Developer: Midway
Publisher: Midway, THQ
Platform: Arcade
Genre: Fighting
Release Date: October 8th, 1992

Mortal Kombat is an arcade fighting game developed and published by Midway Games in 1992 as the first title in the Mortal Kombat series. It was subsequently released by Acclaim Entertainment for nearly every home video game platform of the time. The game introduced many key aspects of the Mortal Kombat series, including the unique five-button control scheme and gory finishing moves. The game focuses on the journey of the monk Liu Kang to save Earth from the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung, ending with their confrontation in the tournament known as Mortal Kombat. Mortal Kombat became a best-selling game and remains of the most popular fighting games in the genre's history, spawning numerous sequels and spin-offs over the following years and decades, beginning with Mortal Kombat II in 1993, and together with the first sequel was the subject of a successful film adaptation in 1995. It also sparked much controversy for its depiction of extreme violence and gore using realistic digitized graphics, resulting in the introduction of age-specific content descriptor ratings for video games.

The original Mortal Kombat is one of the most authentic arcade fighter games you could ever play. I personally started playing MK4 (Mortal Kombat 4) traditionally and habitually atleast once a day with my older brothers in the early 2000s as a kid. I easily fell in love with the fast paced action, blood, gore, and intense violence that the series has held onto all of these years. In particularly this Mortal Kombat was once of the most intense versions of the whole series notorious for the bugs and difficulty. You start off with the option to choose 1/7 combatants who climb a tower to eventually defeat the Underworlds dictator "Shao Kahn". The matches are usually best of 2 and both fighters start off with a health bar of %100 meter. You gain score in the upper left hand corner based on consecutive matches won. Every fighter has their own unique special moves and fatalities. A fatality in Mortal Kombat is the equivalent to "Completely killing an opponent". If you wanted you could play two player against one another or tag-team.

The graphics would definitely be dubbed sub-par considered to modern day gen and next gen consoles. For its time it fell in the range of average, or above average, but the emulators for modern day consoles render it choppy and still provides that vintage feel of traveling back in time to the place where it all began. The characters were all designed with their own unique attribute regarding colors and designs but some used the same model of other ninjas with different patterns/designs. The levels could range from dark stages to calm soothing settings. (Some stages had extra levels, and or stage fatalities.)

The buttons were very fast paced and meticulous along with the single thumbstick and D-pad. Every button represented fast thinking combinations and hair trigger choices. The commands/buttons are R=Block, A=Low-kick, Y=High-Punch, L=Block, X=High-Kick, Start=Block, and the thumbstick would make you move diagonally or direct from left to right. The controls are fairly easy and memorization was a key factor to becoming an avid fighter. It is not an easy game to master but if you dedicate a bit of time to it, you could easily execute every fighter's move list.

Synopsis - 10/10
Gameplay - 9.5/10
Graphics - 6/10
Controls - 8/10
Overall - 9.7/10