Bigger Badder Louder Meaner

Part 2 of a Mortal Kombat Retrospective

Only a year after Mortal Kombat's release came its bombastic successor. Mortal Kombat II expanded on the original in many obvious ways, but in general it made the fighting considerably faster, added multiple finishing moves, and movesets with greater variety. The style of the game was darker, and the story more involved, although the serious tone was undercut by the addition of Friendships and Babalities, silly finishing moves that allowed victors alternatives to killing their opponents. Nevertheless, setting the game in Outworld allowed the backgrounds to look considerably more creepy and weird, and even with the joke finishers it stands as one of the more atmospheric games in the series.

The game leaned heavily on the Malibu comic to do its storytelling for it, but established that in the final stages of the tournament, Liu Kang had engaged Shang Tsung and bested him. Sonya, Kano, and Johnny Cage fought Goro, but after Shang Tsung's defeat, the island began to deteriorate beneath their feet, and only Cage was saved due to Rayden's intervention. Though Goro disappeared, Sonya and Kano were recovered by Shang Tsung's forces and brought back to Outworld as they fled. During the chaos, Scorpion confronted Sub-Zero and killed him, then vanished back to the Netherealm, his task complete. Shang Tsung's master, Shao Kahn, was furious as Shang Tsung's failure to win conquest of the Earthrealm, and decided to host his own tournament in Outworld as opposed to waiting another ten generations.

Aside from Sonya and Kano, all the fighters from Mortal Kombat returned, as well as a revitalized Shang Tsung and former hidden character Reptile. Newcomers included Baraka, the leader of Shao Kahn's mutant army; Kung Lao, descendant of the original hero who fell to Goro and a friend of Liu Kang's; Jax, another FBI agent looking for Sonya; Kitana, Shao Kahn's daughter and personal assassin, and her twin sister Mileena. Capitalizing on the popularity of the many secrets of its predecessor, the game also featured three challenging hidden fighters - silhouette Noob Saibot, green ninja Jade, and grey Lin Kuei Smoke. And to round out the bosses, Kintaro preceded Shao Kahn himself.

My friend Derek got Mortal Kombat II for the Genesis and I remember going over and playing the fuck out of it before borrowing it for a very long (inexcusably long) time. Luckily there was no need for a blood code this time. I became strong with Baraka, Mileena, and Reptile, but there were no outright bad characters and they all had fairly diverse movesets. Mortal Kombat II remains my favourite of the 2D sprite era, and it was this game that really got my into the franchise and its narrative, despite being frustrated by its fragmentary and disjointed telling.

I think Mortal Kombat II reached a peak that the series never really got back again even with its stronger late-generation titles. I know lots of fans consider Mortal Kombat II to be the best game in the series, and I've heard it called one of the best fighting games of all time. It was so popular that there were multiple reports of fans breaking into arcade machines and stealing the boards so they could install them on their own arcades and play them at home.