The first Mortal Kombat game appeared in arcades over 20 years ago and instantly changed the video game history. The franchise is arguably the most successful ever, with the latest Mortal Kombat 11 being the best-selling game in April 2019.
Over the years, Mortal Kombat managed to gain massive amounts of praise and fans. It is the one name that instantly stands out when it comes to fighting games, with Street Fighter and Tekken being the only real competition in terms of popularity.
While its success made gaming history, the Mortal Kombat franchise also had many questionable moments. Some of the biggest mistakes in its history are presented below.
10 Bosses In Deadly Alliance
Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance had a well-received storyline with developments like Shao Kahn and Liu Kang dying, and the team of Quan Chi and Shang Tsung. The problem was that the team of the powerful sorcerers never felt strong.
In Arcade Mode, the last 2 opponents are Quan Chi and Shang Tsung. There are no different versions of the fighters and no special bosses, which were always characteristics of Mortal Kombat games. This broke a convention in video games, which was a choice that was uninspired and left gamers wanting more.
9 Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe
While Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe was not a bad fighting game, it did not properly represent the franchise’s mysticism-based universe. Just as with Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance, the best part of the game was the storyline. However, the violence in the game was drastically toned down in order to safeguard the image of the DC superheroes. This did change with the introduction of DC skins and other collaborations.
The game did not feel like a Mortal Kombat game, and countless aspects of the game were criticized. The result did not do justice to any of the universes, and the lack of violent fatalities led to bad times for the franchise.
8 Reptile’s Faces
Reptile is a loved character that is a Zaterran. He is a creature resembling a lizard that is hidden under a mask to make it seem as if he is a human. This was appreciated ever since the character was introduced.
The problem was that Reptile kept being redesigned. What was a particularly big mistake was changing the physiology of the fighter. In one game Reptile looked and moved like a human and in another, it resembled a bird.
7 Bios In Mortal Kombat Armageddon
Mortal Kombat Armageddon brought all characters in all previous games, leading to a roster of 63 fighters. With so many that had to be tied into the story of the game, bios ended up being ignored. They were not included in the game.
Ed Boon responded to criticism and said the bios will be released online. Only 17 appeared, and then nothing else was mentioned. As a result, there is no way to tie the characters to the story happening in an Edenia crater.
6 Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance – Konquest Mode
Konquest Mode appeared in 3 Mortal Kombat games, and the version in Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance is widely considered to be the worst. It was made out of 100 missions that were practically training sessions to help players master the characters in the game.
While the missions did help gamers deal with different game additions like fighting styles, many of them were very difficult, including having to master extremely complicated combos. In addition, players had to finish Konquest Mode to unlock secret characters and there was no way to re-watch storyline elements presented if you skipped them.
5 Mortal Kombat 4
Mortal Kombat 4 was the first game in the franchise that used 3D models and was an attempt to make the game modern. The problem is that the game always felt as if it was not finished, and numerous in-game experiments were failures.
As an example, Mortal Kombat 4 was the first Mortal Kombat game that used weapons. However, every single character had a different combination to take out the weapon and it was impractical to try when fighting human players. Besides this, the game had the worst secret character in history, Meat, and graphics that were really rough, with zero fine detail.
4 Not Removing Old Characters To Develop New Characters
All throughout the Mortal Kombat franchise, numerous characters were introduced. Most of them were not popular, and it is not necessarily because of design-related issues. While characters like Meat were obvious mistakes, others failed to attract a following because they were quickly abandoned.
While fighters like Ermac and Rain came from rumors and got good stories that gamers appreciate, most new characters did not have stories. They were quickly dropped as players appreciated their favorites, like Scorpion and Sub-Zero. This was possible because the characters were not allowed to die. The best example of this is killing Liu Kang only to quickly bring him back in the next story.
3 Chaos Realm vs. Order Realm
Mortal Kombat: Deception was well-received because it expanded the game world with new realms and potential stories. However, the addition of the order versus chaos fight was not well-received. This is because the two realms were created in highly simplistic ways.
While the idea was not bad, lazy writing led to it failing and becoming uninteresting for gamers. Things were not made better by choosing water as a chaos element and some new fighters that were not popular among veteran players. Also, having the conflict based on someone stealing water can only be seen as a story filler.
2 Countless Revisions, Updates, Expansions And Ports
When the first Mortal Kombat games appeared, the internet did not reach the level to offer DLC content. As a result Midway ended up creating numerous revisions, updates, game ports and expansions. Nowadays, only collectors are interested in them.
Mortal Kombat 3 was when home consoles started to be really popular. Numerous cheats were introduced and they wildly varied between consoles. Having cheats available in one console and not available in another is just one example of how bad the countless ports were for the fluidity of the franchise.
1 Mortal Kombat: Special Forces
Mortal Kombat: Special Forces was supposed to be a breakthrough for Midway as the company tried to enter the adventure and action games niche. The problem was that Midway was quickly running out of money and this was felt in the development of the game. Other projects, like the new R-Rated animated movie, did not suffer from this.
Mortal Kombat: Special Forces is widely regarded as the worst game associated with the game universe. The storyline was bleak and graphics were sub-par. Also, there was no connection established between what happened inside the game and what gamers would expect from a Mortal Kombat game.