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How was your first experience with Mortal Kombat?

Mk trilogy on the Mega Drive. Mum was in hospital giving birth to my younger brother and sister, so totally jumped on the opportunity to play an extremely violent game without being told off :D
 
Mortal Kombat arcade machine in a comic/arcade shop. I thought it was another shitty Pit Fighter sequel. Played it when the SF2 machine was busy. Ended up getting into it with the whole reptile hunt thing.
 
Playing with my Mom on a Sega Genesis. I always played Scorpion. She always picked Sonya. I had to be like 7 or 8 if that. It was pretty awesome.
 
The original MK1 arcade back when it was fairly new. I was like 5 or 6 years old and walked to some guy playing at the exact moment when he was performing the Kano fatality. I was equally horrified and fascinated by it.

I know it wasn't the first game with digitized actors, but at the time it looked as real as you could get. The music and voices were also unlike everything else, the announcer was creepy and dark, everything was pretty hardcore for a child. It remains as one of my gamer life-changing experiences to this day.
 
Played 2 games with my brother on an arcade cabinet and was bored quite quickly. He seemed to like the blood, but we quickly went back to SF2 and WWF Wrestlefest.

9 was probably the first time I remotely enjoyed the gameplay in one.
 
Watching my cousin play MK2 on his Amiga. I was a teenager at the time so of course I was impressed by the gore and fatalities. Compared to other ports that was probably a bad version of the game too especially thanks to the lack of buttons but it was the first I saw. Similarly I was impressed by Street Fighter 2 on the Amiga back then even though looking back its horrible compared to many versions I played since.
 
What's the first fatality you guys did?

I remember discovering the hold high punch Raiden fatality and thinking it was the greatest thing ever.
 
Back on the mega drive I used to play the original and loved it! I couldn't have been very old at all but at the same time it never phased me, though there was a few other games that did freak me out a bit such as Dragon's Fury with its super creepy artwork.

MK never intimidated me though and I'm not even someone who enjoys the modern trend of gore horror, however it remains my favorite fighting game still. All I have for MK is a long running set of good memories and I haven't bought one I didn't like yet.
 
I was like 10 or thereabouts in a tiny town at the only old school pizza place there was. I remember it clear as day, they just got a new arcade game and it showed someone that looked so real! It was raiden and the guy playing did the fatality and I was sold! Having lost many an allowance to street fighter I was so ready. Although I did have to hide that I played it from my parents lol.
 
When Street Fighter 2 was all the craze, I saw Mortal Kombat on an arcade, nobody was playing, I checked the (bad) digitized characters with that jerky, laughable animation (really few frames of animation), and everything looked so stiff... so I just moved on, considering it a B-grade fighter, trying to cash-in on the fighting game genre (wildly popular those times)

some weeks later, on an Arcade which had bigger displays (and thus, it was more popular) I saw a crowd, and I was curious, so I went in to see the game. It was the same shitty game as before, so I wondered why?
Until I saw sub zero head and spine ripping fatality.... My reaction was: "OMG, did I just saw all that gore on an actual arcade game??? O_o" And that was it, THAT got my attention.

If you think about it, fatality is THE main thing of this series. Without them, it wouldn't have been as successful, since it had mediocre gameplay, terrible animation and lame backgrounds. But the violence made what the franchise is today (duh! I know)
 
Wasn't allowed to play it as a kid, it scared me too so I stayed away for a long time.

Eventually I played UMK3 at a local fighting game thing. Loved it despite how dumb it is, played MK9 and really enjoyed it. Not really my thing as a fighter, but I love the style and characters.
 
My older brother had the original MK for Sega Genisis and I learned how to play when I was about 3. Pretty sure either that or Super Mario world was the first game I ever played.
 
Getting the first Mortal Kombat on the SNES and then envy the Sega version because of the bloodcode, just to realize that the Sega controller only had 3 buttons which is ridiculous.
 
I was 9 years old and would often go to the arcade down at the local mall. There was a crowd of people surrounding this arcade cabinet I had never seen before. It was the original Mortal Kombat.

You have to understand that I had never been exposed to a videogame like that at all up till that point in my young life. The sound effects, the blood flying after the hits, the announcers creepy voice, the environments.....and the fatalities...my god the fatalities. This stuff completely blew my 9 year old brain. There was this air of mystery surrounding the game. It both scared me a little bit and drew me into its world.
To this day, there are few moments in my gaming life that I can picture as clearly as first stumbling on the Mortal Kombat arcade cabinet, and the feelings of wonder/horror that coursed through my mind. I was a big fan immediately.
 
10 years old at the arcade in the mall with a kid from my school. Maybe it was because I grew up on Looney Tunes, but our very first ever experience with the game was seeing three fatalities immediately. Scorpion's, Kano's, and Sub Zero's... and we laughed our asses off. Just the most hilarious thing we'd ever seen in a video game at that time.

The more I started getting into the game, the more I became obsessed with playing and seeing every fatality.

And then when Mortal Kombat II came out in the arcade I watched people play it for about two hours that day, I vividly remember telling my classmates the very next day about how Reptile was now playable and his fatality was that he ate his opponent's head. Every single kid told me to shut up because I was lying, and that Mortal Kombat II wasn't out yet.

Awesome memories.
 
I was around 7 or 8 when Alpine Ski Resort in Michigan got it in their Arcade area. A bunch of people around the game. Took forever to finally play. Got my ass kicked and the other kid did the Scorpion torch fatality... I was hooked
 
Got MKT with my PS1 around when I was 6 or 7 and played the heck out of it. I remember the boss characters and the fatalities and just all the content. I continued with each one until Deadly Alliance then picked up again with 9.
 
The original in the Arcade. I still remember the first time seeing it with people just crowding around the arcade machine watching people play. Was so awesome. I then got a Genesis and got MK on that.
 
There wasn't a Mortal Kombat arcade machine near my house. There was a Mortal Kombat at a gas station that was about 2 miles from my cousin's house. There was at least 6 places we could go to play arcade games that were closer, but we would make the trek to play Mortal Kombat.


The graphics and sound were amazing, but I didn't know how to do any fatalities. The gameplay wasn't quite as fun as SFII, but it looked way more advanced to me at the time. How did people figure out the fatalities? I learned from word of mouth and then magazines, but I assume that there had to be the first person in the city to figure out how to the fatalities.


Were any of you able to figure out Mortal Kombat fatalities on your own?
 
The first time I played mortal Kombat was on one of these:

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I was 8. Great times.
 
I was young, but I distinctly remember seeing it in the arcades and seeing someone do Scorpion's fatality. I was amazed. When I got it for the SNES, I proudly showed my dad and his friend the fatality, and they were shocked but to their credit, let me keep playing it.

Funnily enough, even though it was a year earlier, I distinctly remember seeing SF2 in the arcades because someone was rocking with Dhalsim, and when I got a chance to play I picked him, and then got rocked cause he's the worst character to pick when you don't know what you're doing. I actually didn't play SF2 again until months later.
 
Funnily enough, the first time I ever played MK was on the frankly amazing Master System port of MKI. Stiff, slow and ungainly now...but back then? Mind-blowing.
 
First experience was censored SNES version at a friends house when i was a child. A couple of weeks later i saw the arcade version and i was like 0_O!!!!
 
First time I played MK was at Laura's Roller Skating Emporium..... it felt so taboo to go over and play that machine. I remember thinking just how big the characters in the game looked. I thought I was controlling a real person. Then I saw all the blood, and then the dude I was playing against froze me and yanked my head + spinal cord out of my body.
 
I saw MK1 and SF2 in an arcade near my home when I was a kid.

...but I didn't really, truly get to sink my teeth into it until the arcade ports came out on SNES/Genesis/GB. My uncle had the Genesis version with the blood code, my friend from school had the SNES version, and I got the GB version (which I played the hell out of). The characters were cool, their mythology was cool, the special moves were cool and unique especially compared to other fighting games at the time (knife throws, teleports, spears to yank people towards you, moves that freeze people, lightning bolts...awesome).

Of course, hunting down fatalities was the ultimate thing in MK. Finding them in each version of the game, looking at the differences between arcade/SNES/Genesis/GB/GG, and trying to be the first to break them out against your friends? An unbeatable experience.
 
Arcade or SNES. I don't recall, it wasn't super memorable to me. I played more Killer Insinct and Primal Rage. I bet that's why fighting games never stuck. MK definitely looks like the superior game
 
As a kid on the Mega Drive, Lots of button mashing with Sub Zero trying to make him shoot ice. Not much has changed in that regard.
 
I actually never played any of them until I was introduced to Mortal Kombat 9. I've seen the movies (ugh...) and had seen gameplay and all that goodness, but it took me until 2011 to finally try the series. I really enjoyed it when I picked it up, but it was very difficult for me to learn combos and stringing juggles together.

Lots of fun, and even still play it with my friends every once in a blue moon. I was always more of a MvC player though.
 
It was a long long time ago, but when I was three, I went with my older brother to a cousin's house and we played MK1 on the SNES or something.
 
My cousins SNES version and shortly after that on my PC. We found every special move and fatality and everything was handwritten to a small booklet. The dos version was near arcade perfect.
 
Mega Drive, Mortal Kombat 1, 1993.

Rented it from blockbusters, thought it was mostly rubbish when it came to gameplay, but I loved the impact of the moves like the uppercut and scorpions GET OVER HERE thing, the secrets (DULLARD, reptile), and how creepy goro was.

Fun game to rent but had no intention of buying it - games were helluva expensive back then, so I saved my money for good ones.
 
MK1 in the arcade. Even with the limited roster the appearance of the digitized characters was really cool. I sunk a lot of quarters into it. But what was really awesome was when MKII hit the arcade. The graphics were awesome, but the sounds were phenomenal. The sounds of brutality coming out of that machine were unreal. It's like you could feel every blow and impact.

I want a fan when the series went to CG characters after MKIII, but I understand why they did. I imagine digitized skins of humans would look weird warping on 3D models, at least at the time.
 
I just remembered something, this guy I knew who would cheese the fuck out of Mileena's teleport kick in MK2. Fuck you peter. Also I remember punching someone into a new stage being the most satisfying thing ever. Oh and the debates as to whether he said Toasty or whoopsy!
 
MK1 in the arcades.


before this game came out, i remember telling my friends that the ultimate fighting game would be one that gave you the option to kill your opponent, rather than just knocking him out.

and here before my eyes was that game. tho it was rather simplistic, it was still a boatload of fun for me and my buddies at the time.
 
MK 1 on Mortal Monday. They had a Goro standee in the shop. Got my dad to say I was allowed to play the game in order to rent it. lol
 
MK1 for SNES, was great. Thing is I was more of a Street Fighter guy so that took more of my time.
 
I was in the 7th grade and was watching an adult dude play this new cool looking fighting game in the local mall arcade, and when he lost to the Sub-Zero CPU, it did the head rip fatality on him. We both had a silent "Daaammmnnn" look on our faces. Mind-blowing.
 
MK1 SNES version. Played at my friend's house. I was in junior high. "FINISH HIM!!!" Were the most famous words at school back then :)
 
First experience was watching people play it the arcade in my University campus. Watch people play a fair bit as I was (and still am) lousy at fighting games.
 
At a birthday party at an indoor putt-putt type place, when I was maybe in 2nd or 3rd grade, me and some other kids got in trouble because one of them played on the MK arcade machine and we were standing behind him watching.

Then my friend across the street got it on Genesis when it came out. We took pride in remembering the blood code.
 
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