Knowledge and Power

Part 3 of a Mortal Kombat Retrospective

By 1995 Mortal Kombat had reached a peak in its popularity, and I can understand the problems developers would have been facing trying to follow up Mortal Kombat II. Mortal Kombat 3 featured a slightly more in-depth story (or at least more attention was paid to it in the game): done failing at tournament after tournament, Shao Kahn decided to cheat by having Shang Tsung resurrect his dead queen Sindel on Earthrealm, allowing Kahn to breach the dimensional barriers to seize her, and by extension, the realm itself. He stole the soul of everyone in the world except for the few he couldn't lay claim to: the chosen warriors, which he dealt with through the use of extermination squads who killed, among others, Johnny Cage. All that remained were veterans Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, Kung Lao, Jax, Sub-Zero, and newcomers Nightwolf, Stryker, and Kabal. Counted amongst the Outworld forces were Shang Tsung and Kano, as well as new fighters Sindel and her bodyguard, the shokan Sheeva. The sub-boss before Shao Kahn was Motaro, the centaur-like leader of his extermination squads. Also in the cast were the cyborg ninjas hunting Sub-Zero: red Sektor and yellow Cyrax. Hidden fighters included a cyborg version of Smoke, and the return of Noob Saibot.

The fighting engine remained much the same, but added the ability to run, as well as a series of melee combos for each character. Finishers included two fatalities apiece, the return of the fan-maligned Friendships and Babalities, and newly added Mercy, which gave the foe a stay of execution, and Animalities, allowing characters to turn into animals to kill their defeated opponents.

Despite good visual design and versatile movesets for each character, Mortal Kombat 3 was something of a bloated game, and the exclusion of fan favourites like Scorpion and Kitana were glaring omissions, especially in light of some of the poorly-conceived new characters. Nightwolf was all right, but was a fairly unforgivable Native American stereotype, and generic cop Stryker quickly became the least popular character in the series, despite being a strong fighter. The run animations for characters looked a little silly as I imagine it would be difficult to capture, and the Animalities were all fairly ridiculous, uninspired, and inexplicable. The game was successful, but had many fans griping.

Capitalizing on the franchise's success, New Line released a movie based on the game. Other fans of the series have expressed some fondness for it, but I thought the movie was pretty shitty, mostly because it wasn't that violent and quickly degenerated into a straightforward morality story aimed primarily at children. I thought it also suffered a misstep by being mostly a retelling of the first game, and then tacked on only vague references to the second in the tail-end of the movie. And as this was the game where the story really took off, I thought this a pretty big oversight. It also undersold Sub-Zero and Scoprion, making them fairly innocuous servants of Shang Tsung who were quickly disposed of. To short change them, and then put so much focus on much shallower characters like Johnny Cage, seemed a particular disservice to the game's universe. Nevertheless, the movie enjoyed moderate critical and financial success, and kick-started the career of pretty bad director, Paul WS Anderson, who would later go on to make bad movies out of Resident Evil.

In response to some of the critiques lodged at Mortal Kombat 3, Midway revitalized it the following year with Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, which added most of the masked ninjas to the roster, and largely revolved their stories around Kitana, who murdered Mileena (made into an unlockable character) and then fled into the Earthrealm to help Liu Kang defeat Shao Kahn and free her mother, Sindel. Pursuing Kitana were Reptile and Jade. Meanwhile, Scorpion - whose story had been effectively wrapped up in Mortal Kombat II - was a neutral observer who eventually sided with Sub-Zero, and new unlockable character Ermac was a telekinetic fusion of Outworld souls loyal to Kahn. The home versions on the Genesis and SNES also added Noob Saibot and new character, the purple ninja Rain (get it?). Unfortunately, the returning characters had very little work done on their movesets, which made them difficult to stand up to the fighters from Mortal Kombat 3 who had much more at their disposal. The exceptions were Jade and Ermac, who were both given an array of new moves and could still hold their own. Meanwhile, Noob and Rain, despite having few moves, were vastly overpowered, making them super cheap and easy to master. Also thrown in was "classic" Sub-Zero, who was just Sub-Zero in his old costume. The game added Brutalities, new finishing moves wherein the winner beat the crap out of their dazed foe until they finally exploded. Brutalities were nearly impossible to pull off, and all looked the same, so it was kind of an empty gesture.

By this point, the next-gen consoles of their day (Playstation, N64) were gaining ground in America, and Mortal Kombat 3 was further expanded into a home-only release called Mortal Kombat Trilogy, which was supposed to be an amalgam of all three games in the series. Trilogy was arcade quality, had every fighter ever in the series, and gave all of them at least partial catalogs of finishing moves, including the boss characters. It also added console-specific hidden characters: the male ninja Chameleon, whose colours shifted constantly, was on the Playstation and PC releases and rotated through the movesets of all the male ninjas. On the N64 was Khameleon, a grey female ninja who used the moves of the women. Mortal Kombat Trilogy was the final release of the 2D sprite fighters.