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How was your first experience with Mortal Kombat?

The original arcade game at one of the local take away food shops. My mates and I would always swing by after school, grab some chips and gravy and spill blood, lots and lots of blood.

Good times :)
 
Played Mortal Kombat 2 on SNES.

Thought it was shit and went back to Street Fighter II. I was however amused by all the stupid blood and gore.

It wasn't until Mortal Kombat 2011 that I developed any kind of respect for the series.

Mortal Kombat X looks awesome.
 
I played it at an arcade called Tilt at Mid Rivers Mall in St. Peters, MO. I was 10 or 11 when it came out. First console purchase oF the game was Sega Genesis.
 
I was a kid when I first saw MK it was the arcade version at a Blockbuster. A teenager was playing and watched him pull off that Kano fatality I was so in awe. When he noticed I was watching he attempted to try and cover the screen but too late buddy.
 
I used to watch the TV show when I was a kid. Other than that I first played it when my cousin received a promo copy of Deception from his Dad and let me borrow it. I was completely hooked from then on, really.
 
When MK came out, we were knee deep in the street fighter 2 craze.

I must emphasize how amazing MK looked at the time. SF2 was without a doubt the pinnacle of sprite work at the time, with the characters being so large an colorful, and having animation for actions such as walking backwards and whatnot. But MK1 was a whole nother world with the digitized actors. It was almost like a Dragons Lair or Sega Hologram type of thing as far as standing out from other games in the arcade. It was amazing to find that it responded pretty much like any other fighter. Snappy and smooth.

The gameplay was really nothing to sneeze at, as it was very distinct from SF2 while the copycats felt like simple knock-offs. Even in the first day tho, it was apparent that the game lacked the strategic diversity of street fighter, so we went back to that.

As the days wore on, however, more and more people warmed up to that MK machine. Before long, there were crowds and the fatalities started happening. My friends and I eventually succumbed to the allure of MK and started playing it more than SF2. The feeling of not just winning but showboating for the crowd was a real motivator.

When MK2 came out, I was completely obsessed, and during it's reign I was one of the best kids in town at it. Despite being a good kid in general, my passion for mk2 even motivated me to petty theft to get quarters for my demon. I'd sneak out late to play it at arcades and restaurants. I got my irl ass kicked a few times for beating older kids too badly. It was practically an underground lifestyle for a 13 year old. Before MK3 came out, I was over it and was moving onto Killer Instinct.
 
Does anyone recall how you argued to the death over whether you preferred MK or SF? It was serious internal and playground conflict where it was shit like: "SF has the better gameplay and music but MK has fatalities and cooler looking characters". Shit wasn't as serious as SNES vs Megadrive/Genesis but shit got real. I remember when the MK movies came on TV a week apart and all the boys watched the first movie and we thought it was the greatest thing ever: the flash kick, get over here, Johnny Cage, the theme song, $500 sunglasses asshole, the theme song! And then the sequel happened... that was probably my first experience being truly angry and disappointed at a sequel. Fuck that movie.
 
Giant Bomb never shuts up about how great MK9 was and I really liked Injustice when I bought it during a PSN Flash Sale, so I picked up the reboot for PS3. Really dug it, and had some friends over and they did too. Makes me super excited for MKX.
 
First played it on PC and was shocked about the graphics. I became addicted to it as really young kid (who shouldn't have been playing such a violent game really haha). I haven't played MK in years, might pick up the new one if its good.
 
When MKII was released on home consoles, my one friend John had the Sega Saturn.
Since I myself am an only child with very cool ex hippy parents, and I DID NOT have a Sega Saturn, that summer I pretty much lived at my John's house.

He was that friends house that everyone hung out at. The only one that had a pool. A shed we would clambake in. A single parent family and his dad was never around. Myself, and all of my friends, really did pretty much live there.

There was about 8 of us who hung out there pretty much every day and I was the MK II champion of the group. As silly as it may sound, it was something I was proud of. Especially in the beginning, the only time I had to give up my spot on the Player 1 controller was when I actually gave it up. For most of the summer I was unbeatable.

Well John eventually had enough of that, and whenever I was not there, he practiced his ass off.
When I say that towards the end of that summer without any doubt at all the most intense, epic, amazing video game experiences I have ever had in my entire life was the MK II matches between myself and John. Eventually he was just as good as me, and it was truly the best gaming moments in my life. Hands down. Especially since everyone else was rooting against me since I was so dominant, and it did not help that I also had no problem at all shit talking this fact.

It was that summer that I first was given the nickname that I use to this very day. The same name that is even my username on these forums. Dirty Larry, or DL as my friends call me, was born because of my dominance in Mortal Kombat II I always remained very calm but ran shit, just like the Clint Eastwood character the name is inspired by.

The funny thing is now, nearly 20 years later, I suck at Mortal Kombat.
But truly and sincerely, as you can tell by the book I just wrote, the best gaming experiences I ever had were because of Mortal Kombat II.
 
It'd was MK 1 back in the arcade days when I was a kid. It was the gritty over the top violent game that tried to be like Street Fighter. Shock and awe over smooth gameplay. And everyone I know hated the block button.

That was my first experience.
 
Played the first one at the arcades. Shocked at the realistic visuals and violence. That was it. Was 10 years old, been a fan since.
 
I was about 10 and my grandpa took me to Toys R Us to get any birthday gift I wanted and ended up choosing MK for Sega Genesis. I remember taking it home and bragging to all my friends. Then I promptly went inside and started playing while they looked at me through my bedroom window.

Yes I was an ass.
 
Used to frequent arcades with my older brother when I was six. I saw a bunch of kids gathered around a cabinet and wanted to see what everyone was looking at. Been a fan for 2 decades now.
 
My first memory of MK is in the only arcade we had in town. I was only like 9 or so and I remember the other kids standing in front of the machine. This one kid straight up pulled out what I remember being a ton of dot matrix printer paper. I remember they were trying to figure out fatalities and trying to find secrets.

I wish I knew what that guy was up to these days. I remember a couple years later a friend and I stopped by his house and he was playing something like football on the 2600. Damn that kid was cool.
 
Played at the pizza shop every Friday when we went in and ordered a pizza to take home when I was a kid.

I also played it at the arcade every now and then but it was hard to play it because so many people always crowded around the fighting games.
 
I was 19. I ditched this math class with some unbearably dry and humorless teach to grab an Italian beef at the local beef dive.

As I sat down to take my first bite of the sopping sandwich covered with sweet peppers, I saw it.

My God, it was beautiful. I changed in 5 bucks at the coin changer machine nearby and spent the next 90 minutes flying around the screen, shooting ice balls and uppercutting people into pits.

Some guy played me near the end of my pile of quarters, lit me up and I saw it. FATALITY! Oh man. It was glorious.
 
Played Mortal Kombat 1 for the first time in the arcade at the Southland Mall in the East Bay. Was a huge SF2 fantatic but this was pretty really entertaining. MK2 and MK3 took a lot of my spending money back when me and my brother used to go to arcades on the weekends.
 
Was in a rental store and my mom actually picked it out. It was the first Mortal Kombat game. She was more excited about it than I was, I think I was like 8 maybe.

When we got home we played it with my cousin and it was at that moment my lifetime of being bad at fighting games began. My cousin beat me, then my mom beat me, then my mom beat my cousin and they would always beat me whenever we played the game together. My mom was even the first person to do a fatality on me, I hated this after a while and refused to play with them anymore. I mean me getting beat by my mom in a video game? Insanity is what my 8 year old brain thought.
 
Played an UMK3 machine at the laundromat across town in the late nineties; I lost countless quarters between that and the Galaga/Ms. Pacman machine, and it still holds some of my favorite gaming memories
 
mikeebi3 said:
MK1 arcade, the feels
Click to expand...

Local pizza parlor had it. I quickly mastered Sub Zero and the rest is history. There was one point where I could play every character in the game. Knew the entire rosters move sets.

Now I can barely remember the combos for one character. Getting older sucks.
 
I remember I traveled overseas to visit my family in London, one of my cousins had a PSX and asked me to play a fighting game with him, i'm not sure which MK this was though. I was shocked at how gruesome the fatalities were, didn't see anything like that in a video game before.
 
I believe my first experience with Mortal Kombat was Mortal Kombat: DeadlyAlliance. I recall my overall experience being very negative. I never really fucked with the franchise again till the MK9 dropped. I got a lot of enjoyment outta that title.Thought it was an excellent game
 
Xav said:
Played Mortal Kombat 2 on SNES.

Thought it was shit and went back to Street Fighter II. I was however amused by all the stupid blood and gore.

It wasn't until Mortal Kombat 2011 that I developed any kind of respect for the series.

Mortal Kombat X looks awesome.
Click to expand...

Exactly me. Always had the opinion since MK 1 and 2 / SF2 that MK was an ugly joke of a game, fixated with blood and gore instead of a good game.

Held this opinion for years until MK9.

Now I'm a fan and buying MKX day 1
 
First memory I have of the series is playing the Genesis version of MK2 when we spent an afternoon trying to figure out Reptile's moves at a friend's house.

I wouldn't get to play one on my own console until I rented Mortal Kombat Trilogy on my N64 years later and then MK4 which I loved and still have fond memories of (despite its quality).
 
I played the first one when it came out on SNES. I read about it in gaming magazines and saw it in a local shop that broke the game's street date. I was pretty excited, had to get it right away.

I played it for quite a while, tried to learn all the moves. One day a friend came over who wasn't much into video game and he beat me by smashing buttons randomly. I was so frustrated. :(

MK1 was pretty much the only Mortal Kombat game that I ever played...
 
Ive experienced the franchise from the beginning, MK1 in an arcade. I remember thinking digitized characters were revolutionary and it was the future of gaming graphics.

Cut me some slack I was like 7 years old.
 
Brutal. Local arcade had two machine running the first MK. 11 year old me got utterly destroyed for a good 3 hours (mostly spent waiting for a turn). But watching everyone else beat the shit out of each other was glorious. I was hooked then and forever.
 
God I feel so old. I was in high school when the first MK came out. Not many people had Internet access in 1993, so I would print out move lists from rec.games.video or something and sell them at the arcade, because everyone wanted to know how to do fatalities. I made a few bucks with MK1, but selling move lists for MK2 was a gold mine.
 
I don't really remember my first time playing the game, but I do remember renting the first one on SNES. Also played MK2 at the local skating rink.
 
Flash back to 1992. The deli and the ice cream store down the block from me were almost like bitter rivals in the arcade game. They were in a strip mall, separated by a chinese food spot and a discount store that I never set foot in and never ever found out what they sold.
The ice cream store had Street Fighter II and people crowded them. Plus they kept all of their machines in the back, away from the glare. If you couldn't get on Street Fighter, you waited playing Final Fight.
Then the deli got Mortal Kombat and everybody left the ice cream store, even when they got Championship Edition and, later, Hyper Fighting editions of Street Fighter. That deli became THE SPOT to play games pretty much until Mortal Kombat 3. We ran through Killer Instinct. We ran through NBA Jam. Of course Mortal Kombat II was in there - and I'll never forget the guy who taught me how to use Baraka looked like Hans Gruber wearing aviators.
Pretty sure the first character I ever used was Raiden because doing back-back-forward for the Superman was so simple. Anybody that knew any of the fatalities was treated like a god, and being able to share that info was like sharing a porno tape. We would hang out pretty much from the time school ended until it was time to walk back home for dinner.
That ice cream store and that deli probably did like 60% of their daily business on Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat quarters. Neither of these two stores exist today.
 
I walked into my local arcade outside the movie theater, I went there regularly. There was a huge whooping crowd around a cabinet. Walked up and watched scorpion spear someone. Huge pool of blood. Then uppercut, more blood. FINISH HIM. The dude just punched the guy and the kid next to me mentioned that you could cut the other guys head off when it said FINISH HIM.

I didn't believe him, but I spent every l quarter I had on that game. Wound up not having money for popcorn. Worth it.
 
MK1 on the Genesis with the movie soon after. I remember liking it more than SF because I was able to button mash specials way easier than I could in SF.
 
I was 8 or 9 years old my brother was6 or 7 when we got mk2 on sega. It was was among our most played game along with mk3 when that came around.

We had every characters fatality memorized by heart. God damn that is crazy to think that some little kids were that obsessed with the game.
 
saw it in a arcade when i was just a wee boy. ive never seen or heard anything like it, soon after than MK became a prominent thing in my life, it got me to join karate n such. MK! will always have a dear place in my memories.

FINISH HIM!!!
 
Arcade, when it first game came out. It was right next to the SF2 machine if I recall correctly.

I'm old as fuck.

Gas was less than a dollar, you could buy candy with a fucking nickels... shit was crazy.
 
I played Mortal Kombat 1 on SNES as a kid and thought it was dumb. Then I played Mortal Kombat II or III (or maybe both) later and thought they were also dumb. Also those trees with the faces freaked me out.

I did laugh like a loser when Raiden made someone explode and their little hand landed directly under his crotch, reaching up.
 
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