![]() Things might be defeated, but it never looked like anyone actually got hurt. It was all play fighting in most of the games I played at the time. There was no horror to the results of your actions. No real sign of the sickening aftermath of a brutal fight. I never felt that sense of realistic harm in the games I played. Contra, where the corpses simply fade away or blow up without any gore or sign of harm. Double Dragon, where you punch people in the mouth but nobody bleeds anywhere. Mortal Kombat was a complete shock, to me. Skeleton, ninjas, though? Skeleton ninjas that breathe FIRE, as I would soon discover? And burn their foes into nothing more than bony remains? It was incredible to see. When you’re a kid, ninjas are pretty dang cool. He reeled back, tearing off his ninja mask to reveal a vacant-eyed skull. Scorpion stepped back from his dazed opponent, and the screen turned dark. I watched as “FINISH HIM” appeared on the screen. The one that made me need to play the game. I shoved the box in someone’s hands and moved to the cabinet to see that defining moment in Mortal Kombat. I guess free chips were more exciting to most of those kids than watching the game, because the crowd immediately turned its attention to me. In a moment of odd cunning, I said they were free. Not until someone asked me what the chips were for. I tried to move, but there wasn’t a gap anywhere. The gap closed and I couldn’t see the screen again. I tried to get closer, but the crowd was too thick. I’d never seen anything even approximating blood in a game before. Not that it mattered in the shower of digital blood. I don’t remember who Scorpion was fighting. The crowd separated just enough that I could see a digitized orange ninja punching the heck out of someone’s face. What I ended up doing was wandering close to the cabinet, a box of chip bags in my arms, trying to see what was happening. ![]() ![]() I was supposed to be handing out bags of chips to the people at the Christmas party. All I could see was the name high above them: Mortal Kombat. I couldn’t see through the crowd because there were so many kids around it. I wanted to know what it was, but I couldn’t see the screen. An arcade cabinet sat back by the nasty shoe counter. Something I remember strangely vividly given the foggy nature of my childhood memories. However, at my dad’s work Christmas party that year, there was something cool. I’d get excited, find out it was some dull old game, and I’d get disappointed. So, I was use to this roller coaster of emotions when I’d see a cabinet. Playing some decaying Space Invaders or Ms. The ones that were still kicking around didn’t much interest me, either. The most you would get would be a stray arcade cabinet at a laundromat, movie theater, or other oddball location. ![]() In my home town, arcades were already pretty sparse back in 1992. It was Scorpion’s Fatality that captured my imagination that day, and to this day, it’s still what brings me back to the series. And the Fatalities – the crowning moment in a brutal match. The way the world quaked with every uppercut and hard knockdown. ![]() Too many other kids crowded the cabinet at that dingy bowling alley where it sat behind the lanes. I didn’t even get to play it that first time I saw it, either. Mortal Kombat grabbed me the moment I saw it thirty years ago. Mortal Kombat & The Captivating Power of Scorpion’s Fatality ![]()
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