at the bottom of the domestic popularity, but in fact, this IP is the Tarzan of fighting games.
According to the Video Game Sales Wiki, the Mortal Kombat series is the number one in the fighting game industry, more than Nintendo Star Smash Bros. From the perspective of single sales, there are also two "Mortal Kombat" in the top six rankings, which are the 10th and 11th generations that broke tens of millions, and of the other four, three are "Nintendo Star Smash Bros." and one is "Street Fighter 2".
Sales is not a measure of the quality of a game, but it does reflect how popular the series really is. Now, when Mortal Kombat 1 (actually 12) has just been released, you can find out how this game, which looks like an underground circle, is obviously difficult to climb the hall of elegance, how it has today's status.
But is the score of "Mortal Kombat" really as brilliant as the above paragraphs? Yes or no, because its total sales, to a certain extent, are piled up by quantity, it has 12 main stories, plus a bunch of derivative works.
More importantly, the explosion of "Mortal Kombat" began in the Internet era. In the arcade era, it was actually not at the same level as Street Fighter, and the total sales were only 1/10 of "Street Fighter", but because arcade machines did not require every player to buy a copy, the count suffered a loss.
The Internet is a propaganda machine for Mortal Kombat, especially short videos in recent years. Because the features of Mortal Kombat are very suitable for visual display - super violent finishing moves.
I used 600 words to pull sales in front, in fact, in order to boring outsiders who accidentally clicked in, so as not to cause accidents.
"Mortal Kombat" is like a butcher shop knocking over a cart of ketchup. The game was born because several game designers thought the fighting game was too clean at the time, so they wanted to make a dirtier game.
How dirty is it? "Chainsaw Man 2" first appeared in the circle, is the "spinal sword", that is, the heroine dragged out the head of an NPC along with the spine and used it as a weapon. This set of operations can be seen in the finale of "Mortal Kombat" in 92.
Its various finishing moves since its birth are not only large-scale, but also creative. Can you imagine smashing your opponent's head into the body with a sledgehammer and hooking it out from underneath? This can only be regarded as an ordinary level in the finishing move of "Mortal Kombat".
If I were to use fruits to represent human organs to describe the battle scenes of this game, this article would become a fruit wholesale market, so I will not go into detail about the battle scenes of this game.
For players in 92, the taste is not light, but this game still scares everyone. Startled fingers: It immediately became a blockbuster in arcade shops, earning a place in the veritable game Battle Royale 1992.
The game soon became a thorn in the side of the U.S. government, and at that time, American politicians were particularly fond of condemning TV/game violence to brush off their political achievements, so they specially held hearings for Mortal Kombat and a game called "Night Trap".
《Night Trap》
The hearing gave rise to the famous ESRB rating system, the kind you'd see on the covers of European and American games today.
(almost) single-handedly changing the world of gaming, Mortal Kombat literally does it.
Later, "Mortal Kombat" was unrepentant, and its spine was as hard as the R star before the remake (probably tempered by the finishing technique), and the scale was larger from generation to generation. They also carefully studied how to use the latest technology to make these finishing moves look more "ornamental", constantly changing the visual effects of the same character's skills, and new wine in old bottles, while ensuring the stability of the underlying style, spawning more variations.
This kind of 10-point or even 9-point violence naturally can't escape the end of positive energy in China, so "Mortal Kombat 9" and the national district bye, mainstream players have not been able to enjoy the coolest generation of female characters dressed, and the subsequent explosive 10 generations have not stirred up many waves in China.
However, unexpectedly, "Mortal Kombat 11" is now popular in China, and the base camp of the explosion is not Station B, but Douyin. On Douyin, you can find a lot of "Mortal Kombat" videos with tens of thousands of likes, although they are basically AI dubbing, but the commentary is serious and professional. The most abstract thing is that when the big move is made, the picture looks like a program of a postmodern art exhibition.
What anti-color, pixel art, hardcore mosaic, picture reversal... Do your best to ensure that you can't understand the picture at the same time, you can feel the hidden content with your heart, pay attention to the looming sense of meditation, watch a few more, you can approach the level of color is empty, empty is color.
The two major frontiers of domestic game video are scientists who broadcast "Rainbow Six" live with raster encryption on station B, and artists who broadcast "Mortal Kombat" with avant-garde movies on Douyin.
Click into the comment area of these videos, everyone also highlights a professional, obviously not a cloud player, the atmosphere is harmonious and full of laughter, what "this put in the arcade hall before someone had to knock out two teeth", "It is estimated that there is another offline one", seduce you to join this happy family.
It's not just gamers who watch this kind of video, some people say they have never played this game, but they almost die of laughter - hey, watching such a violent "Mortal Kombat" can almost be laughed to death, is there something serious?
No, it's better to say, it should be seen this way, no, it can only be seen this way!
Mortal Kombat is indeed known for its brutal finishing, but that's not the reason for its sales domination, or it wouldn't be selling well from generation to generation. Brutality is the appearance of this game, and its core is the American B-grade entertainment spirit.
Before Class B, first of all, entertainment. The upper limit of the operation of "Mortal Kombat" is extremely high, it is not easy to get started, it is even more difficult to master, the playability is very strong, and the high play energy consumption is not boring for thousands of hours in it.
In addition, it is not a Japanese-style fighting game such as "Street Fighter" and "The King of Fighters", even if the look and feel are similar, in fact, the hands are very different, from rhythm, operation to combat thinking are different; The most Japanese style is probably that the characters in it always wear masks.
Because Mortal Kombat has been an American producer from the beginning, using it against Japanese fighting games such as Street Fighter, the producers emphasize that its roots are not Street Fighter 1, but Karate. "Karate", produced by the father of "Prince of Persia", and "Street Fighter" were regarded as representatives of the two major directions of fighting games.
Combat isn't the only selling point of the game yet, and it may sound ridiculous, but Mortal Kombat has many story fans. The addition of cinematic storytelling to fighting games began with Mortal Kombat, and while other fighting games were still telling stories with Galgame-style text graphics, it was already using 3D modeling and RPG-like modes to narrate.
1997
So today's "Mortal Kombat" has the top performance effect of fighting games, as well as an unusually large world view, involving six worlds, multiple races, and groups of gods; Sometimes time travels, sometimes the world restarts.
To say how good its plot is, it's actually average. But the plot of fighting games is particularly difficult to write, the screenwriter has to find a way to string dozens of characters together, but also have to arrange them to fight with high intensity, under this limitation, the plot of "Mortal Kombat" is simply "Avengers", and many people exclusively watch its CG as a movie.
Why is the most famous character in Mortal Kombat not a sexy beauty, but a scorpion? It may be because this revenge character, who is also good and evil, and ruthless, is too deeply rooted in people's hearts; This is also why Melena is the most popular female character in the game, because although her mouth looks like a gentle countryman, her personality is complex and deeply evil, and she has a subversive sexiness, which makes everyone can't help but want to kiss her in French style.
Mortal Kombat was one of the first to add an online multiplayer mode to fighting games, and it took Midway a year to study the feasibility of the technology, and it later became a must-have feature of large-scale fighting games.
So this game that seems to be eye-catching with out-of-class fights, in fact, the vision is not low at all, they are always trying new technologies and ideas, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding. Even its translation is innovative, "Mortal" Kombat, referring to the cutting-edge live-action scanning technology used in the game in '92.
But don't think too well of them, Midway and skin-changing Nether Realm are all about a love to implement a fatal finishing move on fans' blood pressure: technology always keeps up with trends, but issuing bugs is ancestral, and disgusting means follow trends, from full networking to microtransactions... If you don't roll over when Mortal Kombat is released, it may not be complete.
In any case, however, you can hardly deny the entertainment beyond its shortcomings. And in this entertainment spirit, the soul of B-grade films cannot be absent.
In the smooth violence of "Mortal Kombat", an underground sense of humor is about to come out. Many of the game's finishing moves have a hellish joke ethos, such as taking a photo with the (half) skeleton of your own defeated soldier.
Its ketchup, which is different from "Dead Space" and "Doom", has an exaggerated sense of drama and is cynical. For example, the most famous trick in the entire series is the broken egg punch of the second male protagonist Jonny Cage, which has shattered the dignity of many creatures in 30 years, reflecting the equality of men and women beyond the times.
The production team especially likes to spoof its signature finishing moves, and they once produced a set of "friendship finishing moves" after being criticized for being too large, like a rainbow pony cameo. In the 11th generation, the friendship finishing skill has returned, you can see Absolute Zero selling ice cream, Princess Geitana high-fives and hugs, the clown tries to thin the opponent, but is hit by a bat dart from nowhere, and is coerced into ending the friendship...
Sometimes, they'll replace the finishing move with the baby version of the family, or send you some accidents where the hero you control overplays fire and blows himself up with his opponent while celebrating victory, or is like a clown, bluffing people at the beginning of a friendship finishing move, only to find out halfway through that it is actually a brutal finish.
Guangyun will feel that "Mortal Kombat" is extremely violent, but when you really play it, you will experience alternative banter.
It has a sense of humor that belongs to B-grade films, and many people love to watch the dialogue highlights of the encounter between enemies and friends in the game, which is full of cryptic jokes and cold jokes, and there are so many homophonic memes that they can deduct money to bankrupt Warner.
Crimson: "I want to suck your blood." ”
Absolute Zero: "My blood is cold." ”
Crimson: "So refreshing~"
(Refreshing is a pun describing cold drinks as cool and sarcastic jokes as old-fashioned.)
Absolute Zero: "Another outside pervert." ”
Crimson: "It's clear that you're staring at me." ”
Absolute Zero: "I'm looking at your weaknesses. ”
Jokes aside, Mortal Kombat is full of pop culture memes, from music to movies. So the two male protagonists of the game, one is Jonny Cage in the style of an American comedy action movie superstar in the 80s, and the other is Liu Kang, who is directly copied from Bruce Lee.
When Cage meets Crimson (Scarlett), he will say, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn", which is the famous line of the male protagonist to the female protagonist in "Gone with the Wind", and the female protagonist's name is Scarlett.
When the character Rain makes a big move, he will suddenly appear the classic look of Queen's bohemian rhapsody, accompanied by guitar sounds from nowhere; Once, he also had a special purple-clothed version, just to pay tribute to Prince's famous song "Purple Rain".
"Mortal Kombat" also has a huge library of linkage characters, backed by Warner Pictures, not only linked DC heroes, but also made B-grade superstars such as Terminator, Robocop, Alien, and Rambo.
This is not enough, it also has to cover half of the well-known horror film characters, "Ghost Street", "Friday the Thirteenth", "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"... Before "Dead by Daylight" linked a terrorist IP, it had probably already appeared in "Mortal Kombat".
So if you're afraid of watching horror movies, go play Mortal Kombat, which together with Doom can eliminate your fear of perverted murderers and demons - unless you choose a high difficulty.
This is "Mortal Kombat": under countless cheap jokes, it is a unique violent aesthetic, which stimulates the senses of American B-grade entertainment and the spirit of hanging children to the extreme, plus a classic and complex fighting mechanism, coupled with an unorthodox restrictive execution animation, into a super IP with a total sales of nearly 100 million.
It's a "man as its name" game called Mortal Kombat, Mortal, which means both mortal and deadly, and Kombat is a variant of Combat, which represents the core of fighting. As for why use K instead of C? Quite simply, because K is cooler, K stands for Kill, representing a kind of deviant middle two, funny, slightly stupid, but very KOOOOOOOOL~
In games, c is often replaced with k, such as Crimson Scarlett, which is Skarlet instead of Scarlet.
Now that Mortal Kombat 1 has been released, the starting evaluation is not surprisingly not high, which is the convention of this series, and it is always necessary to bring a little workshop-level shortcomings to pull down the score. So you can also try the cheaper Mortal Kombat 11 first, and maybe experience some unexpected fun.
Only, far from the NS version, it's really rubbish.
This time you can trust IGN
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