Years of Decline

Part 4 of a Mortal Kombat Retrospective

In the lapse between Mortal Kombats 3 and 4, the franchise had still been busy. 1996 saw the release of animated show Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm. There wasn't much to the series, and it suffered from the same problems the film encountered, but it was the first appearance of Quan Chi, who would become one of the more popular post-MK3 characters. The animation was cool, and had serviceable voice acting, including Ron Perlman, Luke Perry, Olivia d'Abo, and Clancy Brown.

Mortal Kombat 4 was announced as the first game in the series to take the step into 3D, using computer-rendered models and larger fighting arenas. With Shao Kahn's story largely played out, the game focused instead on the fallen elder god, Shinnok (first introduced as Noob Saibot's master in Mortal Kombat 3), and his invasion of Edenia, Kitana's home realm which had been freed from Outworld.

As production was still going on Mortal Kombat 4, it was announced that Midway would also release a platform adventure game, Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. Players would take control of the first Sub-Zero and engage on a quest through the game world set in the mid-80s. The game used 2D sprites in 3D backgrounds. The story fleshed out Sub-Zero, Scorpion, and the new villains for Mortal Kombat 4. Mythologies was easily the most story-intensive game at the time, retracing Sub-Zero's murder of Scorpion and elaborating on the respective forces in the game: rival clans Lin Kuei and Shirai Ryu, and Shinnok's demonic Brotherhood of the Shadow. It lay the groundwork for much of Mortal Kombat 4, and introduced many new characters such as Fujin, Sareena, and Shinnok himself. John Tobias also released an extensive history of the Mortal Kombat universe, revealing details about Kahn's rise to power and the relationship between realms and villains. The game reviewed poorly due to generic gameplay and a surplus of full-motion video sequences that looked very very silly, but was still a success.

Within weeks of Mythologies, Mortal Kombat 4 was released. New features included the ability to draw weapons, sidestep, and select alternate costumes. Ultimately, the fighting engine did little despite being 3D to improve upon its predecessor, and the voices of the characters were kind of grating - spouting indecipherable gibberish throughout the fight. Luckily, it did away with all finishing moves save two Fatalities each. Hoping to revitalize the series by adding some new blood, the developers opted to introduce new characters to fill the shoes of some of the classics. Returning characters included Liu Kang, Sonya, resurrected Johnny Cage, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Raiden, Jax, and an unmasked Reptile. Filling out the cast's new additions were former Outworld general Reiko, African monk Kai, Black Dragon thug Jarek, Edenian traitor Tanya, wind god Fujin, and of course Shinnok himself and his treacherous henchman, sorcerer Quan Chi. Noob Saibot was a hidden character, Goro returned as a sub-boss, and there was also the strange hidden fighter Meat, who was the skinless model used for fatalities.

Despite having a video introduction and video endings for each character, the game suffered once again from poor storytelling, relying largely on the comic and Mythologies to tell its story for it. To those playing the game, Goro's return was out of nowhere and there was no in-game indication that he had become good. With with little base and unclear roles in the game, many of the new characters faded quickly into obscurity in the minds of players. I particularly recall Jarek and Tanya being a little difficult to nail down, as they are alternately described as good and bad. Meanwhile, some returning characters had inexplicable roles in the story, particularly Reptile. Mortal Kombat 4 became the last arcade release of the series.

About a month after the game's release, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation was released in theatres, a sequel to the earlier film and ostensibly an adaptation of Mortal Kombat 3's storyline. This time, most fans will agree with me when I say this film sucked and sucked hard, and by comparison the first film was far superior; even I'll admit that. Annihilation attempted to feature all the characters, but with such a large cast, many fighters appeared almost as cameos and are killed quickly - Baraka and Mileena are each in one scene and are not addressed by name. Most of the roles had been recast (all but Liu Kang and Kitana), the director had been replaced, and the production values were abysmal - complete with stop motion animation that looked like they were pre-Ray Harryhausen. It smacked of a terribly low budget, and for a film that seemed concerned with catering to fans rather than making a decent movie, it wasn't that violent at all, and became the same bland moralizing fairy tale as its predecessor. It bombed at the box office, was ripped to shreds by reviews, and currently holds an embarrassing 7% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The following year, the franchise branched out once more to television, this time as a live-action spin-off of the movies called Mortal Kombat: Konquest (although in Canada and potentially elsewhere it was spelled Conquest). Konquest told the story of the original Kung Lao and his adventures after his initial victory over Shang Tsung, along with his buddies Siro and Taja (played by a pre-famous Kristanna Loken) and guided by Raiden. Set in an unspecified time in the distant past and in the city of Zhu Zin, Shang Tsung and Shao Kahn sent monsters and assassins after Kung Lao each episode, these frequently being characters from the game. The show wasn't very good from a technical standpoint, but this was in 1998 when Sam Raimi's Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess were at the height of their popularity and had spawned a handful of medium-budget action-oriented imitators, so that was pretty much par for the course. Though the show actually pulled in high ratings, particularly in the UK and Australia, the budget demands were too high and the show was cancelled.

In 1999, a redone version of MK4 called Mortal Kombat Gold was released for the Sega Dreamcast, advertised as a great graphical improvement, taking advantage of the Dreamcast's better technology, and added six classic characters to the roster: Kitana, Kung Lao, Baraka, Mileena, Cyrax, and unlockable Sektor, as well as a few new arenas. But where Mortal Kombat 4 was generally treated with indifference, Gold was very harshly reviewed. The graphical update was negligible, which was inexcusable in the face of considerably better-looking games on the Dreamcast, particularly when compared to Soul Calibur. The additional characters were handled poorly, too, but this was pretty much status quo for MK4. Kung Lao's return after his apparent death in Mortal Kombat 3 was a little lackluster; it was claimed that he faked his death and came out reluctantly from retirement, when it would've been easy to tie in his return to the Netherealm like they did with Mileena (who had also died in MK3, and so her return in Shinnok's forces made some sense). Baraka suffered from the same problem Reptile had; he seemed out of place in the regime of a villain he had never previously served. In terms of gameplay, everyone was serviceable, but ultimately it did nothing to address the concerns critics had with the original iteration, and was mostly considered a failure.

By this time, Midway had announced that the success of Mythologies had prompted them to begin development on other action titles. One involving Liu Kang was mentioned, but the one that was confirmed as in production was Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, which would focus on Sonya and Jax in a battle against Kano, Jarek, and other members of the Black Dragon. Originally, this looked all right and was a cool idea, and fans were optimistic. We were shown both Jax and Sonya, and told that we would learn how Kano lost his eye, and meet a pre-scar Kabal. However during production co-creator John Tobias as well as other developers left Midway, and what was originally going to be a much more involved game came to be short and fairly stupid. Special Forces was released only on the Playstation with little promotion, and there was no sign of either Sonya or Kabal, nor any explanation for Kano's eye. It's generally agreed to be the absolute worst game of the franchise, and bombed amongst fans and critics alike. Many avid fans haven't even heard of it, and it's the only game in the franchise that I haven't played and have no plans nor desire to.

Meanwhile, Midway wasn't doing so good in general. Despite consistent releases, the company was experiencing yearly financial losses and had begun closing off departments one by one. Mortal Kombat was one of its highest banking franchises, but suffered from overexposure and was getting ripped apart. With even diehard fans losing interest, Mortal Kombat slipped off the radar.