I was a diehard fan of the Mortal Kombat series growing up, playing the original trilogy as well as the fourth game competitively in arcades most weekends for years as a kid. I loved the characters, the violence, the lore, the secrets, the sound design, etc. It was a defining series that shaped my taste in videogames moving forward. Once the series moved on to home consoles starting with Dark Alliance, however, the MK games fell out of favor with me. Three games came and went over a console generation without garnering my interest, and I figured that MK's best years would forever remain enshrined in its 90's arcade heydays.
But then Mortal Kombat 9 dropped in 2011 and exceeded all of my expectations while reviving a long dormant fanbase.
I'll never forget the building excitement leading up to the release of MK9. It felt like the old days. Little details were leaking out pre-release, and the ol' rumor mill started churning at full speed. People who had early copies of the game were sneaking out little GIFs or videos of Babalities, old rumored stage fatalities made reality (e.g. the Living Forest), secret characters (e.g. Cyborg Sub-Zero). Everything was being discovered and shared at a much faster pace than how things were in the arcade days, but that old MK mystique had seemingly returned in a big way. It was great.
I went to a midnight release for MK9 and ended up communing with a bunch of old MK fans who were returning to the series for the first time in a decade. It was great reliving memories of the arcade era with them while waiting for midnight to strike, and I ended up placing second in a tournament that they held for the game in the store. When I got the game home and started digging into it, I was blown away by the sheer wealth of content on offer.
Seriously, MK9 crammed more meaningful content into a fighting game release than any game before or since, IMO. It's just staggering. Here are some stand-outs:
There is more I could praise, but I'll leave it at that for now. The gameplay in NetherRealm games is always a bit stiff for my tastes, but that never stopped me from enjoying MK9 for what it is as a total package. It's such an amazing work of quality fanservice, and one that more than earns its sale price in a genre where most games offer comparatively meager content at full-price + microtransactions.
But then Mortal Kombat 9 dropped in 2011 and exceeded all of my expectations while reviving a long dormant fanbase.
I'll never forget the building excitement leading up to the release of MK9. It felt like the old days. Little details were leaking out pre-release, and the ol' rumor mill started churning at full speed. People who had early copies of the game were sneaking out little GIFs or videos of Babalities, old rumored stage fatalities made reality (e.g. the Living Forest), secret characters (e.g. Cyborg Sub-Zero). Everything was being discovered and shared at a much faster pace than how things were in the arcade days, but that old MK mystique had seemingly returned in a big way. It was great.
I went to a midnight release for MK9 and ended up communing with a bunch of old MK fans who were returning to the series for the first time in a decade. It was great reliving memories of the arcade era with them while waiting for midnight to strike, and I ended up placing second in a tournament that they held for the game in the store. When I got the game home and started digging into it, I was blown away by the sheer wealth of content on offer.
Seriously, MK9 crammed more meaningful content into a fighting game release than any game before or since, IMO. It's just staggering. Here are some stand-outs:
- An absolutely stacked cast of characters covering the entirety of the original trilogy and then some.
- Gameplay that returned to its 2D roots after years of middling 3D design. It was still stiff compared to its Japanese counterparts, but it was easily the most competitive that an MK game had been in ages.
- 2v2 tag-team game mode that would sadly not return in later installments. This was a severely underrated feature, IMO. The small handful of 2v2 tournaments that I watched were a real treat, and it was great to be able to involve four people at once during local multiplayer. I'd like to see this return in MK11, honestly.
- Robust online options with a well-designed spectator/lobby mode. The netcode wasn't great, however, and NetherRealm wouldn't really nail that aspect until much later with the addition of rollback netcode in MKXL.
- Easily, hands-down the best Story Mode ever in a fighting game. Even its successor couldn't top this memorable reboot of the original trilogy's plot. It was such a smart decision to have Raiden go back and try to change the events that led up to the point in Armageddon where the story (and frankly the game design) had gotten muddled to the point of needing a reboot. Seeing the events of MK1-3 told with so much more detail and character development was a real treat, and no other fighting game has come close since MK9's release IMO.
- An absurd number of meaningful unlockables via the Krypt. That's right. Actual unlockables. No microtransactions, no grinding. Just unlocking cool shit with a fun interface as a reward for playing the game any way you see fit.
- An extremely generous number of stages covering nearly all of the standouts from the original trilogy. It was so great seeing these classic stages recreated in higher fidelity. They nailed this aspect of MK9, IMO.
There is more I could praise, but I'll leave it at that for now. The gameplay in NetherRealm games is always a bit stiff for my tastes, but that never stopped me from enjoying MK9 for what it is as a total package. It's such an amazing work of quality fanservice, and one that more than earns its sale price in a genre where most games offer comparatively meager content at full-price + microtransactions.
