Nick de Bruyne
Mortal Kombat
Few titles in the history of video games made as much of an impact on arrival as the infamously violent arcade fighter Mortal Kombat. Created due to a failed project based on actor/martial artist Jean-Claude an Damme and eventually reworked and released to arcades by Midway in 1992, Mortal Kombat was the talk of the town and gamers flocked to arcades to get a taste of a level of violence that was not yet commonplace in video games.
Mortal Kombat became an instant hit thanks to the perfect combination of incredibly graphic violence, a mature tone, hyper-realistic graphics (for its time) and something that was distinctly different to the competition from Capcom and SNK.
Besides the already stated charms, no other element was quite as important to Mortal Kombat’s success as the now-legendary concept of Fatalities.Your worth as a Mortal Kombat player was instantly gauged by how many fatalities you knew and whether or not you had the nerve to perform the movements accurately within the allotted time. With excited crowds watching over your should, you had the power to excite the crowd with violent acts of death and brutality that they had never seen before, or… screw it all up and leave the room disappointed.
Mortal Kombat was one of the first major pushes in history towards understanding the need to cater to a mature gaming audience. It understood that gamers weren’t all 8 year old kids and took the risk to put it out there. While it may have never been as good, as balanced or as deep as other games in its genre, nothing could ever take away that feeling you got when you first watched a character brutally murder his opponent. With such a level of realism and a tone so different to the other cartoon-styled fighters of the time, it demanded a reaction from its audience, and that’s exactly what it got.
For that simple reason alone, Mortal Kombat will always be one of the most important titles in the history of video games and one whose impact is still seen in the industry today.
NBA Jam
Released in 1993 when the NBA was hitting the prime of its golden era thanks to players like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, NBA Jam (featuring neither) from Midway redefined the way that sports games could be played and embodied every single reason why arcades were so incredibly relevant at the time.
Rolling in off of the popularity of Mortal Kombat, Midway released yet another title featuring ultra-realistic digitized versions of fans’ favorite NBA players. However, instead of going in the same realistic and mature direction as Mortal Kombat, Midway sucked in huge crowds of gamers by going in the completely opposite direction.Gamers were suddenly thrusted into a world of sports like never seen before. The graphics were amazing, the players so life-like yet the gameplay blew everyones minds by over-exaggerating the abilities of the players to superhuman levels.
The package was just what the arcade scene needed and involved great visuals as well as the over the top 2 vs 2 gameplay that involved real-life athletes launching themselves two stories into the air to perform massive, wondrous and just-too-damn-cool-for-words slam dunks. It was all wrapped nicely with fast paced music and sound but more importantly, a sports commentator who has now become legendary for his enthusiastic outbursts of unforgettable phrases like “Boomshakalaka!” , “He’s on fire!”, “Rama-lama-ding-dong” and “Is it the shoes” not to mention some of the other charming additions such as that giant slam dunk that involved the character ripping out the Tarzan cry.
NBA Jam re-invigorated the arcade scene with a new sense of excitement and wonder and it showed by even being named as The Amusement & Music Operators Association most played game of the year.
It caused buzz and it got people excited and even I remember exactly where I was the day that I first heard about NBA Jam. I’ll never forget my brother (we were both huge NBA fans) walking into our living room with amazing tales of a new video game that he had seen that featured super realistic graphics, insane dunks like he had never seen and a crazy commentator that said the most outlandish things he had ever heard. I nearly died on the spot with excitement and couldn’t wait to see it for myself. Needless to say that I was not disappointed when my time finally came to see the game in action and play it for myself.
Fun, fast, competitive and absolutely fantastic to spectate, NBA Jam was everything that the arcade sports scene needed at the time and it brought with it a new era of energy and fun. That’s what great gaming was all about.
Darryn Bonthuys (Guest writer)
Streets of Rage 3
Sure, the nineties may have seen their fair share of side-scrolling beat em’ ups, classic games such as Double Dragon and Final Fight, but when Bare Knuckle 3 hit our shelves, it completely blew away the competition with its numerous improvements to its visuals and gameplay.
The gameplay was faster, smoother and supplemented by various special attacks, there were hidden easter eggs to unlock more playable characters, while the game as a whole was more challenging and forced gamers to adopt new fighting tactics on the fly.
While players could choose from four characters originally, the roster could be expanded to include three more characters, although western audiences only got access to two of them, super martial artist Shiva and Roo, a kangaroo that made marsupials popular before Tekken came along.
If you’ve ever wanted to play a game that set a benchmark for its genre, while being assaulted by a colourful array of enemies that ranged from thugs, hookers, ninjas and even a juiced up Freddy Mercury, then try out this classic brawler.
Eternal Champions
Another gem lost in a sea of mediocrity during the heyday of fighting games on the Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis generation, Eternal Champions was a game that had some effort put into it, instead of being just another generic punch and kick title.
While the character roster wasn’t particularly large, it was still an incredibly diverse assortment of fighters that had their own detailed back stories and origins, complete with unique fighting styles and levels where gamers could perform stage-specific fatalities, moves that were aptly named “Overkillâ€.
So whats the one thing that kept Eternal Champions from being a runaway success with numerous revivals on each generation of console hardware? Most likely the difficulty of the game itself, as just getting past one fighter was an incredibly challenging affair, resulting in many a TV being taken in for repairs due to having a controller wedged in the smoking screen.
Last Updated: March 11, 2011
