Mortal Kombat (SNES)
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"No blood in a Mortal Kombat game? No blood in a Mortal Kombat game??? That's...that's just not right! It's like...no sun at the beach... Like no winter with your summer... It's like...Robin and no Batman... Like Luigi and no Mario... Tails and no Sonic... Fish and no aquarium... A Happy Meal and no toys... A wedding and nothing to drink... Pizza with no cheese... America and no freedom... No! Shame on you, Nintendo! Shame on you!"
— Dan Bulich, Console Wars
Mortal Kombat is a fighting game published and developed by Midway for arcades in 1992. While it was a huge success, it was also the subject of controversy due to its violence, leading to the rise of the ESRB. Due to this success, Mortal Kombat' received ports published by Acclaim Entertainment for many home consoles as well as a franchise.
This article will focus on the Super Nintendo port, developed by Sculptured Software.
Why This Port Doesn't Perform a Fatality
- To get Goro out of his lair, due to Nintendo's stringent censorship policies at the time, the game was heavily stripped-down from its arcade counterpart; all of the blood was replaced by grey sweat and the Fatalities were reworked into more tame "finishing moves."
- By removing the blood, the Super Nintendo port is missing one of the key components of what made Mortal Kombat special.
- Not to mention, according to AVGN, the fighters bleeding sweat is even more disgusting than when they bleed actual blood.
- While on the topic of Fatalities, the finishing moves are disappointing, with many of them looking just as bad as the nonexistent blood (particularly Johnny Cage, whose "Deadly Uppercut" Fatality is replaced by him just kicking his opponent in the chest while his foot disappears, which is just lazy).
- Stiff and almost unresponsive controls, with most special moves having a few seconds of lag whenever they are executed.
- Even worse, whenever you are hit while using a projectile, the projectile is cancelled (unlike in the arcade, where your projectile still hits the opponent even if you are hit).
- The Start button is virtually useless during fights, although blocking has been mapped to the L and R buttons. This means you are unable to pause during gameplay, only between fights.
- This port has more bugs and glitches than any other home console port of Mortal Kombat.
- Unbalanced difficulty, with the Endurance Levels being much more difficult than their arcade counterparts while Goro and Shang Tsung are much more anticlimactic fights in comparison.
Redeeming Qualities
- The graphics and sound are almost identical to the arcade version.
- Due to the failure of this port, along with the Sega Genesis version selling more copies and the newly-created ESRB, Nintendo allowed full blood and Fatalities in the Super Nintendo ports of Mortal Kombat II onwards.
- Some of the censored fatalities serve as an inspiration for future ones.
- There's the uncensored version hack by fans, where this version now has a blood, including the fatalities has been completely uncensored, you can check at the link in the description.
Reception
While Mortal Kombat sparked controversy for its heavy violence, the Super Nintendo port sparked a controversy of its own for its heavy censorship. The port received mixed reviews at the time of it release, but today it's considered one of the worst video game ports of all time, receiving much more negative reviews.
This port damaged the Super Nintendo's reputation and decreased its sales compared to the Sega Genesis port.